“If you don’t get a job, Yubaba will turn you
into an animal.”
Hidden in the fantastic other-wordly narrative
of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is an allegory about society’s
toxic obsession with work.
“Come on! Get to work you little runts!”
The Studio Ghibli classic was released in 2001
and commented on Japan’s losing its soul to capitalism
in the context of the country’s “lost decade.”
Yet the film is eerily relevant to our contemporary idea
of “hustle culture”
-the mindset that to get ahead, you need to devote
as much of your day as possible to working,
leaving little time for anything else.
“Work like hell,
I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks,
every week.”
Spirited Away shows that idea to be a trap.
While Chihiro may think her liberation comes from 24/7 hustling,
in fact hustling keeps her down
--it’s something more intangible, and more spiritual,
that provides her freedom.
“I put a spell on it, so it’ll give you back your strength.
Just eat it.”
Here’s our take on how Spirited Away pulls the mask off living to work,
and shows us the need for another dimension to life.
“That’s your contract, sign your name away
and I’ll put you to work.”
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"Move it, you stupid soot balls."
Spirited Away follows the adventures of innocent Chihiro,
who’s forced to become a worker at a chaotic,
mysterious bathhouse for spirits while she tries to reclaim
her old life and save her parents, who’ve been transformed into pigs
by the bathhouse’s villainous ruler, Yubaba.
“I’ll give you the most difficult job I’ve got,
and work you until you breathe your very last breath."
The bathhouse environment may be bizarre,
full of odd characters and spirits for clients,
but at its core, it is a place of work.
It runs on its own fixed time schedule.
"Now get back to work."
Employees sleep top to tail in crowded rooms,
and are pitted against one another to see who can work the hardest.
“Haven't’ you ever worked a day in your life?”
“Lin and Sen, you get the big tub today.”
"What?"
“Hey, that’s frog work!”
Chihiro’s productivity is crucial not just to her thriving
in the bathhouse, but also surviving.
“And if she doesn’t work hard, roast her,
boil her, do whatever you want.”
Simply put, the bathhouse runs
on hustle culture, extolling the virtues
of overwork and burnout.
Dr Bryan Robinson says, “When the hustle culture drives you,
you unwittingly relinquish your personal power
and become a slave to internal
and external pressures,”
adding that 45% of the modern day workforce
brag about ascribing to this way of life.
“We have to make sure that they all think that she knows
exactly who they are. And I've been studying for weeks.”
But this lifestyle actually signals a culture of employment
that isn’t functioning as it should.
If the only way to get ahead is to work every hour of the day,
then something is broken.
“You’ve got some customers on the way.”
“Wait! Give us a minute!
This is clearly harassment.”
Spirited Away critiqued this culture of work
at the end of Japan’s so-called “lost decade.”
“It’s an abandoned theme park. See?
They built them everywhere in the early '90s,
then the economy went bad and they all went bankrupt.”
The bad economy that Chihiro’s father mentions
is a reference to the Japanese stock market crash of 1990,
which began a period of long-term economic stagnation.
In such an environment, work is a trap
--no matter how hard you grind, you are always beholden
to financial forces beyond your control.
"Sake's on the house tonight.
But first, hand over all the gold
you picked up."
The film also brings into focus the class hierarchy
that a capitalist society helps create,
as the working class toils away for the benefit of the upper class.
“Welcome the rich man, he’s hard for you to miss.
His butt keeps getting bigger, so there’s plenty there to kiss!”
While the groundworkers at the bathhouse
scrub floors and feed boilers
and scrape sludge,
the boss Yubaba is high up and away in a luxurious penthouse,
viewing her workers as lesser beings.
"Now get out. I've got all the lazy bums I need."]
The problem with this structure and attitude toward work
is that it is inherently dehumanizing.
Workers cease to be people, and instead become tools
for their employers.
Spirited Away takes this to an extreme
by literally having Chihiro lose her name
“That’s how Yubaba controls you, by stealing your name,”,
and in turn, her identity,
when she signs her contract at the bathhouse
and has to change her name to Sen.
“And it belongs to me now.
From now on your name is Sen, you got that?”
One of the kanji that Chihiro loses from her name
means “to search” or “inquire.”
The kanji that is left,
Sen, means 1000.
So Chihiro is symbolically reduced from a person whose identity
is linked with curiosity and independent thought,
to nothing but a number
--just as capitalism views us as only as valuable
as the number of our net worth.
"You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight.
I drove an eighty-thousand dollar BMW.
THAT'S my name."
The biggest problem that Spirited Away shows
with hustle culture is how seductive it can be.
"Give me some gold. Give me some tips please sir."
The lure of money encourages a competitive environment
among the workers, all of them jostling
with each other to provide for NoFace,
the wealthy client sowing chaos by liberally bestowing gold coins
on the workers.
“Just keep the food coming. I wanna eat everything!"
However, eventually,
as with Chihiro’s parents, the greed of the workers is punished,
as they are literally swallowed whole by NoFace.
“Wipe that smile off your face. You’re still smiling!”
Hustle culture creates this catch 22 to ensnare workers,
encouraging them to never stop grinding
while keeping them at an arm's length from any meaningful social mobility
that the promise of work should offer.
So while work is presented to Chihiro as a means of escape,
the message is that it will actually incarcerate her,
and us.
"I can't believe I forgot my name.
She almost took it from me."
It is only in abandoning the hustle
that she’s able to get back to her old life.
On the flipside, those who do have money
also aren’t fulfilled
-- as we see through No-Face and Chihiro’s parents
who represent overconsumption.
“Mom! Dad! Come on, quit eating!
Let’s get outta here!”
Early in the movie, consuming turns Chihiro’s parents
into literal pigs -- a common symbol for capitalists.
"Finally, those capitalist pigs
will pay for their crimes, aye."
Studio Ghibli has clarified they represent the greed
of Japan’s economic bubble of the '80s,
and how the people who became “pigs” in that time
didn’t know it or remember what it was like
to have a human soul.
In 2001, after the economic downturn
had revealed that capitalism wasn’t even working
to make people rich, Miyazaki was encouraging
the younger generation to look back at
Japan’s pre-capitalist, more spiritually inclined history.
At the very start of the film, when Chihiro notices spirit shrines,
“What are those stones? They look like little houses.”
“They’re shrines. Some people think
little spirits live there.”,
her mother’s reaction implies that she and her husband embody
a new, materialistic Japan that’s abandoned
the country’s more spiritual past.
“You’ve got daddy here. He’s got credit cards and cash!”
And the parents’ transformation into pigs is a form of punishment
for their failure to show respect to the spirits of the place.
"And you humans always make a mess of things.
Like your parents, who gobbled up the food
of the spirits like pigs."
The film designs the spirit world to look like
Japan from the Meiji period, when Japan first began to transform
into a capitalist society, something also illustrated
in the Tom Cruise film The Last Samurai.
“You see, the emperor’s mad
for all things western, and the samurai believe
it’s changing too fast.
In fact, the ancient and the modern
are at war for the soul of Japan.”
As Ayumi Suzuki writes: “the influx of the Western culture
brought to Japan both chaos and growth,
represented by the mixing of Japanese identity
with Western architecture, philosophy,
fashion, and values.”
But, “By having Chihiro live in the era
of a modernizing Japan, Miyazaki invites the audience
to experience what we really were losing as a nation
and personally during that period.”
Suzuki underlines “Miyazaki's equation of labor
with wage slavery,”
"Yeah, I'm Kamaji,
slave to the boiler that heats the baths.",
and how the workers essentially become Yububa’s property.
He also reminds us that Chihiro is a
“child whose childhood has been stolen from her”
--and this portrayal of child labor makes it clear to us
how wrong it feels to give up a whole life to work.
Perhaps we might read in a larger commentary,
too, about how children are treated
in the capitalist system: even when they’re not
literal laborers like Chihiro, they can face very early pressure
to start training for and proving their value
as future capitalist earners.
Through juxtaposing the Meiji era with its modern one,
Spirited Away was arguing that the soul of Japan
was still being fought over by two warring belief systems.
The film centers on the conflict between materialism and spirituality.
And this clash between our material world
and the pure spirit world is illustrated through
Chihiro’s interaction with the stink spirit.
When the stink spirit arrives at the bathhouse,
he is shunned by the workers as an inferior spirit,
“It’s a stink spirit.”
“And apparently it’s an extra smelly one.",
while Chihiro is given the job of tending to his needs as a test
because of her lowly status.
“Take this guest to the big tub and take care of him.”
“But, but I--”
“No buts, or I’ll turn you into coal.”
However, Chihiro is eventually able
to figure out that it isn’t a stink spirit,
but actually a more lofty river spirit
--and she succeeds because she treats the spirit
with respect,
“Just a minute sir!
That’s our best herbal formula."
As director, Hayao Miyazaki said,
“In my grandparents' time, it was believed that spirits,
or kami, existed everywhere
–in trees, rivers, insects, wells,
anything. My generation does not
believe this, but I like the idea
that we should all treasure everything because spirits
might exist there,
"It means that our world is filled with gods.
That they are beyond counting.",
and we should treasure everything because there is
a kind of life to everything.
"Gods show up in places where you least expect them."
When the workers pull what Chihiro thinks is a thorn
out of the stink spirit’s side, we see that in actuality
it’s years of accumulated human junk that’s been dumped into the river.
“Sen where are you?” “Well done.”
The pollution resulting from humanity’s materialism has poisoned
the river spirit’s essence, and turned him into
something foul and unpleasant.
"Hey! We're not open! Go! Please! Go! Leave us!"
The reason Haku has forgotten his identity is likewise
because the river he’s the spirit of was destroyed to build apartments.
"My name *is* the Kohaku river."
"They filled in that river. It's all apartments now!"
"That must be why I can't find my way home,
Chihiro."
Thus humanity’s obsession with overconsumption is shown
to have devastating environmental and spiritual costs,
a point which echoes the messages of other Studio Ghibli movies
like Ponyo and Princess Mononoke.
“What I want is for the humans and the forest to live in peace!”
Spirited Away shows spirituality and respect
for the non-material world to be antidotes to the potential
ugliness of materialism.
It's spirituality that saves Chihiro
--her holding onto something that she can feel and trust
even though it can’t be articulated,
valued, or measured. “Haku!"
There is a clear generational divide in Spirited Away.
Right from the start, Chihiro senses the danger
of the world they’re entering while her parents don’t.
“Did you hear that building? It was moaning.”
“It’s just the wind."
Chihiro is out of place in the bathhouse, too,
the only other young people being the ambiguously aged Haku,
and Yubaba’s gigantic baby son, Boh.
“You’ll get sick if you go outside, so stay here and play with me.”
In Spirited Away, youth is a kind of superpower,
“Will you take her to see Yubaba? She’s a tough little girl.
I think she can handle it.”,
yielding a sixth sense that the adults don’t have.
"You still haven’t noticed that something precious to you
has been replaced.”
For Chihiro, this sixth sense manifests
in her relationship with Haku
--and how she’s able to hold on to her trust for Haku
throughout the film,
"You're a good friend.",
despite older characters telling her she should be wary of him.
“He’s Yubaba’s henchman, don’t trust anything he says.”
From her very first meeting with Haku he seems to know her
"How did you know my name's Chihiro?"
"I've known you since you were very small.",
and it’s later revealed that’s because he’s a river spirit
who once saved her when she nearly drowned.
“You were the one who carried me back into shallow water,
you saved me!”
In the end, she’s rewarded for trusting
her intuition about Haku,
"I knew you were good!",
instead of what others told her.
Tasha Robinson argues that Chihiro, and indeed all of Studio Ghibli’s
child heroes and heroines, embody the Japanese idea of Genki,
or as Robinson puts it,
“a mixture of driving energy and indomitable good cheer.”
"There's a fish! Oh look there's another one!"
"So, how do you like the new place?"
"Dad it's perfect!"
"Look at this! A tunnel of trees!"
Whereas Lin, an older human
who works in the bathhouse, idly dreams of escaping one day
“I gotta get outta this place. Some day I’m getting on that train.”,
Chihiro’s youth gives her the tools to actually do so.
Chihiro saves Haku by revealing to him his real name,
“You did it Chihiro! I remember!
I was the spirit of the Kohaku river!”
and she saves NoFace from his greed
“I think being in the bathhouse makes him crazy.
He needs to get outta there.”,
turning him back into the gentler, less threatening NoFace she first met.
“He won’t hurt us.”
There is a sense that because Chihiro is a child,
she is uncorrupted by the material trappings
of the adult world.
"Sen, you did great, we made so much money!"
“I don’t want any, but thanks.
I’m sorry, but I’m in a really big hurry.”.
She sees it for what it can be: dangerous,
inhospitable, soul destroying.
Miyazaki once said that,
“Children understand intuitively that the world
they have been born into is not a blessed world.”
Indeed, many films
in the Studio Ghibli canon focus on independent,
strong child protagonists who are able to navigate
their own way out of difficult situations.
"Yayyy! Ahhhhh!" "She got him!"
In My Neighbour Totoro, the two daughters,
Satsuki and Mei, can confidently move
between the human and spirit world in a way their father cannot,
as only young people can see the spirits of the forest.
"Here?"
"Mhm, last time the tunnel led to Totoro"s tree."
In From Up On Poppy Hill, students at a Japanese boarding school
work together to save their school’s clubhouse
from demolition.
“Sit back down or I’ll have you thrown out!”
“You’re just like the old men who run this country!
Dumb and enamoured with the new!”
The things that feel important to adults
-progress, money, consumerism,
"There's a new customer who's loaded. He's giving gold away by the handful!"-
are put in perspective by the young heroes and heroines
of Studio Ghibli, especially Chihiro.
Chihiro succeeds by never losing sight of who she is,
“Chihiro.”,
or what she thinks is right.
So if we’re plunged into a society that runs counter
to our own world view,
we can, like her, hold onto our original spirit,
listen to our own inner child, and just maybe get out
of the rat race, too.
This is a film about greed, and how giving into greed
blinds us to what actually matters.
"Beg for tips, this is the time.
Beg for tips, make yourselves a dime!"
Yububa, the greediest of all,
even overlooks her baby going missing,
the thing she supposedly loves most,
because she’s so focused on her gold.
"Suck up to him and get every last speck of gold,
he's...Ew, what's that dirty mouse doing here?"
But while the consumerist greed of the bathhouse is trapping,
for Chihiro the actual act of working is often liberating.
She’s able to retain a healthy perspective
on the benefits work can offer because,
unlike her colleagues, she never allows herself to be
invariably motivated by money and greed.
“What, they’re all for me?
Thanks, but I don’t need anymore.”
Ultimately, what keeps Chihiro incorruptible
to capitalist greed is that she has a greater purpose:
she’s focused on saving her parents, and getting back to her old life.
“Mom! Dad! I got a gift from the river spirit!
Maybe if you eat it, it'll break the spell!”
As David Foster Wallace put it,
“Everybody worships... And the compelling reason
for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship...
is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things... you will never have enough.”
"Gimme!"
Increasingly, as we’re seeing mass burnout
and backlash to hustle culture, we’re also seeing the rise
of practices like mindfulness, meditation and digital detoxes
-- though often with a distinctly capitalist bent
as if you can “buy” wellness without making deeper changes.
“I cannot end my day without a soak in one of these..."
"Yeah."
"...goop baths. It’s really meant to use like
the healing powers of essential oils
to kind of bring you down.”
Spirited Away, while grounded in specific
Japanese ideas and spirits, is looking at spirituality
as a broader, more immutable thing:
the importance of a name, family,
friendship, and love.
"Haku. Thank goodness."
Working harder and harder won’t ever deliver you
to the promised land, but it’s these things
that will save your life.
“What’s going on?”
“Something you wouldn’t recognize, it’s called love.”
"What is your favorite scene from a Miyazaki movie?"
"For me,
it just doesn't get any better than the Totoro growing scene.
Just reminds you of, just what a miracle it is
that things grow.
You just water these seeds and then they just grow.
You kind of forget this magic is around you all of the time.
I also love the physicality of the way they kind of squeeze,
they, they squeeze it up
and they push it out like they're giving birth almost.
And they, they will it to,
to grow.
And then they wake up the next morning and it's real,
that, you know they haven't- it hasn't grown into this big tree
but there are these little sprouts, and there's such
an interesting feeling that they made it happen."
"I thought it was a dream! Hooray!
We did it! We did it!"
"How many times would we have loved to have a-
a good dream come true, right?
It's a dream come true."
"Building that appreciation and that awe for nature
is one of the most amazing things about Miyazaki movies for me.
The way that the- the young girls cultivate
this relationship with nature, and it's- it's their friend,
it comes to them in times of need.
It's such a beautiful way to, to teach us to think about..."
"Yeah."
"...the way that the natural world grows around us
and what relationship we want to have with it."
"And that we're not the only living creatures
on this planet. In fact,
we're only a slight blip on the larger,
you know, um, passage of time.
And that we also,
uh, you know, we can really teach this
to our children.
You know, I think about the black ooze
and Princess Mononoke towards the end,
and how they have to deal with those natural elements
and overcome a curse almost, as the way we treat the world
that we live in."
"So, another scene I love is in Kiki's Delivery Service
when she rediscovers her ability to fly.
And it's so tied to also, that her ability to help and to-
to be there, um, to show up in a time of need.
"Kiki was so brave! She really saved the day."
"We have another video about Kiki, which is really interestingly-
it's tapping into a similar theme as, as we're finding in Spirited Away,
which is this burnout, this need to find purpose
that's not just in a hustle culture."
"Flying used to be fun, until I started doing it for a living."
"Both of these films are, a lot about finding something else
in your life --a spiritual outlet--
something that nourishes you, nourishes your mind and souls."
"And- and it also has an opportunity, it gives you a moment
to just take a step, and think about,
what are we absorbing?
What are we allowing to, come into our consciousness."
"Yeah."
"Are we, then, internalizing that
and delivering it into the world?"
"Take long walks. Look at the scenery.
Doze off at noon. Don't even think about flying.
And then pretty soon you'll be flying again!"
"This year has been such an opportunity to reflect,
and you know if, among that many things,
And I think a lot of us went, well,
what are we dong with our time?
You never know how much time you have left.
You don't have that much time on this earth,
what are you doing with it?
What- what is meaningful to you?"
"I guess I never gave much thought to why I wanted to do this."
"For Kiki, finding that purpose,
I think she needs to find her purpose
in order to fly, and that's very literal for her.
But it's-but it's true for there rest of us."
"Her purpose is very much about human connection.
And it's so true, the more you practice
thinking about others and helping,
that's the most enriching.
That's the way that you can find really the most centering,
um, piece I think, is when we realize
we're all part of this larger story."
"Yeah, you see that in- in Ponyo,
which is one of the..."
"Oh, great point, yeah."
"...the simpler stories I think in- in Miyazaki,
but it's one of my favorites for that reason,
because it- it is just this amazing telling
of what love is.
The way that Sosuke when he says, 'I will love you,'"
"I will love you too."
"And 'I will protect you,' and he says that
it's a big responsibility."
"It's a big responsibility, but I *really* love her."
"I love Ponyo and I love May and Totoro.
I love that little girl character who's just such a force of nature,
and she's so wild, and she just has this will.
I don't know if I identify with this character,
but that scene of Ponyo just, running on the wave,
running after Sosuke and the mom goes,"
"That wave as just after us."
"The wild energy of her and her devotion,
the way that she's like I'm just going to get back to him
or the way that she heals people, but it's-
its this very ferocious, wild, young energy.
It's just this sweet, sweet childish love between them."
"Ponyo loves Sosuke."
"And also that love comes in many forms.
I think that's shown through a lot of Miyazaki films,"
"For love, it broke the neva smell."
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