Laura Hartman
Web Design / Graphic Arts / Photography
A Different Kind of Shoujo
As Japan’s most prominent and well-known animator, Hayao Miyazaki has played an important part of redefining shojo anime. According to the biography on his website[1], Hayao Miyazaki was born the second of four sons in Tokyo on January 5, 1941. He attended three different grade schools, during which time his mother suffered from tuberculosis. He completed junior high school at Omiya Junior High and attended a public senior high school, where he saw “the first-ever Japanese feature-length color anime, Hakuja Den,” which sparks his interest in animation. After graduation from high school he enrolled in Gakushuin University, where he earned degrees in Political Science and Economics. He began his career as an animator at Toei Animation and later went on to work on several animated films before finally beginning work on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in 1983. With the creation of Gibli Studios in 1985 Miyazaki then went on to create some of Japan’s most famous animated feature films.
Films and series in the shojo anime genre usually feature a core group of female characters, often with the focus on the most ditzy or over-the-top, and the dashing introverted bishonen that she both screeches at and swoons over. Miyazaki helped to both revolutionize and redefine shojo anime to take on a different look and meaning. The female characters in his films are always unique, complex, and have an equally balanced relationship with their male counterparts. Instead of pre-teen high school love dramas, Miyazaki’s films depict other types of love that gives the characters both a mature and an innocent feel. In this paper I will use Miyazaki’s Spirted Away and Howl’s Moving Castle to explore these elements that separate Miyazaki’s characters from the rest of the shojo category.
Let’s first examine the character of Chihiro. In the beginning of Spirited Away, she is seen as a pouty, self-absorbed ten year-old girl. She is decidedly unheroic and even seems cowardly at first as she clings to her parents in fear. Miyazaki described it in an interview[2]:
“With Spirited Away I wanted to say to them [ten year old
girls], ‘don’t worry, it’ll be alright in the end, there will
be something for you,’ not just in cinema, but also in
everyday life. For that it was necessary to have a heroine
who was an ordinary girl, not someone who could fly
or do the impossible.”
The fact that Chihiro is so ordinary makes her very real and very relatable. She doesn’t have superpowers, isn’t a child genius, and isn’t particularly brave or outgoing. Instead she becomes a hero because of the choices she makes when placed in extraordinary circumstances. It isn’t until she enters the gods’ bath house that she starts to discover her own strength.
Miyazaki gives us a similar character in Howl’s Moving Castle with Sophie. Adapted from a novel by Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle is about the adventures of a hat maker named Sophie who is cursed to take the form of an old woman during an encounter with the notorious “Witch of the Waste.” Because the curse prevents her from telling anyone about it, Sophie journeys to find a way to break the curse herself and winds up in the company of the wizard Howl, who is said to devour the hearts of young women. She takes up residence as his “cleaning lady” and discovers that the magical door of his castle leads to four different locations.
Sophie’s character is like Chihiro in that she starts out very ordinary and very unheroic. She is the oldest of three daughters (the other two of which are drawn to be very beautiful and flamboyant, while Sophie is rather simple and plain) and works at her father’s hat shop. She is very passive, as is seen in an early sequence where she is harassed by two city guards and only escapes their advances because of a chance meeting with Howl. Despite the unusual nature of their escape (Howl flies her over the rooftops before dropping her off at a bakery), Sophie doesn’t really react afterwards, other than her initial surprise. After she is cursed and meets Howl for the second time, she becomes a more interesting character.
Both of these characters illustrate that ordinary people can do amazing things when placed in unusual and unfamiliar circumstances, but they do it in a way that is different from the usual shojo anime story. They don’t become warriors or take on uncharacteristic or masculine qualities (like Nausicaa, or San from Princess Mononoke). Instead they find strength in their independence and femininity . For example, both Chihiro and Sophie are seen as purifying figures. When she goes to work in the bath house, Chihiro is assigned to scrub the dirtiest wash room, and then cater to a “stink god” customer. She fills the bath for the customer and removes a “thorn” from its body, which turns out to be the handle of a bicycle atop a mountain of trash and filth. Through her actions, the customer is revealed to be the spirit of a river god, now cleansed of all the garbage and filth.
In the case of Howl’s Moving Castle, when Sophie first enters the castle it is covered in clutter, trash, dirty dishes, laundry, and anything else that could possibly be in disarray. She convinces Howl’s fire demon Calcifer to cover for her and help her convince Howl that she came to be their housekeeper on the condition that she would try to find a way to break the bond between Calcifer and Howl. The next few scenes are then devoted to her cleaning every room in the castle, as well as getting to know Howl’s little apprentice, Markl. Not only is she a purifying element here, but she’s completing a family-like structure that brings about positive changes in everyone, and particularly in Howl.
On that note, it is important to discuss the role of the leading male characters in both films because their relationships with Chihiro and Sophie are important to the development of their characters. In both cases, the female characters are largely independent of the male characters—that is, neither Chihiro nor Sophie fall into the role of damsel in distress. They are both capable of solving their own problems. While there are instances where Chihiro is rescued or helped by Haku, and Sophie by Howl, both occurrences are balanced when Chihiro and Sophie come to the rescue in return. The “good wife/wise mother” concept is key to Chihiro and Sophie’s heroism as it reinforces the strength of their characters rather than stripping it away.
In Spirited Away, for example, Haku rescues Chihiro in the beginning of the film and keeps her from being discovered by Yubaba and her henchmen. He also brings her to see where her parents are being kept. However for much of the film Chihiro is largely on her own and must solve the conflict herself, particularly when Haku is injured by the flying paper birds. Here Chihiro saves Haku by opening a window and letting him into the bath house and then feeding him an herbal cake to heal his wounds. She also takes the initiative to return the sigil Haku stole to Zeniba, and then reveal’s Haku’s true name to him.
Howl, on the other hand far from being as collected and calculating as Haku, is revealed to be irresponsible, cowardly, and a crybaby. When he receives summons from opposite sides of the ongoing war, Howl convinces Sophie to masquerade as his mother and sends her to speak to the queen and make excuses for him. Because of her newfound spunky attitude and fiery personality, Howl finds his strength through her and follows Sophie to meet the queen in time to whisk her away to safety. Sophie’s independence isn’t jeopardized here, however, as Howl shortly separates and leaves her on a flying machine to find her own way back to the castle. Howl then takes a more active role in the household and in the war. He renovates the castle using magic to make it more comfortable and more protected. He even says at one point when they are being bombed by the enemy that he’s found his strength because he’s found something to protect. At the end of the film, in addition to being rescued by Howl and being freed from her curse, Sophie also saves Howl from death by returning his heart to him and breaking the spell between Howl and Calcifer.
Lastly, Miyazaki’s films illustrate different kinds of love between the female protagonists and main male characters. In Spirited Away, the characters are very young and so the relationship involves a specific kind of love. The only implication we get of this love is through the characters’ actions and behavior, and the only confirmation comes from Kamaji, the boiler room operator. It’s not sexual or passion-driven, and it’s never actually spoken between Chihiro or Haku. Instead it’s a mutually understood, spiritual kind of love. Because the characters are depicted as children, there’s an innocence about it that isn’t common among mainstream shojo anime. It’s also different because, at the end, the characters don’t end up together living happily ever after. We don’t even know for sure if Chihiro truly remembers Haku, and so their love is shared from afar. Such a distant love is the only possible outcome for this film.
Howl’s Moving Castle, on the other hand is more direct about expressing the relationship between Sophie and Howl. While not over the top or swooning fangirl-like in nature, we know early on of Sophie’s attraction to Howl. The family environment with Markl, seeing her shopping for food and preparing meals is very explicit in its imitation of the Japanese family structure. And despite the physical and emotional attraction between Howl and Sophie, it’s still different from the teenage drama that is so ever-present in shojo anime today. Instead it’s a more mature form of love that emphasizes family and a sense of belonging. At the end of the film, we do see Howl and Sophie together with Markl and Calcifer as a family.
Miyazaki’s films are always unique and interesting in the way that they tell stories. The types of characters he uses and the imaginative settings he puts them in are a breath of fresh air in the category of shojo anime. His characters tell us that you don’t have to have super powers and you don’t have to be super smart to do amazing things. With characters like Chihiro and Sophie, Miyazaki helps his audience find their own strength and confidence in everyday life.
[1] http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/miyazaki/miyazaki_biography.txt
[2] http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml