Shenmiao Wang - Week 4

Week 4 Topic - Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki

“Princess Mononoke” is an animated film written and produced by Hayao Miyazaki in 1997. The fantasy adventure revolves around the young Emishi prince Ashitaka’s participation in a scuffle between the humans that consume the woodland resources and the vengeful gods of the forest. The movie shows life in Muromachi village, where people believe in innumerable spiritual beings concerned with human affairs and capable of assisting or harming humanity’s interests. It illustrates Mononoke’s pursuit to avenge Eboshi’s greed to degrade the environment as she consumes the earth’s resources. This segment discusses the epic struggle between nature and humankind caused by the hostile relationship between animism and the human world.

Miyazaki’s animated film paints techniques of the Spiritual Realm and incorporate animism to depict the environmental aspect. For instance, Lady Eboshi illustrates animism through the belief that there exists a forest spirit that is the cause of the community’s misfortunes. Conversely, the forest spirit retaliates by arguing that human activities such as deforestation result in the depletion of animals’ habitats. Thus, the trust in the dreadful animistic culture drives Eboshi’s desire to kill the vengeful animal spirit to save her people from extinction due to environmental degradation.

The animism theme in the film elaborates on the conservation idea. The topic represents the modern conflict between human beings’ need for growth and development and nature’s need for preservation through animism. Thus, animistic believers trust that social disputes with the animal spirits relate to the current misfortunes such as the Coronavirus pandemic theme, while the primitives believe the plague originates from wildlife. Hence, pacifying the conflict between the human world and the revengeful animal spirits might resolve the epidemic.

Work Cited

Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli, 2019.