Personal Dork Assistant

Words of wisdom on Chinese iconography in Spirited Away

Editor: Stolen shamelessly from people smarter than I.

In the depiction of the spirit world, the music, the tone of visual representation (especially the composition of color of the bath hall, the architectural design of its ceilings, and the vases outside Yu-ba-ba's room) seem to evoke elements of Chinese culture (the Tang dynasty in particular, a moment, according to "authoritative" historical accounts that I was taught in highschool, the Japanese culture in general and architecture in particular were marked with significant Chinese influences). My impressions might be shaped too much by stereotypical visual representation of Chinese and Japanese cultures in the mass media and predicated upon the false essentialist assumption of the mutually exclusiveness of these two cultures. However, the music, which at least to me is unmistakably more "Chinese" than "Japanese," does seem to suggest Miyazaki's deliberate choice of "not-so-typical-Japanese" elements (especially in the context of his filmic vocabulary) to depict the spirit world.

So, my question is: if my observations are not too far off, how much of this would you say has to do with the ways in which the spirit world is commonly perceived in Japanese culture , and how much of it is Miyazaki's creative invention. Of course, as mathematically inclined as I am, I would prefer an answer with the exact percentage of each.

I think a lot of the visual representation has to do with the thematic preoccupation with tradition/modernity. The spirit world is strongly linked with the premodern (Japanese notion of "modernity" began in the 1860s with the Meiji Restoration, a major component of which was the move to suppress cultural references to the mythic/folkloric past), and a visual shorthand imagery of making reference to the past is by using Chinese iconography. One example that springs to mind is the Japanese TV show "Go Sei Sentai DaiRanger" ("Five Star Task Force DaiRanger"), in which a tribe of ancient Japanese warriors have their powers passed down to the present (well, it was 1992 then!) generation. The ancient warriors are clearly rooted in Chinese symbolism, basing their costumes on Chinese mythological creatures -- I don't know how you pronounce these names properly in Chinese, but these are the Japanese pronunciations: Ryu (dragon), Shi Shi (lion), Tenma (winged horse), Kirin (giraffe with a horn) and Hou Ou (phoenix). They even went so far as to hire stuntmen who could do Chinese style wu shu, rather than the usual Japanese shotokan karate you usually see in these shows. I always think it's nice to see such an admission (that Japanese culture sprang from Chinese culture), as opposed to perpetuating these ideas that Japanese were descended from the tengu (mythological goblins); that the Emperor was a direct descendant of the gods, etc., which can lead to bizarre forms of Japanese nationalism and "Nihonjinron" (usually translated as "Japaneseness").