Animism in Animation

The Magic of Hayao Miyazaki

Animism begins with the assumption that one's self is constituted in one's relationships to other people and things - not in some inner being (ie it’s not 'I think, therefore I am', but 'I relate, therefore I am').¹ To an animist, all things in the world are animated by a divine, spiritual life force; together they form a unity.

For Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary director of many Studio Ghibli masterpieces, 'animism will be an important philosophy for humanity in the 21st century',² as we become increasingly alienated by capitalist materialism and planetary degradation.

But are Miyazaki's films actually animist? Do audiences experience animism while watching them? Is it even possible to be an animist, to believe in the 'secret life' of animate and inanimate things, in this day and age?

First, to give animism some context. For the ancient Celts, everything in nature was numinous, every tree and river contained its own divine energy, and the gods were everywhere. Hence the importance of dindsenchas, 'the lore of places', which recorded the mythic and sacred features of the land. And when the hero Amairgen led the ancestors of the Irish to the Emerald Isle in The Book of Invasions, he declared:

I am a wind on the sea.

I am a sea-wave upon the land.

… I am a stag of seven combats.

I am a hawk on a cliff.

I am a tear-drop of the sun.

I am a boar for valour.

I am a salmon in a pool.

I am the excellence of arts.

I am a spear that wages

battle with plunder.

I am a god who forms

subjects for a ruler.³

He diffused his sense of identity into his environment. His 'self' was not limited by his body, nor even by sentience: he believed his spiritual essence was communing and intermingling with all aspects of the world around him.

The ancient Chinese, too, believed that nature was animated by interactive spirits. The Classic of Mountains and Seas imbues the various regions of China with immortal beings which arise from its geography. In Journey to the West, the Monkey King encounters gods and demons which are incarnated by the topography of his travels. Landscapes are lent a spiritual dimension, crawling with spirit activity:

An immortal site of ten thousand years.

The phoenix sings in green paulownia trees;

And living streams hide aged dragons.⁴

In Japan, the native religion underpinning the Emperor to this day is Shinto, which holds that kami (divine) nature pervades all things in the universe, and that by purifying ourselves, we can become sensitized to its presence. Miyazaki himself describes this animism: 'my grandparents believed that spirits existed everywhere, trees, rivers, insects, and wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything.’⁵ More recently, in Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron, he speaks in the present tense as he evokes the spirits of his dead friends - Isao Takahata, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, in particular: 'The Japanese believe in spirits. Sometimes they have to be placated ... He keeps haunting me in my dreams ... He doesn't answer, but I can feel him.'

Miyazaki has a dry sense of humour and one shouldn't take everything he says seriously. He has, after all, 'retired' 4 times and I reckon he's still working. But we should draw attention to the admission: 'I like the idea that ...', because it hints at the background question here: can you really be an animist while operating in the modern world? There's a big difference between believing and wanting to believe.

Jolyon Baraka Thomas has argued that anime has no connection to animism and that anime directors do not reconnect audiences to their animistic roots. Animism, to him, is a modern category (without a native equivalent in the Japanese language) which reinforces instead of erasing the divide between nature and culture. Thomas continued that the writers and directors who claim the mantle of animism betray a 'cultivated vulnerability: a willingness to eschew cynicism in favour of enchantment, awe and togetherness.'⁶ In other words, they take refuge in the comforting idea of sentient, spiritual nature without truly understanding and believing in animism.

This is a compelling argument, but I disagree in the context of Hayao Miyazaki.

It's true that one of Miyazaki's big themes is the conflict between humans and nature; this is, however, a bridge which can be crossed. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is set in a post-apocalytic world in which humans view the insect 'Ohm' as enemies, when in fact they're healing the planet from human devastastion. The protagonist resolves this opposition by saving the baby Ohm, an act of reconciliation which leads to the growth of a non-toxic forest. Castle in the Sky ends with the symbolic integration of the floating city and its great tree, a union of technology and nature. In My Neighbour Totoro, Satsuki and Mei's adventures with Totoro represent a childhood connection to the world which adults neglect to maintain; the film reveals nostalgia for a time when agriculture and nature coexisted more harmoniously. In Spirited Away, Chihiro succeeds in purifying the spirit bathhouse by extracting human pollution from the 'Stink Spirit', and she liberates Haku (a boy-dragon incarnated by a river) from the grips of the greedy capitalist Yubaba. All of these examples demonstrate human beings overcoming their estrangement from the natural environment.

Princess Mononoke offers a more problematic resolution: San and Ashitaka part ways, despite their love, because one belongs to the forest and the other to civilization. But this sundering is the culmination of a devastating war between humans and spirits, an unfortunate but not inevitable outcome (for if San and Ashitaka could make peace with the boar, wolf, ape and deer gods, why not other humans?), and an outcome which they pacify by restoring the head of the Deer God to the Night Walker.

The animal spirits in Mononoke are only one example of how Miyazaki portrays nature as endowed with agency. In Ponyo, waves literally have eyes and tsunamis are caused by vengeful ocean spirits, while the visceral depiction of earthquakes and aeroplanes in The Wind Rises renders them sentient in all but name. Nature speaks through the rich sound design of the wind, waves, fire and trees, and it shines across all the sublime, painterly landscapes of Ghibli. These films evoke a connection which we have lost, but might one day recover… like memories of childhood.

Miyazaki isn't just conveying a deeper communion between humans and nature through his themes. It's woven into his style, which is punctuated with what he calls 'ma, emptiness' and Takahata named 'sensuality': moments of stillness when the audience is encouraged to observe the physical makeup of the world inside the film.

See for example the bus scene in Totoro, the noodle scene in Ponyo, or the breakfast scene in Howl's Moving Castle. Such scenes don't advance the plot, they're there because Miyazaki 'creates a tactile world ... His attention to detail is astounding', in the words of his producer and the second Ghibli co-founder, Toshio Suzuki.⁷ These details appear to live and breathe - they possess a marked animist quality, so that rather than concentrating purely on the characters and narrative, we examine the connections within Miyazaki’s world as a whole.

If no one can say for sure that Miyazaki believes in nature spirits, it’s at least clear that he wants to communicate this belief. And if he doesn't convert audiences to animism in their seats, he certainly encourages them to consider an animist perspective, to wonder whether all the world around them might be alive, because in his films, magic and reality are woven seamlessly - the world really is alive. In Kiki's Delivery Service, witchcraft is compared to painting: to create art is just as magical as to fly a broomstick. Suzuki explains that 'In the moment, for him, it's real. He speaks with conviction because he really believes it.'⁸ Miyazaki’s mingling of fantasy and reality dispels the dichotomy between humans and nature rather than reinforcing it.

Though it's true that the word 'animism' does not exist indigenously in the Japanese language, animism as a concept is predicated on the oneness of life and the soul's connection to the universe - and these ideas, which have always been central to Shinto, are embodied by the kanji 魂, tamashii. Shoko Yoneyama has drawn attention to Miyazaki's denial of duality, dubbing it 'critical animism': first, it challenges the 'hyperseparation of Western binaries', the relentless emphasis on the individual as separate from the natural world. Second, it differentiates itself from 'State Shinto' as used by the Japanese government to emphasise the uniqueness of Japan.⁹ Miyazaki’s animism denies Japanese nationalism but it embraces Japanese tradition; on the making of Spirited Away, he expressed his ‘very warm appreciation for the various, very humble rural Shinto rituals that continue to this day throughout rural Japan.’¹⁰ There is no hiding the connection between Japanese anime and Shinto-based animism.

Miyazaki’s marriage of theme and style, buttressed by long-lived Japanese attitudes towards the spirit world, goes beyond the 'cultivated vulnerability' alleged by Jolyon Baraka Thomas. There is a sense of unresolved wonder in his work, but it’s more than delusive 'enchantment, awe and togetherness'. As Yoneyama put it, Miyazaki sees nature as a 'manifestation of vital energy which encompasses the life-world and the spiritual world', tracing the evolution of this philosophy between 1982-94, the prelude to Princess Mononoke. To Miyazaki, nature is pervaded by an unseen but present, not otherworldly force - the non-dual spirit of life itself. His creative process involves tapping into this fundamental presence: 'You have to go crazy to open the inner doors of the brain ... It's hard to return to normal life ... I went to the edge of madness.'¹¹

Thomas makes a good point that animist analyses of anime often overlook the 'spirit' of the medium itself, focusing only on the narrative and not the cameras, screens and cables which reproduce it. Wouldn't a true animist believe that the mechanical apparatus itself is possessed? Probably, but Miyazaki does attribute independent agency to the films themselves. He stated that he does 'not make a film' - a film 'tries to become a film' by turning him into 'a slave to the film'.¹² The Boy and the Heron is a dialogue between him and the spirit of his friend and rival Isao Takahata: 'I finally buried him in the storyboards'.¹³ Besides, there can be degrees of animism, and an animist need not place equal importance in every object presented to them.

The films of Hayao Miyazaki are animist because they promote a view of nature as spiritually alive, a life which is manifested in physical reality if you would only stop to notice it, a life which the sound and visuals of Miyazaki's films could help you to notice. Behind the blowing of the wind, the stirring of the leaves or the crashing of the waves, you might hear the roiling energy of the entire planet. You don't have to talk to a rock to believe that you're connected to it, both scientifically and spiritually.

Yes, I think you could be an animist in this day and age.

1. 'Animism Revisited’, Nurit Bird-David (1999).

2. ‘Miyazaki’s Animism and the Anthropocene’, Shoko Yoneyama (2021).

3. The Celtic Heroic Age, John T. Koch (2003).

4. Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en, tr. by Anthony C. Yu (2012).

5. ‘Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film "Spirited Away”’, James W. Boyd (2004).

6. ‘Spirit/Medium: Critically Examining the Relationship between Animism and Animation’, Jolyon Baraka Thomas (2019).

7. Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron, Kaku Arakawa (2024).

8. Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron, Kaku Arakawa (2024).

9. ‘Miyazaki’s Animism and the Anthropocene’, Shoko Yoneyama (2021).

10. ‘Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film "Spirited Away”’, James W. Boyd (2004).

11. Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron, Kaku Arakawa (2024).

12. ‘Miyazaki’s Animism and the Anthropocene’, Shoko Yoneyama (2021).

13. Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron, Kaku Arakawa (2024).