I Don’t Need A Savior; I’m In A Ghibli Movie
Hayao Miyazaki and the art of gender equality
Tags: #FemaleCharacters #Ghibli #MyNeighborTotoro #KikisDeliveryService #SpiritedAway #ActiveFemaleProtagonists #Animation #Films
In Japanese traditions, women in media are often subjected to submissive, obedient, self-sacrificing stereotypes (Sugawa-Shimada 2019): they take care of domestic chores such as cleaning, cooking, and laundry – either because they are mothers or because they are daughters of absent, dead, or distant mothers – or are generally expected to fulfil “traditional Japanese virtues influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism” (Sugawa-Shimada 2019, 198) more than their male counterparts. This has been particularly criticised within the classic Shōjo (or ‘girls’) genre within Japanese media which often silences more diverse female experiences (Darling-Wolf 2016, Norris 2019).
Some of the most pervasive and problematic stereotypes in anime include the Ojousama, the Tsundere, and the Happy (Magical) Slave. Typically, the Ojousama is a young wealthy woman, often the embodiment of Japanese beauty standards (long hair, slim, pale skin), and attends an elite school where she is idolized by her peers. For example, Nakiri Erina from Food Wars! attends the elite culinary school, run by her family, where she is worshipped for her beauty and talent. This is the extent of her characterization. She is defined by her family, their power, and her outward appearance. Tsunderes, in contrast, are driven by inner conflict. They alternate between irritation and infatuation. Their whole personality rests on their feelings towards a love interest and the often conflicting reactions to those feelings. Pokemon frequently uses this troupe for its female characters, including Misty, Jessie, and Officer Jenny, who all fulfill this trope to varying degrees. They can be violent or short tempered, but exhibit moments of affection towards their crushes.
While the Ojousama and Tsundere are concerning stereotypes, in general, they do not necessitate a passive character. The Happy (Magical) Slave, however, is an ignorant and naive character whose only purpose is to fulfill the needs of her male counterpart. At times, characters who fit this trope are also assigned magical or god-like powers. For example, Belldandy from Oh My Goddess! is a goddess who is summoned by a college student and stays to grant his wishes. This trope reduces women to entirely passive characters, deliberately stripped of agency, and as such, purpetuates violence against women. Collectively, these stereotypes portray women as passive, emotionally unstable, and one-dimensional.
The works of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, however, have defied these stereotypes since the beginning of his career. For example, in one of his earliest works Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974), Miyazaki and co-creator Isao Takahata created a female protagonist defined by her courage, determination, and cheerful innocence who “faces her difficult situation with a distinctively Japanese “gambare” (do your best) spirit found elsewhere in Japanese animation and popular culture” (Darling-Wolf 2016, 505). Yet, similar to Western media, Miyazaki’s works can be criticised for the way mothers are often depicted as either dead (e.g. Heidi, Girl of the Alps 1974; Castle in the Sky 1986; Princess Mononoke 1997) or absent (e.g. Nausicaä 1984, My Neighbor Totoro 1988, Kiki’s Delivery Service 1989) reducing the role of mothers as unimportant or irrelevant. Regardless, he consistently creates women who are both real and relatable to a wide audience.
My Neighbor Totoro 1988
One of the most recognizable films from Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro, lacks the diverse representation of female characters present in his other works. However, it is a story centered around two young sisters, neither of whom are generalized stereotypes. Satsuki, the older sibling, is adventurous, yet reserved. Her younger sister, Mei, is a curious and determined four year old. Satsuki often looks out for her younger sister but is only nine years old herself and could easily fall into the cliché role of caretaker. Despite an absent mother, she is not subjected to stereotypical substitute mother traits as her father is still the one doing most of the household chores. Instead, both Satsuki and her sister are seemingly encouraged to learn and not expected to help.
As a pair, the sisters are the driving force of the movie; they are the main characters, the conflict (when Mei goes missing) and the solution (Satsuki’s search for her sister). Because of their age, Mei is not traditionally damsel’d, but her disappearance could be seen as a nod towards the damsel trope. She is “saved” by her sister, which is another variation on the norm. While Satsuki seeks help from Totoro, they merely enable her to find Mei. The sisters in My Neighbor Totoro are perhaps the least active female protagonists this post looks at, but they are never stripped of their agency.
While not given a name, Oba-chan (or Granny) fills in as a substitute mother figure for Satsuki and Mei’s absent mum. She is depicted as a classic Japanese grandma who is given agency in the sense that she is teaching and guiding the girls while making active choices about when, where, and how to help. Furthermore, Oba-chan clearly has her shite together even in stressful situations. When Satsuki receives a telegram about her mother, Oba-chan is the one who directs Satsuki and Kanta, the neighbor boy, to the main house for Satsuki to contact her dad. Later on, when Mei goes missing, Oba-chan is actively engaged in the search for the younger girl while still looking out for Satsuki. As the film’s major maternal figure, she does double duty, representing women past the age of thirty, without being ‘cast either as the malicious crone or [...] into some obscure abyss, never to be seen again’ (Brady, 2020). Oba-chan might be relegated to the “grandmother” role, but she defies the Western stereotypes of bitter hag, the missing/dead mother, and the passive woman.
The only passive female character is Yasuko, the girls’ mother. She is absent because of her stay in a nearby hospital due to her long-term illness. Yet, it might be a more forgiving depiction given that Miyazaki took inspiration from his own mother who had tuberculosis and as such merely represents his own life experiences from his childhood.
Kiki’s Delivery Service 1989
Kiki’s Delivery Service is an exemplary tale of driven, strong female characters and can only be summed up with the refreshing trope of ‘women supporting women’. As the leading lady, Kiki is probably one of the most active heroines within the Ghibli franchise, consistently demonstrating her agency: at age 13, she leaves home (as part of the witches’ traditions) and ends up founding her own business; she has perseverance and is a problem solver. For example, when she loses a parcel, she is determined to get it back and ends up becoming friends with the artist Ursula who resides in a cabin in the forest. Yet, Kiki is not flawless, she is quite a clumsy witch who also experiences self-doubt. Her flaws neither define her nor are they specifically related to her being a girl. When she loses her powers as a result of doubting her own abilities and character, she gets them back of her own accord and with the support of other women.
This is a movie mainly about relationships between women, but there are instances in which Kiki interacts with men – or rather one particular boy: Tombo. In the beginning of the movie, she is catcalled and harassed by Tombo (aka the Japanese ‘Waldo’) but she immediately calls him out for his behaviour and doesn’t take his inappropriate advancements as something to be flattered about. Despite their rocky introduction, the two eventually become friends. In traditional media tropes, the boy would usually end up becoming the one to save the girl, yet Kiki’s Delivery Service defies this trope: it is Tombo who gets damsel’d and is in need of being rescued by Kiki. As such, Kiki is never stripped of her agency for the sake of a male counterpart.
Kiki’s mother Kokiri is an equally capable woman who is depicted as a more experienced witch than Kiki. She runs her own business and, according to Kiki, is excellent at potion making. Though she isn’t in the film for long, she fully supports her daughter's decision to seek her new home without hesitation.
The saga of female entrepreneurs continues: in Kiki’s new town we counter Osono who is running a seemingly successful bakery with her (probable) husband. As opposed to many other mothers(to be), Osono is never reduced to a state of helplessness despite her pregnancy. At the same time, while seemingly fitting within the trope of a ‘mother figure’ – for example, she cares for Kiki when she gets sick – she does not smother her and can be seen as a woman supporting another woman while she finds her footing.
Deep in the nearby forest lives artist Ursula who is clearly a feminist millennial icon living the cottage core lifestyle long before it became a trend. As such, Ursula is independent and befriends a murder of crows. Coming off as a bit of a hermit, she does seek out Kiki as a way to bond with another woman. Indeed, Ursula seems to take women as her muses as she uses them for inspiration for her art (does that make her queer coded? Perhaps). However, we also get to see a more vulnerable side of Ursula when she admits to Kiki that she herself sometimes feels stuck in her ways and unable to pursue her career as a painter. Yet, she does not dwell on her own misery but uses it as a way to show Kiki that it is okay to be sad sometimes and that self-doubt is part of life itself.
On the more passive side we encounter Madame, an old lady who frequently hires Kiki as a delivery girl and to help with chores around the house. She closely resembles the kind grandma stereotypes within Japanese media yet is also depicted as seemingly lonely at times. For example, it seems that as a result of having an ungrateful granddaughter, she makes Kiki her new ‘grandchild’, even baking her a cake as a way to thank her for her work and friendship. Madame is accompanied by her maid Barsa who has an obsession with witchcraft. Other than giving a helping hand to Kiki and being useful to Madame, Barsa does not have much of an active role within the movie. These two women are definitely passive characters, however, neither is defined by their relationships with men.
Spirited Away 2001
Perhaps the most iconic and widest known film amongst the Ghibli franchise is Spirited Away featuring another set of remarkable well thought through women. Protagonist Chihiro (in the film also given the alter ego Sen) is first depicted as a scared and shy young girl who cautiously follows her parents through a dubious tunnel and into a suspicious town. After exploring on her own, she returns to her parents but they have been turned into pigs. Chihiro is on her own, trapped in the spirit world. In order to not disappear, Haku, a mysterious spirit, feeds her food from the spirit world, saving her life. Indeed, amongst the women examined in this blog, Chihiro is the only one who is damsel’d and subsequently saved by a man (though not done as a plot device to further the man’s story).
Her character development begins only after Chihiro is instructed to seek out Yubaba, the owner of the bathhouse, to get a job. While still cautious at times, she is much more proactive in trying to find a way out of her predicament. Not just that, Chihiro is the one who finds solutions to the problems she encounters in the bathhouse. For example, when a Stink Spirit visits, Chihiro takes him on as a guest and discovers that the spirit actually had a thorn stuck in their body. With the help of Rin, a fellow bathhouse worker, and Yubaba, they remove the thorn (and a hell lot of garbage) and reveal the Stink Spirit to be a powerful River Spirit. Similarly, after letting No Face into the bathhouse, she refuses his offers of gold, preventing the No Face from attacking and eating her like other bathhouse employees. Instead, Chihiro offers some of the River Spirit’s gifts to No Face resulting in the return of the eaten bathhouse employees.
To add to this, we actually see a shift with the damsel trope. When Chihiro sees Haku being chased by Spirit Papers, she helps him, feeding him the gift she received from a River Spirit. She then ventures out to find Zeniba, Yubaba’s sister, to properly break the spell put on Haku. Ultimately, Chihiro finds solutions out of predicaments on her own and with support of friends. Indeed, as Miyazaki himself said ‘It’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’ (Dhruv Bose 2021b).
Yubaba is not just the owner of the bathhouse but also a powerful witch. She is depicted as calculating and selfish, and exploits her workers for her own benefit, yet she is also not wholly evil. She is a literal mother figure who puts her lazy son on a pedestal while calling Chihiro useless and dumb despite not knowing her. Her counterpart, her witch twin sister Zeniba, is similarly coded as an ambiguous character yet generally has more ‘positive tropes’ associated with her. When Zeniba first shows up, she seems equally fearsome. However, when Chihiro visits her in the swaps “her representation of femininity fits more closely with Japan’s hegemonic ideals of maternity” (Papastavros 2021, 7) thus revealing Zeniba more closely fitting the stereotype of the ‘kind old granny’. Therefore, while both show a lot of agency, strength, and independence, Yubaba seemingly has a more active role throughout the film than her twin sister.
Another active female character is fellow bathhouse employee Rin. While she initially seems motivated solely by personal gains, she ends up helping Chihiro whenever and wherever she can, potentially reducing her to nothing but a supporting female role. For example, in the beginning, Rin guides Chihiro through the bathhouse to find Yubaba and even keeps her safe from other employees of the bathhouse. Later on, Rin is the one who shows Chihiro around, helps her out with the Stink Spirit (aka River Spirit), and helps her across the waters to catch the train to Zeniba’s swap. At the same time, her character is often depicted as a classic strong Japanese woman by playing into the stereotype of strong women being keen negotiators and not pushovers.
The only purely passive female character is Yuko, Chihiro’s mother, who is reduced to a stereotypical worrisome mother who follows the father into the tunnel in the beginning. As such, Yuko is part of the mother trope other Ghibli movies and Western media often create; she is there. That’s it. She doesn’t contribute to the story after the first ten minutes.
So, like, these are movies about actual people?
Over the past 50+ years, Miyazaki consistently created fleshed out female characters (e.g. Bellot 2016; Alexander 2020; Brady 2020; Galicia 2021): they are independent and courageous; women and girls are people with opinions, motivations, and lives; many movies have strong female leads; they are never hyper-sexualised (as opposed of what is often seen in anime); women embody various different roles such as warriors, princesses, witches, farmers, engineers, etc.; women have depth and show strength both emotionally and physically; women are made out to be equals, not just love interests; and women do not rely on being saved by their male counterpart.
Indeed, Miyazaki himself is known to have said that his female characters ‘will need a friend […] but never a saviour’ (Dhruv Bose 2021). Thus, the women he creates seem both real and relatable to a wide (female) audience. This is unsurprising given the influences of his mother who continuously questioned the regressive and conservative societal norms (Dhruv Bose 2021), his vocal discontent to towards the mainstream anime industry (Galicia 2021), and his taking of inspiration from real women and girls when designing character, behaviours, and experiences (Galicia 2021, Dhruv Bose 2021). Therefore, Miyazaki manages to create active heroines, antiheroines, and supporting female characters throughout the Ghibli franchise.
Hayao Miyazki is proof that men can indeed write women, if they bother to take the time to do so. He does not rely on cookie cutter stereotypes to fill his casts, making women interesting and actually, you know, actual people. They are old, young, ambitious, scared; they have goals. They might play into certain stereotypes, but ultimately end up defying them, because they aren’t one-dimensional. Hallelujah!
Sources
Alexander, E. (2020). Why Studio Ghibli might just be the most feminist film franchise of all time. Harper’s Bazaar, 5 February, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/a30777541/studio-ghibli-feminism-netflix/
Bellot, G. (2016). Hayao Miyazaki and the Art of Being a Woman. The Atlantic, 19 October, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/10/hayao-miyazaki-and-the-art-of-being-a-woman/503978/
Brady, S. (2020). Ghibli’s heroines don’t need a saviour. Varsity, 16 March, https://www.varsity.co.uk/film-and-tv/18941
Darling-Wolf, F. (2016). The “Lost” Miyazaki: How a Swiss Girl Can Be Japanese and Why It Matters. Communication, Culture & Critique, 9, 499–516
Dhruv Bose, S. (2021). Hayao Miyazaki: The life and lasting influence of the Studio Ghibli auteur-animator. Far Out, 5 January, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/hayao-miyazaki-studio-ghibli-life-career-films/
Galicia, C. (2021). 10 Ways Hayao Miyazaki's Movies Are Feminist Works Of Art. Screenrant, 2 April, https://screenrant.com/why-hayao-miyazaki-ghibli-movies-are-feminist/
Norris, C. (2019). Shōjo Fantasies of Inhabiting Cool Japan: Reimagining Fukuoka Through Shōjo and Otome Ideals with Cosplay Tourism. In: Berndt, J., Nagaike, K., Ogi, F. (eds.). Shōjo Across Media: Exploring “Girl” Practices in Contemporary Japan. Cham, Palgrave, 331-354
Papastavros, V. (2021). Miyazaki’s monstrous mother: a study of Yubaba in Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. Feminist Media Studies, XX(X), 1-16
Sugawa-Shimada, A. (2019). Shōjo in Anime: Beyond the Object of Men’s Desire. In: Berndt, J., Nagaike, K., Ogi, F. (eds.). Shōjo Across Media: Exploring “Girl” Practices in Contemporary Japan. Cham, Palgrave, 181-206
Image Credit
Studio Ghibli [@GhibliUSA] (2021). "So much work, so little time. KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989) dir. Hayao Miyazaki http://GKIDS.com/Kiki" 19 December, https://twitter.com/GhibliUSA/status/1472688191526170624?s=20
Studio Ghibli [@GhibliUSA] (2022). "Dreaming of a breezy summer day... MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988) dir. Hayao Miyazaki http://GKIDS.com/Totoro" 9 January, https://twitter.com/GhibliUSA/status/1480298338603970568?s=20
Studio Ghibli [@GhibliUSA] (2022). "It's frustrating when no one listens to you. SPIRITED AWAY (2001) dir. Hayao Miyazaki http://GKIDS.com/Spirited" 12 January, https://twitter.com/GhibliUSA/status/1481279814095024131?s=20