When Hayao Miyazaki retired in 2013, he left behind one of the greatest bodies of work of any animator. His films were fantastical and all uniquely his own. They all featured incredible stories and endearing characters, and they all can be analyzed as myth. Of course, anything can be analyzed as myth, but Miyazaki's films are specifically interesting due to the purposeful subversions of the familiar tropes of myth which reflect the evolution of society and culture, including but not limited to: better roles for female characters, anti-war and pro-environment sentiments, and conclusions involving peace and unity. Miyazaki weaves his own personal opinions and viewpoints into the age-old storytelling tactics of myth. This could be on purpose, or this could be a perfect case for the collective unconscious, but either way, his films are perfect for modern mythical analysis.
It is impossible to discuss mythical analysis without mentioning Joseph Campbell, and no Miyazaki film fits Campbell's monomyth more perfectly than Princess Mononoke. Princess Mononoke is a story with very traditional mythological archetypes. Hayao Miyazaki's writing process, which this paper will discuss more in depth later, is very free form. Often, he starts with ideas and storyboards before he has a script of any kind. This is a style which often results in age-old paratactic story-telling conventions, which helps his films seem all the more mythical. Princess Mononoke begins the way many myths do: A young prince, Ashitaka, has a curse placed upon him, so he must leave his village to try and find a cure. Joseph Campbell would likely classify this as a "call to adventure". Like many Miyazaki films, Princess Mononoke does deal in the supernatural. Ashitaka's curse grants him amazing strength, so when he crosses the threshold, to use Campbell's terminology, he already has the supernatural aid needed to defeat multiple samurai in battle. However, Ashitaka comes from a culture which prefers to avoid war, so while this curse does make him more powerful, he despises it because it also heightens his aggression and makes violent choices for him. He realizes that he is in the "belly of the whale" once he sees a convoy of soldiers and travelers attacked by the wolf goddess and her three cubs. However, this is also Ashitaka's first glimpse of the goddess he will later meet, as one of the wolf cubs is actually a human girl who was raised by the wolves. He follows this convoy, or what is left of it, to a steel mining town. There he meets Lady Eboshi, ruler of the town and primary antagonist. Lady Eboshi takes the role of "woman as temptress" when she offers a good life for Ashitaka, on the condition that he stay and work at Irontown. He doesn't take this offer, choosing instead to follow the wolf girl, San, into the forest. It is revealed that Lady Eboshi wants to demolish the forest and kill the wolf, boar, and deer gods so she can expand her ironworks. Ashitaka then encounters a "road of trials" to gain the trust of San and her mother, the wolf goddess Moro. Trust is only gained once he has protected San, and in turn she has brought him to the deer god to save his life. The film concludes in an all-out attack by Lady Eboshi and her warriors on the gods. She plans to take the head of the deer god to the emperor so that she can receive protection and support for the expansion of Irontown, and it is also rumored that the head of the god would grant her immortality. She manages to behead it and kill the boar and wolf deities, but just when Eboshi thinks the wolf goddess is dead, its head operates on its own and bites off her right arm. The body of the deer god then begins to transform, searching for its head and destroying anything it comes in contact with, including its own forest. Ashitaka and San manage to convince Eboshi's guards to drop the head, and together they present it to the god and the forest is restored. This forest restoration is Ashitaka's "ultimate boon", and in the end he "refuses return" by staying at the repurposed Irontown instead of venturing back to his village. It is brought up by Christine Hoff Kraemer that Ashitaka's role in this film is that of a liminal being. He is an outsider to both Lady Eboshi of Irontown and San of the forest. This can be compared to prominent myths as "This liminality, the quality of being 'betwixt and between,' empowers Ashitaka to play the Christ-like roles of mediator, martyr, and finally, savior" (Kraemer). Ashitaka's Christ-like holiness allows him to be the source of peace in this unfamiliar, war-plagued world. This film has many connections to existing myths and reoccurring themes of myth, and this may be partly due to Miyazaki's writing style.
In is an understatement to say that Miyazaki has an interesting creation process. When planning a movie, he often draws storyboards before anything else. This allows his process to become more about visual storytelling than dialogue, but it also mimics the style of spoken, paratactic storytelling. By creating visual scenes first, he then must use his head to string scenes together, preferably with more visual-heavy scenes. Thus, like paratactic storytelling, thoughts often seem loosely linked and things are rarely fully explained via dialogue so the viewer must rely on his or her own knowledge, intuition, and observance. Also, this form of writing is an excellent argument in favor of the theory of collective unconscious. If Miyazaki begins with ideas for characters and a handful of scenes, then one could argue that it is the collective unconscious of humans which leads Miyazaki to write mythic conventions to fill the spaces between his scenes. While his overall story structures often have stereotypical mythic conventions, his characters and themes are anything but stereotypical.
While it is very uncommon to see myths with female protagonists, eight of Miyazaki's thirteen movies feature females in leading roles. This is just one of Miyazaki's frequent alterations on mythic conventions. He refers to himself as an environmentalist and it is reflected in his films. His movies often end on notes of finding a way to live in harmony with nature or with nature prevailing. He is also firmly anti-war, something very noticeable in his films such as Howl's Moving Castle, Porco Rosso, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Being anti-industry and anti-war, it can be easy to characterize villains as simply greedy and evil. However, one more of Myazaki's ideologies is that he never portrays a character as simply evil. In Princess Mononoke, it is true that Lady Eboshi is power-hungry and blind to the damage she is causing, but she also saves lives of lepers and former brothel workers by providing shelter and jobs. She cares deeply about those whom she has saved and would protect Irontown with her life. It is also true that at the end of the film, she sees all her wrongdoings and vows to cease expansion. This type of ending is present in many Miyazaki films. By utilizing this style of writing, "Miyazaki avoids the clichéd Western trope of good vs. evil and explores the issues of technology and nature in a way that affirms both" (Kraemer). In his mind, anyone can change, even antagonists.
Miyazaki's films often wear their themes on their sleeves. Howl's Moving Castle features a scene where the main characters go to the palace to convince the queen not to recruit Howl, and when the meeting goes south the heroes outright protest her war before escaping. In Spirited Away, Sen, a young girl whisked away from her parents by an evil witch named Yubaba, must work in a bathhouse that serves spirits, or "kami". In one scene, a particularly unclean spirit enters the bathhouse, but after diligently cleaning it, "Sen sees the true nature of this river kami through the purifying waters -- at that moment her [heart] is clean and bright and she witnesses the forceful dragon-like river kami sail away white and pure" (Boyd). In Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the last remaining humans live in fear of the mythical Toxic Jungle, though Nausicaa is able to prove that it's not the plants themselves that are toxic, but that humans made the soil toxic during their near-Earth-destroying nuclear war. In another film, scenes like these may be viewed as overbearing, preachy, or pretentious. What sets Miyazaki's films apart is that when he includes a scene reflecting his personal views, it doesn't detract from the story. His personal scenes are often either crucial to the story, or they flow well with his paratactic-influenced style. This reflects interestingly on society. Viewers will find scenes like these laughable in a more "serious" film, but Miyazaki's storytelling is so honest and familiar to viewers due to its mythical roots that it is seen as believable and accepted. This could also be due to his style of writing characters that behave similarly to real people. His characters all have strong beliefs and goals, but they only stick to these beliefs to a certain extent. Lady Eboshi realizes her wrongdoings and changes her goals once the forest is given new life. In Porco Rosso, not only do the pirates root for the protagonist in the final fight, they all fly off together as allies to escape the Italian air force. This reasonable nature and deep down kind-heartedness of Miyazaki's characters coupled with his nuanced animation style makes his characters seem more realistic than some characters in live-action films.
Ultimately, these character traits, coupled with his other unique writing conventions, are what add up to make Miyazaki's films excellent. He doesn't just simply use the same story structure laid out by Joseph Campbell; he adds his own personal beliefs to it, which is his way of critiquing the very myths that influence him. Critiquing mythological structure is necessary in myth, not just as society changes in the modern age, but because every difference in myth can be attributed to each society's different beliefs and viewpoints. Miyazaki's films are variations on myths, but they also still function as myths for a modern age. Castle in the Sky, the first film officially released by Miyazaki's production company Studio Ghibli, had a noted impact on the design aesthetics and story-telling conventions of Japan in the 80s and 90s. It is this ability of Miyazaki's to be timeless but also influential to a modern world that sets him apart from other filmmakers and makes him one of the most important mythological storytellers of the modern era.
Works Cited
*Boyd, James W., and Tetsuya Nishimura. "Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film
"Spirited Away"" Journal of Religion & Film. Journal of Religion & Film, Oct. 2004.
Web. 28 Mar. 2016. <https://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/boydShinto.htm>.
*Kraemer, Christine Hoff. "Between the Worlds: Liminality and Self-Sacrifice in Princess
Mononoke." Journal of Religion & Film. Journal of Religion & Film, Apr. 2004. Web.
28 Mar. 2016. <https://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No1/BetweenWorlds.htm>.