Princess Mononoke

I love films. I love literature too in equal amounts, but it can’t be denied that books and films are two completely different forms of media. The visual aspect of cinema in many ways makes it a far more appropriate form for tackling the theme of environmentalism and nature. Beasts of the Southern Wild, for instance, absolutely captivated me and helped me understand some rather deep and complex environmental issues, combining the emotional and physical needs of humankind with the equally important Fellow blogger N. Lloyd’s post on the representation of nature in some of Disney’s classic princess films piqued my interest in how animated films deal with the same issues.

Animation is not a sign of simplicity or childishness anymore than a live-action signifies maturity or depth. Studio Ghibli’s 1997 animated feature Princess Mononoke has been one of my all time favourite films since I first watched it way back when I was fourteen. I have always had a deep love of animation, but the majority of the content that I had thus far seen was limited to large scale Western cinema, such as Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks. All produced films that have been culturally influential and often deeply, deeply meaningful. But I had never before experienced a film that tackled difficult themes the way that Princess Mononoke did.

The film garnered a great deal of praise across the world, not just for the beauty and excellence of the film itself, but also because of the themes that it tackled and the dignified way in which it approached them. Modern anxieties surrounding the destruction of the natural environment for the sake of human progress and expansion form the core theme of the film, yet the film refrains from being preachy or wholly one-sided. The stance that the film takes reflects the idea that the conflict between the human world and the natural world can no longer be integrated as one, but the hope remains that perhaps humanity can at least learn to live with and regain respect for nature.

Set in 16th century Japan, the film concerns a boy named Ashitaka who sets out to seek a way to end a curse put upon him by a boar god. He travels westwards to a settlement called Irontown, along the way hearing of the Great Forest Spirit and of a girl who supposedly lives among a wolf clan. The main conflict of the film arises from the desire of several human characters to ‘reclaim’ natural land in order to produce the iron that Irontown is named for, while the spirits of the forest actively defend against and sometimes even attack the encroaching human presence.

If I’m being completely honest, then I should admit that this concept is far from new, and the characters themselves are likable and interesting, most are (with the exception of San, the human girl who lives among the wolves) in no way iconic. Plenty have films, music, and works of literature have tackled the theme of humans vs. nature, and Beasts of the Southern Wild was unique in the way in which it represented its human characters. Instead of a cross-section of ‘typical’ people, the film focused on the lives of an ensemble of people from a close-knit outsider culture whose relationship with nature simultaneously mirrors and yet completely diverges from our own. In Princess Mononoke, it is the representation of nature that is really standout. Humanity as a whole is the outsider here, looking inwards towards a natural world which it no longer fully understands or appreciates.

Nothing suggests that the natural world has diminished in power or importance (most evidently shown with the physically and mystically powerful Great Forest Spirit, whose enormous size combined with the ability to both take and grant life is surely symbolic of concept of nature as a whole), and despite the negative effects that human interference has caused, the climax of the film hints at renewal. Nature is not static, but a living, developing thing; just as the forest in Princess Mononoke slowly begins to regrow after being all but destroyed in the human/nature conflict, nature is perfectly capable of adapting and recreating itself to different environments and situations.

‘Nightwalker’ – the Great Forest Spirit’s appearance changes from day to night and back.

The elements of mysticism and spiritualism that are inherent in the film contribute to the sense of surreal otherness that defines nature in this film. In a modern world in which nature is often sidelined, it is not difficult to understand the film’s characterisation of nature as something essential to human life, and yet something that humanity has become increasingly detached and alienated from. The forest is a strange place, where humans fear to tread, and yet it is also beautiful. It is not so different in that respect from the kind of fairytale forests of Western children’s literature, where the natural world so often is a place of danger/fear and life/peace. To return to N. Lloyd’s article on the representation of the natural world in Snow White, the forest into which the princess if forced to flee is at first terrifying and unnatural, an uncanny mutation of human eyes, faces and hands that are anthropomorphised onto shadowy trees. Yet, this fear changes to happiness when Snow White notices the living creatures of the forest gathered around her.

Kodama/Tree Spirits

In the ancient forests of Princess Mononoke, the creatures that we encounter are not always of the mortal kind. The Tree Spirits (or Kodama) are exactly what their name implies, and their presence in the forest is undisputable. The humans that encounter them are unnerved by them, and yet they see them as clearly as they see the forest itself. They are symbolic of the nature of the very trees from which they originate, rejecting the notion that trees are inherently passive by clearly expressing the active soul that each tree apparently possess. They do not communicate verbally with humanity – they may even lack the ability – but their very presence is enough to convince the characters within the film, and perhaps even the audience as well, that nature is a LIVING entity. The small and quaint nature of the Kodama perhaps reinforces the common trope that nature is at least somewhat defenceless or weak, but they number a great many and their return at the end of the film is representative of the triumph of the spirit of nature, even in its weakest and most unassuming form, over the mistakes that humanity has made in the past.