Week Six - Filip (Part One)

What are the underlying thematic of Princess Mononoke? How does it ‘defamiliarise’ its historical setting, according to Napier (2005)?

‘(Princess Mononoke) is a meditation on Japanese history that provides a counternarrative to some pivotal myths of Japanese culture and society... calls into question many long-held notions of Japanese identity.’
Princess Mononoke subverts established conceptions with themes of cultural, spiritual and environmental crises.
The film defamiliarizes its historical setting of the fourteenth-century Muromachi period with ‘subsequent subversion of conventional expectations concerning what a film in that era should be “about”.’ (Napier, 2005) That is; the shift in focus from prosperous feudal Japan with its samurai and lords -to women, outcasts, foreigners and the conflict between humans and gods.



According to Napier, how does this anime problematise traditional (or conservative) constructions of gender, class and race?

Iron Town’s matriarchal society undermines convention. The featuring of Non-yamato Japanese tribes are included and condemned lepers.



How do it and other Miyazaki films address the humanity/nature divine, according to Wright (2005)? Could Miyazaki’s vision be described as in some sense religious (inasmuch as it conveys a sense of the sacred)?

According to Wright (2005), Miyazaki ‘does this by encouraging the assimilation and appreciation of foreign cultural elements’ which ‘coalesce into coherent and transitional human traits. Essentially, his films attempt to re-enchant his audiences with a sense of spirituality that eschews the dogmas and orthodoxies of organized religions and politics, instead reaching for the original, primal state of spiritualism in human history and how it can be lived today.’

Miyazaki has a tremendous respect for nature, reflected in his ‘staunchly non-computerised anime house’ and having expressed the wish to see Tokyo flooded so its civilization’s greed becomes drowned or overgrown. This paints Miyazaki with a remorseful sort of spirituality.