Spirited Away Revealed: The Real Mythology & Folklore Explained!

Spirited Away is not only one of the best animated films, but of the best films of any category. In this video, I will do my best to uncover all the Mythology & Folklore referenced in this Anime Masterpiece.

00:00 Intro
01:18 Torii Gates, Hokora & Dōsojin
02:52 The Bathhouse & Haku
03:52 Shadow Kami & Pigs
05:03 Masked Kami
05:52 Eat food from this world
06:22 No Face & Other Guests
7:36 Kamaji, The Boiler Man & Suit Sprites
8:36 Radish Spirit
8:59 Ritual Bathing
09:28 Yubaba
10:26 The Heads!
11:00 The Power of a Name
12:25 The Stink Spirit
13:54 Haku Dragon Form
14:04 No Face = Hungry Ghost?
14:48 Paper Dolls!
15:24 Bo, the Giant Baby
16:24 Outro

Please let me know which mythological reference you noticed in Spirited Away

Instrumentals in this video in order of appearance:

#studioghibli #miyazaki #spiritedaway #anime #mythology

[martinhill]

golden rule of studio ghibli: no sequels. ever.

[KrimsonKandle]

Spirited Away is one of those movies you wish you could see for the first time again

[vnusfmtv]

No one talks about how noface is the only spirit that sees Chihiro on the bridge, even when she’s holding her breath.

[ghostprince]

*when you realize that if Chihiro’s parents had just brought their lunch everything would be different*

[gentlesoul]

No Face is not evil. He simply absorbs what is around him and reflects it back. In the bathhouse, he was confronted with greed, and so reflected it back. Sen did him a kindness, letting him in out of the rain, so when "talking" to Sen, he was absorbing her kindness and gave it back. At "Granny's" he was presented with illustriousness and kindness, and again, gave it back. He simply just "is". Not good, not evil, just "is".

[sirskiajati]

I just realized when Haku said he promise will meet Chihiro again, it means that he will meet Chihiro again when Chihiro is dying or dead.

[izzyeis]

knowing haku is a dragon i thought those "white sakura petals" were scales

[dieuanhnguyentran]

I just realized that when Haku warned Yubaba about her most precious thing being switched, the first thing she looked was at the gold in front of her. It took her a while to look at Boh...
That's... kinda sad tbh

[rosalieblackwood]

6:21 is when we see Chihiro holding her breath. To hold one's breath is also a belief in Asian culture as a way to not attract/be noticed by the spirits. Breathing is a sign of life and spirits may get jealous of that and may cause harm. People still do this practice when they walk pass a graveyard.

[sailormoonstone]

This movie was everything for me growing up. I’ll be 30 in a couple of months but secretly wish this was a real world😭

[loganfirstman]

When I was about 7 this was one of the scariest movie I've ever watched.

[marilenaapostolidi]

Haku's warning to not look back while she was leaving is similar to the greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The myth says that when Eurydice died, Orpheus, devastated, descended to Hade, where he sung his grief with his lyre. Managing to melt even Hade's and Persephone's hearts, they decided to let him take his wife back. But under one condition: He should never look back to see his wife until they arrive in the living world. Unfortunately, once he stepped into the light, he turned his head to see her, not considering that she was still in the dark. A glimpse was enough and Eurydice was lost forever. This story is also quite similar to Izanami's and Izanagi's story from japanese mythology.

[daevranni]

At the end, when she's told she must not look back when they leave - there is a moment where she almost turn back, but then her hair band glints, and she stops herself. The hairband was made by Zeniba, Bo and NoFace, and Zeniba said it would protect her. The 'no looking back' is a well known theme, but what about the hair band?

[mattmckenzie]

My favorite sentence, “inspired by the bigger radishes he’s seen.”

[tixibdu]

I kid you not, when I was 9 years old. I legit thought this movie was a horror movie because of the pigs and night street. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[evilwifu]

Idk if its just me- but the art and aesthetic makes me feel so weird, like i want to be there. the attention to detail on the conceptual designs are fascinating...

[crossproduct]

I love the attention to detail in this film. Here's an example: their Audi Quattro has the steering wheel on the left. They drive on the left in Japan, so cars would normally have the wheel on the right. That means that the father imported that car, presumably from Germany and presumably at fabulous cost. It's one of the first things that establishes greed as the central theme.

[chloethompson]

When Chihiro signs the contact, she actually writes her surname wrong (her name is 'Chihiro Ogino' and she writes the kanji for 'Ogi' wrong.) One theory why is that she wrote it wrong on purpose so that Yubaba never stole her real name from her so she never forgot her name, and therfore she could return to the human world at the end. Another theory is that Yubaba's ability to make people forget their names was already coming into force, and Chihiro was already starting to forget her name. I think both are pretty cool theories.

[GravesRWFiA]

you missed one thing that was more news than folk lore, the stink spirit with the bicycle. The bike is significant. a couple of years before they made this movies they cleaned the moat of the imperial palace in tokyo. people had been dumping garbage in there for years and the thing that the media lit on to was that someone had even tossed a bicycle into the moat. By putting the bike in and drawing attention to it Miyazaki is saying this was the spirit of the imperial palace-close to the emperor himself-which is why he was so very important.

[beccag]

The “don’t look back” deal also appears in an Old Testament/Hebrew Bible story. A family fleeing an evil city is told not to look back, but the mother does and gets turned into a pillar of salt.