Summary Of Hayao Miyazaki's Anime Movie "Princess Mononoke"

Princess Mononoke is a Japanese film released in 1997, Hayao Miyazaki’s 8th venture as a writer and director. It set a record for Japan’s highest grossing film of all-time until Titanic was later released that same year.

We are first introduced to Ashitaka at the start of the film, defending his village against a corrupted Nago, the boar god and leader of the Boar clan, who tries to destroy the village. Ashitaka kills the demon before it reaches the village, getting entrapped and cursed in the process. After the village’s wise woman attempts to heal him, she reveals the cursed Ashitaka’s fate. He is told the curse will spread throughout his body and kill him if he doesn’t find the cure westward. Our banished hero then ventures west, soon to be found in the middle of a war between an industrialist town and the forest.

Princess Mononoke is set in the Japanese Muromachi period, from 1336 to 1573, and was a prime time for industrial uprise. During this era, Japan bartered heavily with the Ming Dynasty, which leads to the central theme to this story focusing on what that economic boom did to the lands these growing villages resided on.

There exists no villains throughout the film. We see the industrious Iron Town take down forests and kill wildlife in an attempt to further their prosperity. However, even this isn’t seen as “evil.” Every character that we see is not inherently trying to dismantle the others’ way of life, but is instead trying to find their own.“The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it – I know it is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed for it, in life and in politics, is hopeless” (Scott, quote from Miyazaki). Nago was corrupted involuntarily; Lady Eboshi brings people marginalized in the city and creates a haven for them; Jigo, the closest thing to an antagonist, shelters and feeds Ashitaka out of kindness. We are given a basis in which evil has been founded upon which is generally not the fault of the being that it happened to. Evil is created by flawed ideals; its victim is not to blame for its creation.

The moral of the story isn’t just “respect nature.” As Miyazaki said earlier, it only manifests the right conditions are maintained for it to exist. Both parties cause their own versions of evil to exist. But that street goes both ways.

We have seen depictions of this kind of feud in the past. Marx’s Communist Manifesto lays down a similar groundwork for how this relationship functions. The bourgeoisie and the proletariats in Marx’s theory relates closely with Lady Eboshi and her people, respectively. We see one side with the power and capital exploit the other side for their resources in both cases, such as the forest (unwillingly) providing capital to industrialists in order to grow. Industrialists take land, bourgeoisie take labor. However, in Marxism philosophy, the bourgeoisie are not inherently evil. Marx never stated the bourgeois is inherently evil. Alienation experienced by the proletariats is, but it wasn’t something you could fight against, “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed' (Marx 343). He does not describe an enemy, but an element of reality.

Both the industrialists and forest tear at each other until the very end of the film. Though Lady Eboshi and the forest dwellers seek to defend their land and people though commendable intent, their actions and rationale cause evil to exist. And in this case, the continuous battle will mean the end of Japan or even the world. This constant battle is not a foriegn idea. On both sides, we have seen humans tear away at their resources and the exploited fight right back. In a literal example, after the proletariats we’re fed up with their injustice and alienation, they retaliated:

At first the contest is carried on by individual labour- ers, then by the work people of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois condition of production, but against the instruments of production themselves. (Ranjit 5)

The entire system becomes disarrayed. Where the bourgeoisie and proletariat were supposed to work harmoniously with each other, their exploitation caused them to rift. We see the downfall of people in Easter Island, taking advantage of the land and not tending to it, leading to complete environmental disaster, “Eventually Easter’s growing population was cutting the forest more rapidly than the forest was regenerating… People also found it harder to fill their stomachs, as land birds, large sea snails, and many seabirds disappeared.” Deforestation took place because Easter Island’s inhabitants used trees to transport the giant stone statues. Because the trees weren’t there to house the fauna, inhabitants of Easter Island slowly ran out of food, resulting in exhaustion of food supply and cannibalism.

Ultimately, in both examples, humans not taking proper care of their environment led to the destruction of themselves. The consequences of actions and ideals are unintended but can, at times, be the root of evil. It must be dealt with quickly, but as a product of your environment, you are also held responsible. In the case of Princess Mononoke, there needs to be a workable equilibrium. Humans cannot push their interests so far that their ecosystem collapses, killing all life. And the forest has to sacrifice a little to make way for humans and their growth. Kate Soper suggests that political ideologies cannot be a compass for understanding what impact a culture may have on its environment.

She indicates that focusing on one attribute of an ideology does not explain its entire result of the matter it effects. Lady Eboshi assumed the forest would coexist with her rapid growth and deforestation, however, was unaware, or did not care, about the effects it had on the beings that have lived in the forest. To Soper, nature had to be separate from human culture. Lady Eboshi is forced to think over her traditional views of industrialism that has brought her with her quarrel with the forest. Only then would she and her people will be able to live in peace.

Miyazaki establishes that the story is not built around the traditional good versus evil storyline with the scene between Ashitaka and Lady Eboshi. As war was very profitable, Lady Eboshi recruited people who would normally be deemed outcasts – like brothel girls and lepers – in the mainland and put them to work. Her people love their job, and flock to her because she makes them matter in a society where they would only struggle. She is like this due to her environment; she provides people with security, fulfilment, a means of living. This is problematic for Ashitaka, for he realizes Lady Eboshi and her people are not enemies. The consequences of actions and ideals are unintended but can, at times, be the root of evil.

The industrialists and forest go to war, and violence echoes throughout the land. Lady Eboshi doesn’t heed to Ashitaka’s advice and goes after the forest spirit, in turn killing all forest life. The land gets encased in a thick, black, life-deadening goo and all of our characters who only sought to live their lives end up facing imminent death. The circumstances did not have to be drawn out to this extent and could have been avoided. If the industrialists and forest had just made an effort to understand each other without inflicting harm to one another, or they had just listened without being consumed by hate, this crisis may have been averted. Amy Murphy reels in the main idea of the film:

We must begin to fundamentally accept the whole of nature as something that has to be connected, something that cannot be further undermined by other divisional ideologies such as individual nation-states, existing class orders, or certain continuing theologically justified hierarchies (Murphy 18).

The end of the film brings ending that even societies today need. After witnessing the devastating effects of their quarrel, Lady Eboshi agrees to co-exist with the forest. She must not break off from nature to pursue her own goals as they are no longer two separate entities, but something that is connected. The forest will find its own way to survive, as nature always find a way to flourish. Lady Eboshi must find a way to manage her own rational and act in accordance to sustain herself and her people. The ideology that both the side with power and capital and the side that provides the capital can work alongside each other can prove to be beneficial for both parties, “The great commerce of every civilised society is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country” (Smith 328). Our opposing forces in the film may be able to achieve prosperity by working together to create not just a haven for humans or animals, but for both.

This movie has no villain, simply people who are cursed for no reason. Evil was not formed based on desires, but was rather created due to the environment they were in. In the end, there was no clear victor, except for life itself, something both the industrialists and forest fight so hard to achieve since the very beginning.