Miyazaki says Chihiro is a typical modern Japanese ten year-old girl, but she appears to me to be his typical innocent and courageous heroine. I wish that he had depicted Chihiro as bullied by her colleagues at Yubarba's public bath center, felt vexed by her own incompetence, and thus grew mean-spirited due to her failings. She would then more accurately portray a typical girl of today. I think he was successful with this in Kiki's Delivery Service.

There is another unsatisfying point for me; various spirits, ghosts and gods call at the public bath center, but what on earth are they? I guess they are designed as symbols for the strains and shadows of modern Japan. For instance, in one case, Chihiro and her older colleague Rin bathe a Jabba the Hut-like spirit desperately trying to remove his sludge pollutants. He turns out to be a polluted river god. I think Miyazaki tried to depict that Chihiro comes to learn how her country is going, as well as how important labor is, while working for the spirits. I, however, don't think he was entirely successful. They are all interesting and fascinating, especially Kao-nashi ("Faceless") and Boh ("Baby"), but to me they were not more than goblins like Hampty Dampty.

Miyazaki and the 'Family'
Above all, I felt uneasy about the relationship between Chihiro and her parents, especially her mother, who is portrayed as a bit too distant. It is a formula in juvenile novels, such as Ende's The Never Ending Story, that the protagonist steps into another world, adventures and returns to the real world to re-confirm his/her tie with his/her parent(s). Yet, if you expect such a conclusion in Kamikakushi, you will feel betrayed.

As Miyazaki discusses in the film's press kit, the protagonist returns to the human world with her father and mother, but that's all; there is nothing more than the fact that they return to the world. I understand, or believe I understand, that Miyazaki tried to make a story about a child who awakes to the 'power to live,' not a story about the family. However, I could not help feeling the conclusion is something unnatural.

It is sometimes pointed out by critics that the family relationship, especially the stable relationship between parents and children, is rarely portrayed in Miyazaki's works. Even in his most heartwarming movie Totoro, Satsuki and Mei are not living with their mother. Meanwhile, to work together is always admired as a very good thing in his films. He seems to love to describe solidarity through labor, rather than blood or territorial relations. He loves para-familial communities based on labor. For example, the fortress village in Mononoke and how lively the employees are in Yubarba's pubic bath!

I think this is related to the main reason why I was unsatisfied with Kamikakushi. Frankly speaking, I went so far as to think that Chihiro would have been happier if she stayed in the spirit world rather than returning to the human world with her rather selfish parents. On the surface it looks as if this movie deals with a dull girl's awakening and return to the real world, but I suspect Miyazaki made (maybe unconciously) a story about the denial of the real world and the escape to his own fantasy world.

In other words, Miyazaki sailed under false colors. The superb animation technique (Kamikakushi is full of crowd scenes!), realistic background artwork, Joe Hisaishi's excellent tunes, lively voice acting by talented actors and actresses like Bunta Sugawara and Mari Natsuki, Yumi Kimura's impressive song and so forth made Kamikakushi the most sophisticated and exciting Anime film, but Kamikakushi, I must conclude, is nothing more than the attractions in Tokyo Disneyland. On November the 13th, the film's distributor Toho announced that Kamikakushi broke the all time Japanese box office record, formerly held by Titanic with 26 billion yen, but I wonder if it might have reached only one-fourth of this box office figure without the spell cast with 'directed by Hayao Miyazaki.'

Credits
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Animation Supervisor: Masashi Ando, Kitaro Kosaka and Ai Kagawa
Background Art Supervisor: Yoji Takeshige
Color Design: Michiyo Yasuda
Sound Effect Supervisor: Kazuhiro Hayashi
Music: Joe Hisaishi
The theme song composed and sung by Yumi Kimura, words by Wakako Kaku
Executive Producer: (the late) Yasuyoshi Tokuma
Running Time: 2 hours 5 minutes
Color / Vistasize
DTS-ES (6.1ch)

Kumi Kaoru is an Anime scholar residing in Japan, and now is engaged in the translation of Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements' The Erotic Anime Movie Guide. The Japanese edition will be published with the translator's commentary chapter in 2002.