Princess Mononoke Analysis

Throughout the progression of human history, technological advancements have always been made at the expense of altering and harming the environment; so much so that one of the five types of conflict highlighted in literary writing is human vs. nature. One such story that addresses this conflict is Princess Mononoke by Japanese storyteller Hiyao Miyazaki. Although appearing to be a simple animated children’s tale of a boy thrown into a fight between spiritual beings and the human civilization that threatens to encroach upon their territory, Miyazaki delves into an utterly complex commentary on the consequences technological advancements have on its surroundings. Unlike other examples from film and literature that covers the topic however, Miyazaki …show more content…
Ignorance of the consequences human expansion had on the environment played an equally large roll. Miyzaki makes sure to include this as otherwise he feared his warning of what could come in the following century would be lost and he be branded another mouth-piece for the environmentalist movement. In Princess Mononoke, the people of Iron Town are completely unaware of the purpose of the nature spirits and fear them. Instead of seeking a relationship with them, they wage war, and nature wages war back. This personification of the natural world through the spirits, combined with the ignorance of the people, crafts a perfect image of what Myizaki feared may occur in the early 2000s. His forewarning that a balance between the two worlds must be reached, and war not be waged, eloquently characterized the conflict he saw in his own country of Japan, as the effects of globalization rampantly spread through …show more content…
Just as the film is based in the 13th to 15th century in Japan, so were the origins of Shinto teachings diffusing throughout the island. This connection to Shintoism was no doubt on purpose, done to remind Japanese audiences that the religion that inhabited their island for more than one thousand years was based on the inherent seeking of a path towards the unification of human and nature. Myizaki undertones Princess Mononoke with various symbols of Shinto as well, not letting the viewer forget their cultural ties to the film’s historic setting. This move by Myizaki to stress religion goes hand in hand with the decay of Shinto reverence in Japanese culture and the subsequent rise in urban metropoles. Explained in “Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami” John Breen highlights this cultural transition eloquently: “The period of rapid economic growth from the 1960s to the 1980s has done particularly severe damage to the country’s natural environment through overdevelopment and frequent pollution. The price of consumerism and material wealth has been paid in the form of the disintegration of ‘hometown communtities’ and spiritual confusion, and in the 1990s this has undoubtedly been one of the reasons for the frequent occurrence throughout Japanese society of events that border on