Spirited Away into the World of No Name

Spirited Away into the World of No Name
Spirited Away (2001) is a brilliant masterpiece. And I must confess, before I begin, that I am a fervent fanatic for Hayao Miyazaki and his anime movies. I will not even attempt to hide my bias. I love Spirited Away, a movie which strongly influenced my outlook on life. It is a visual experience I treasure, and for which I am greatly indebted to the genius of Miyazaki and the countless people that helped make Studio Ghibli into the anime powerhouse it has become. The fact that even now, eighteen years later, theaters still play Ghibli movies, is a testament to their longevity, their relevance, and their impact on popular audiences. Recently, I had the privilege to attend a screening of Spirited Away, which I had never been able to see on the big screen. Naturally, I had to write about it. Admittedly, this became a more speculative piece than the kind I normally write. I merely allowed my mind to run freely, and this is where I ended up.
Spirited Away centers on the ten-year old Chihiro Ogino, who finds herself trapped in the world of Kami (spirits) after her parents are turned into pigs by the Witch Yubaba. The majority of the movie is set at Yubaba’s bathhouse, the centerpiece of the spirit world. Chihiro, in order to save her parents, must find a way to free herself and convince the witch to turn her parents back into humans. All along the way she finds new friends and allies, such as the dragon boy Haku, the Boiler room operator Kamaji, and Lin, who help her along her journey. I would hardly judge myself capable of describing the full breadth of the story, which is one not simply told verbally, but primarily through visuals; it has to be seen. I would encourage anyone who has not done seen Spirited Away, to invest a mere 125 minutes of their life to watch it.

While I enjoy animated movies of all calibers, few can live up to the thematic breadth of Spirited Away. It is a movie with many layers and threads running alongside one another. Indeed, there are so many things that one could emphasize. Perhaps the most important message that Miyazaki hoped to convey to audiences, especially children, is that the world around us is not mundane, not devoid of spirituality and magic. This is what nearly every movie by Miyazaki is essentially about. Spirited Away presents a world full of Kami, the spirits which were believed to inhabit the human world in traditional Japanese folklore. Trees, rocks, rivers, mountains, and nearly every aspect of the physical world, were said to house them. But the modern generation no longer believes in the kami. It is for this reason that Miyazaki endeavored to reconnect the modern world with the traditional spirits of old, which had long inhabited the earth. In his own words: “I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything.”[1]
The spirit world, a supernatural realm which adults believe to be non-existent, becomes the setting for Chihiro’s journey. As she moves from the human world to the spirit world, Chihiro’s being becomes erased (in the movie, she becomes see-through). This is called kamikakushi (lit. ‘hidden by gods’), a term which also appears in the Japanese title of the movie: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (‘Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away’). Chihiro, the spoiled and moody 10-year-old child, ceased to exist after her ‘spiriting away’; stuck in the world between adolescence and adulthood that we all find ourselves in at one point or another. According to Miyazaki, Chihiro needed to find something ‘essential’ in herself to construct a new identity for herself, to become a member of the adult world — her ‘coming-of-age’ story.

Symbolizing Chihiro’s Kamikakushi is the moment when the Witch Yubaba takes away her name, when she makes Chihiro sign an employment contract. From then onward, Chihiro becomes ‘Sen’, by which she is known to the other inhabitants of the bathhouse. Her transformation is so complete that even she forgets her own name. A farewell card in her shirt pocket luckily shows her true name, allowing her to remember it. Haku, who is with Chihiro at this point, admonishes her to guard her name well, because stealing names is Yubaba’s ‘source of power’ by which she controls her employees. Indeed, near the end of the movie, Chihiro tells Zeniba (Yubaba’s twin sister) her name, after which she replies: “Chihiro… what a lovely name… Take good care of it.” This sentence struck a particular chord with me. Throughout the whole movie, several characters had emphasized the importance of one’s name. Clearly there must be more behind it than what might appear at first.
Names are not without meaning; there is true power in naming things, even if this is rarely recognized in the Western World. For example, Chihiro’s name means “One-Thousand”. Haku, whose real name reads Nigihayami Kahakunushi (meaning “flourishing swift-flowing amber [river] god”) is an amber-colored dragon. Yubaba (lit. “bathhouse granny”), owns the bathhouse. ‘Zeniba’ means “money granny,” Kamaji means “boiler granddad” — and indeed, this many-armed old-timer spends his days in the boiler room, heating the water used in the bathhouse. If anything is made clear by the movie, it is that your name is something you should treasure, that you should keep safe, that you should not carelessly give away to others.
But is my name who I am?

It is difficult to reduce someone’s identity to the name given to them by their parents at birth. Yet, in Spirited Away, one’s name is perhaps their most prized possession. It is to our name that our identity is attached. The entire range of our character, experiences and living experience can be captured with the name by which others call us. And even when we find ourselves lost, not knowing who we are, it is our name that stays with us.[2] Sometimes, when I hear someone’s name, it just feels right to call them just that. “This person is a Peter,” is my thought. Sometimes, when asked to give a name to something or someone, it just pops out spontaneously, almost as if everyone truly has a specific name attached to their person.
Whatever the precise letters or words used, your name is the symbolical representation of your identity. As such, your name is not merely a sound bestowed upon you at birth; it is your identity incarnate. You can change the words, but the essence remains. Indeed, Haku was right when he told Chihiro to guard her name; and Zeniba, who remarked that Chihiro should take good care of it. Your name, and the identity which is attached to it, is your responsibility. It is the challenge of life to grow our name, to cherish and care for it. ‘Growing our name’, then, means ‘developing our personal being.’ The Chihiro at the end of the movie is no longer the same as the Chihiro at the start; her name has matured.

Yet, many people take their name as a static entity; something given at birth which does not change — unless you mean to change it legally (though, again, to change the exterior sound of your name does not change its content: the identity). It is easy to become self-complacent in the belief that one has already figured out their name; convinced as they are that they know what they are as persons. But can one ever be sure? If it is true that life is ever-dynamic, and growth is a fact of life, then the person, certain of their identity, has deceived him/herself. By not paying attention to the potential growth of your name, you disallow your inner self to blossom into something better. Miyazaki pointed out that ‘growing up’ is merely the development of individuals who draw on something already inside them to deal with particular circumstances — say, being trapped in the spirit world.
It is far worse to neglect your name, which leaves it defenseless against the encroachments of others. How many of us carelessly sign away our name like Chihiro, who wanted to work at the bathhouse? When you sign away your name, it is no longer yours to control; others get the power to control who you are — even if you do not realize it. Haku, for example, lost his name to Yubaba. She gave him the name Haku, whose identity was ‘to be her henchmen and to manage her dirty work’. Haku followed the path set out by Yubaba, and did these vicious things. Never mind the slug creature she put in Haku to control him; it was the fact that she set the boundaries of who ‘Haku’ was, that made it inevitable that he should act in accordance to his new identity. Haku, who had once been a benevolent river spirit, came to be shunned by other members of the bathhouse, who saw him as a rotten, bad, and untrustworthy person. It was this person that Yubaba had turned him into, simply by taking his name, both physically and symbolically. A name that is forced upon you, is not a safe name. It can be taken away at any point. Yubaba might have given Chihiro the name Sen, but she could easily have claimed back this name later. Indeed, she frequently threatened to turn Chihiro into coal.

No matter how many times we convince ourselves that only we are in charge of our name, our identity, we allow outside forces to interfere at every corner. There is, for example, the employer, who has the power to dictate your daily schedule; who can use his position to coerce employees into doing things that they would otherwise not have done — things they hitherto believed to be ‘out of character’. Haku, it must be remembered, was a good person, yet coerced into less-than-admirable behavior.[3] How often do we let our behavior be decided by others around us? How often do we feel coerced into displaying ‘adult’ behavior out of fear that others might look at us weird, condemn our childish nature? In all such cases, the expression of our identity is decided upon by external agents; and all that with our consent. Yet, perhaps even a diluted name is better than no name, someone might argue. A bad name still implies existence; no name implies that one has no existence at all; to be a miserable soul condemned to endless wandering around the world like an empty shell, a see-through ghoul ignored by all others.
What if there is no name to hang your identity from? What have you become if there is no verbal sound that I can use to call you, and lead you away from your wanderings? What name will I use to praise you for your virtues, or condemn your for your vices? How do you go on living when nobody knows your name? If any character in Spirited Away came close to this reality, it was No-Face. A curious spirit, the No-Face is introduced at the start of the movie when Chihiro crosses the bridge to the bathhouse. Nobody sees him, or pays any attention to him. But it is attention that No Face craves: he wants to be acknowledged so bad, that he was prepared to devour the one person that genuinely treated him like a real person — to acknowledge that he had an identity, a name. All the dirty gold in the world cannot buy you friendship, which is a bond between names. Unlike Chihiro, the people in the bathhouse did not care who No Face was, as long as he continued handing out gold. Only then would they acknowledge his existence, bestow all sorts of material luxury on him, in the form of food and comfort.

True friendship between names cannot be bought; not with bath tokens, not with dirt-gold, not with brute force. The one person that No Face wanted to befriend was Chihiro: not because she showered him with praise or luxuries, but rather because she treated him as an individual being; a being with a name. Perhaps she saw in him a name that remains unbeknownst to us. Even the No-Face, in the end, finds himself, following Chihiro to the house of the Witch Zeniba, where he remains as a spinner. “Take good care of your name,” the Witch instructs us. Nourish it, grow it, and protect it.

A name, in the end, is you; no matter what particular order of letters you use, no matter what the some state document says your name is. You can change your external name as you like; but your inner name stays the same. Chihiro, even when she was Sen, remained Chihiro. The inner name is an essential you[4] that goes where you go; leaves when you leave; only to remain behind when you reach the end of your life. It is what stays behind long after our physical remains have gone, in the form of an inscription on a tomb stone, or a small record in the annals of history.
A name can live on without its owner; but the owner cannot live without their name.
~Cheers
Tim

[1] Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki’s Anime Film “Spirited Away “, Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki’s Anime Film, “Spirited Away”, Volume 8, James W. Boyd, Tetsuya Nishimura, Issue 3 October 2004.
[2] Excluding those unfortunate souls stricken with amnesia.
[3] That is not to say there is no such thing as ‘bad’ people; people that act in terrible ways, from a pure intrinsic motivation.
[4] Not to be confused with the concept of the soul. Your ‘name’ is not an objective reality, nor a subjective reality. Rather, it lives in a realm in between these. You cannot unilaterally decide what your name is once you have passed away. Yet, there is no objective reality to your name either. Instead, the legacy of your name, and the character attributed to it, are negotiated by the people that remember you. It is from the consensus of posteriority that your posthumous name arises — neither subjective nor objective reality. Therefore, it is pointless to argue that an ‘essential you’ does not exist because you cannot physically find it when inspecting the body; it is not a physical thing, after all.
