2001 film by Hayao Miyazaki
 is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It was produced by Toshio Suzuki, animated by Studio Ghibli, and distributed by Toho. The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, alongside Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takashi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono, and Bunta Sugawara. In "Spirited Away", Chihiro "Sen" Ogino moves to a new neighborhood and inadvertently enters the world of "kami" (spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore). After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.
Miyazaki wrote the screenplay after he decided the film would be based on the ten-year-old daughter of his friend Seiji Okuda, the film's associate producer, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of US$19 million, production of "Spirited Away" began in 2000. Pixar animator John Lasseter, a fan and friend of Miyazaki, convinced Walt Disney Pictures to buy the film's North American distribution rights, and served as executive producer of its English-dubbed version. Lasseter then hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer, while screenwriters Cindy and Donald Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.
Released in Japan on 20 July 2001, "Spirited Away" was widely acclaimed and commercially successful, grossing $ at the worldwide box office. Accordingly, it became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a total of ¥ ($305 million). It held the record for 19 years until it was surpassed by "" in 2020.
"Spirited Away" was a co-recipient of the Golden Bear with "Bloody Sunday" at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival and became the first hand-drawn, Japanese anime and non-English-language animated film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. The film is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time and has been included in various "best-of" lists, including ranking fourth on BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.
Plot.
Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents Akio and Yūko travel to their new home. Akio, taking a shortcut, stops in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park, which Yūko insists on exploring over Chihiro's protestations. Upon finding a seemingly empty restaurant still stocked with food, Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro finds an enormous bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers her parents have been transformed into pigs and she cannot cross the now-flooded river.
Haku finds Chihiro and instructs her to ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji, a yōkai commanding the susuwatari. Kamaji instead asks a worker named Lin to bring Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse and cursed her parents, as well as Haku's master. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but eventually gives her a work contract. As Chihiro signs the contract with her name (), Yubaba takes away the second kanji in her name, renaming her . She soon forgets her real name, and Haku later explains that Yubaba controls people by taking their names; if she completely forgets hers like he once did, she will never be able to leave the spirit world.
The other workers, except for Kamaji and Lin, frequently mock Sen. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. The spirit of a polluted river arrives as Sen's first customer. After she cleans him, he gives her a magic emetic dumpling as a token of gratitude. Meanwhile, No-Face demands food from the bathhouse workers, granting gold copied from the river spirit in exchange. However, when Sen declines the gold and leaves, he angrily swallows some workers.
Sen sees paper shikigami attacking a dragon and recognizes the dragon as Haku metamorphosed. When the seriously injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Yubaba's twin sister Zeniba, who turns Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse and creates a false copy of him. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her that carries a deadly curse. Haku strikes the shikigami, causing Zeniba to vanish. Once he and Sen fall into the boiler room, she gives him part of the emetic dumpling to vomit up the seal and a slug that Sen disgustedly kills.
Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. She confronts an engorged No-Face and feeds him the rest of the dumpling to regurgitate the workers. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, and Lin helps them leave. Sen, No-Face, and Boh travel to see Zeniba with train tickets gifted by Kamaji. Meanwhile, Yubaba nearly orders Sen's parents' slaughtering, but Haku reveals Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba complies, but only if Sen can pass a final test.
Sen meets with Zeniba, who makes her a magic hairband and reveals that Yubaba used the slug to control Haku. Using his dragon form, Haku flies Sen and Boh back, while No-Face decides to stay with Zeniba. Mid-flight, Sen recalls falling into the Kohaku River years earlier and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as .
When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba tests Sen to identify her parents among a group of pigs to leave. After she answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract disappears and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the riverbed to her restored parents. Shortly before leaving for her new home, Chihiro looks back at the tunnel with her hairband from Zeniba still intact.
Production.
Development and inspiration.
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"I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize [...]. [I]t's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances [...]. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish."
—Hayao Miyazaki
During summers, Hayao Miyazaki spent his vacation at a mountain cabin with his family and five girls who were friends of the family. The idea for "Spirited Away" came about when he wanted to make a film for these friends. Miyazaki had previously directed films for small children and teenagers such as "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service", but he had not created a film for ten-year-old girls. For inspiration, he read the shōjo manga magazines (like "Nakayoshi" and "Ribon") that the girls had left at the cabin, but felt they only offered subjects on "crushes" and romance. Miyazaki felt this was not what these young friends "held dear in their hearts", and resolved to make the film about a young heroine whom they could look up to.
Miyazaki had wanted to produce a new film for years, but his two previous proposals—one based on the Japanese book by Sachiko Kashiwaba, and another about a teenage heroine—were rejected. His third proposal, which ended up becoming "Spirited Away", was more successful. The three stories revolved around a bathhouse that was inspired by one in Miyazaki's hometown. He thought the bathhouse was a mysterious place, and there was a small door next to one of the bathtubs in the bath house. Miyazaki was always curious about what was behind it, and he made up several stories about it, one of which inspired the bathhouse setting of "Spirited Away".
Production of "Spirited Away" commenced in February 2000 on a budget of ¥ (US$15 million). Walt Disney Pictures financed ten percent of the film's production cost for the right of first refusal for American distribution. As with "Princess Mononoke", Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli staff experimented with computer animation. With the use of more computers and programs such as Softimage 3D, the staff learned the software, but used the technology carefully so that it enhanced the story, instead of "stealing the show". Each character was mostly hand-drawn, with Miyazaki working alongside his animators to see if they were getting it just right. The biggest difficulty in making the film was to reduce its length. When production began, Miyazaki realized it would be more than three hours long if he made it according to his plot. He had to delete many scenes from the story, and tried to reduce the "eye candy" in the film because he wanted it to be simple. Miyazaki did not want to make the hero a "pretty girl". At the beginning, he was frustrated at how she looked "dull" and thought, "She isn't cute. Isn't there something we can do?" As the film neared the end, however, he was relieved to feel "she will be a charming woman."
During production, Miyazaki often sought inspiration by visiting the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, Tokyo. He based some of the buildings in the spirit world on the Pseudo-Western style buildings from the Meiji period that were available there. The museum made Miyazaki feel nostalgic, "especially when I stand here alone in the evening, near closing time, and the sun is setting – tears well up in my eyes." Another major inspiration was the , a traditional Japanese inn located in Yamagata Prefecture, famous for its exquisite architecture and ornamental features. While some guidebooks and articles claim that the old gold town of Jiufen in Taiwan served as an inspirational model for the film, Miyazaki has denied this. The Dōgo Onsen is also often said to be a key inspiration for the "Spirited Away" onsen/bathhouse.
Toshio Suzuki, the producer of the film, also cites European inspirations and influences in the production of "Spirited Away". He specifically invokes the structure of the film as European-inspired due to Miyazaki's own influences by European films such as "The Snow Queen" and "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep".
Music.
The film score of "Spirited Away" was composed and conducted by Miyazaki's regular collaborator Joe Hisaishi, and performed by the New Japan Philharmonic. The soundtrack received awards at the 56th Mainichi Film Competition Award for Best Music, the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2001 Best Music Award in the Theater Movie category, and the 17th Japan Gold Disk Award for Animation Album of the Year. Later, Hisaishi added lyrics to "One Summer's Day" and named the new version of the song which was performed by Ayaka Hirahara.
The closing song, was written and performed by Youmi Kimura, a composer and lyre-player from Osaka. The lyrics were written by Kimura's friend Wakako Kaku. The song was intended to be used for , a different Miyazaki film which was never released. In the special features of the Japanese DVD, Hayao Miyazaki explains how the song in fact inspired him to create "Spirited Away". The song itself would be recognized as Gold at the 43rd Japan Record Awards.
Besides the original soundtrack, there is also an image album, titled , that contains 10 tracks.
English dub.
John Lasseter, Pixar animator and a fan and friend of Miyazaki, would often sit with his staff and watch Miyazaki's work when encountering story problems. After seeing "Spirited Away" Lasseter was ecstatic. Upon hearing his reaction to the film, Disney CEO Michael Eisner asked Lasseter if he would be interested in introducing "Spirited Away" to an American audience. Lasseter obliged by agreeing to serve as the executive producer for the English adaptation. Following this, several others began to join the project: "Beauty and the Beast" co-director Kirk Wise and "Aladdin" co-producer Donald W. Ernst joined Lasseter as director and producer of "Spirited Away", respectively. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt penned the English-language dialogue, which they wrote in order to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.
The cast of the film consists of Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, Suzanne Pleshette (in her final film role before her death in January 2008), Michael Chiklis, Lauren Holly, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers and John Ratzenberger (a Pixar regular). Advertising was limited, with "Spirited Away" being mentioned in