Spirited Away is definitely one of my (and I'm sure everyone's) favorite Miyazaki films, and I love it for the little things that go unnoticed to American viewers on the first watch. Like, for instance, one of the symbols above Yubaba's door to the bath-house, "yu" (which stands for "hot"), was an allusion to feudal Japan's era of bath-houses. It would translate to "hot baths," and the women were called "yuna," which translates to "hot water woman." and Yubaba is what they'd refer to the owner as! But wait, there's more! During that time era, those bath-houses served as brothels. That's why the customers offer gold to the girl employees, and why no-face keeps offering Chihiro/Sen gold. I had to look all of this up after the first run-through of the film, but what drove me to look it up online was how the bath-house looked and ran. It all seemed eerily similar to something I had studied before. And then I found out that Miyazaki put all of this in intentionally to tackle the problems of the sex-trade industry growing in Japan at the time, and how young kids were being exposed to it at such an early age.
Random little tidbits like this are what make me love watching Miyazaki films even more. Has anybody else noticed any hidden themes/metaphors in his other films?
Oh, and who can forget the best part of Spirited Away: the most detailed characters, the pigs!
I thought that was really interesting background information. Glad you posted it.
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