The Making of Spirited Away

• Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, screenwriter, author, and manga artist born on January 5, 1941. Spirited Away is a 2001 film written and directed by famed animator Miyazaki and produced by the Japanese anime studio Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki is a co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio, who attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and as a maker of animated feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the animation business.
• A quote about the film: "This movie [Spirited Away] is a story about a 10-year-old whose father and mother happened to eat something they shouldn't have, and so became pigs. The movie appears to be satire, but that isn't my purpose. I have five young female friends . . . I spend every summer with . . . at my mountain cabin. I wanted to make a movie they could enjoy. That is why I started this film, and that is my true purpose." - Miyazaki

The idea for Spirited Away came about when he wanted to make a film for the family and friends he spends his vacation at a mountain cabin with every summer. For inspiration, he read shojo manga magazines like Nakayoshi and Ribon, but felt they only offered subjects on "crushes" and romance. Miyazaki then decided to produce the film about a young heroine whom his friends could look up to instead.

Why a bathhouse setting? Miyazaki thought the bathhouse was a mysterious place. He remembers seeing a small door next to one of the bathtubs in the bathhouse. Miyazaki was always curious to what was behind it. As a result, he made up several stories about it, one of which inspired the bathhouse setting of Spirited Away. As for buildings in the film, Miyazaki based some of the design on buildings in real-life such as Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. Another major inspiration was the Notoya Ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn located in Yamagata Prefecture, famous for its exquisite architecture and ornamental features. The Dogo Onsen is also often said to be a key inspiration for the Spirited Away onsen/bathhouse.

The themes of the film are heavily influenced by Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore. The central location of the film is a Japanese bathhouse where a great variety of Japanese folklore creatures, including kami, come to bathe. Miyazaki cites the solstice rituals when villagers call forth their local kami and invite them into their baths.

For Chihiro's character design, Miyazaki created her as a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize. Chihiro was based on a ten-year-old girl: the daughter of a friend of Miyazaki's.

Haku appears to be around 12 years old in physical age. He has straight, dark green hair and dark green eyes when he is human. Haku wears a short, blue hakama, white kariginu with a blue kimono underneath and beige sandals. When he transforms into his dragon form, he has a mint-green mane and a white, scaly body.

Yubaba is strict to her employees like the queen of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. When Yubaba ordered the slaughter of Chihiro's parents, this action resembled the Queen of Heart's infamous line 'Off with their heads!' Yubaba is stylistically unique within the bathhouse, wearing a Western dress and living among European decor and furnishings, representing the Western capitalist influence over Japan in its Meiji period and beyond.

No-Face, who reflects the characters which surround him, learned by examples and took the traits of whomever he consumes. No-Face doesn't exist in Japanese mythology. He is an original character created by Hayao Miyazaki to speed up the story. His physical appearance is taken from Bombyx mori, a silkworm.

Production of Spirited Away commenced in 2000 on a budget of 1.9 billion JPY ($15 million). Disney invested 10% of the 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 they were getting it just right.

Spirited Away was released theatrically in Japan on 20 July 2001 by distributor Toho, grossing 30.4 billion JPY to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, according to the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. It was also the first film to earn $200 million at the worldwide box office before opening in the United States.

"To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us." - Hayao Miyazaki