Eiji Kano Onsen Trip
Hien Mondesir
The story is about the adventures of a young ten-year-old girl named Chihiro as she wanders into the world of the gods and spirits. She is forced to work at a bathhouse following her parents being turned into pigs by the evil witch Yubaba.
The film was made to please the ten-year-old daughter of Hayao Miyazaki's personal friend, director Seiji Okuda. Okuda's daughter even became the model for the film's protagonist, Chihiro. During the film's planning phase, Miyazaki gathered the daughters of Ghibli's staff in a mountain hut in Shinano Province to hold a training seminar. His experience led him to wanting to make a film for them, since he had never made a movie for girls at the age of 10.
It won first place in the Studio Ghibli general poll held in 2016, and was re-screened in five movie theaters around Japan for seven days from September 10 to 16, 2016. It was adapted as a stage play by John Caird, starring Kanna Hashimoto and Mone Kamishiraishi, and debuted in February 2022 in Tokyo, Japan and premiered in April 2023 in the United States.[2]
Chihiro Ogino, a disaffected child, is annoyed about having to move to a new town. She is traveling with her parents in their 1996 Audi A4 Quattro to their new home. While driving to their new house, Chihiro's father attempts to follow a shortcut; they subsequently lose their way and come across a mysterious red gate and a tunnel which exits to a clock tower and leads to what appears to be an abandoned theme park, lined with seemingly empty restaurants. Finding a restaurant fully-stocked with unattended food, both parents eat the food they find there and, as a result, transform into pigs.
Chihiro's distress at losing her parents is compounded by the discoveries that the world around her has changed and that her body seems to be disappearing. A mysterious boy named Haku appears, comforts Chihiro, and gives her a red berry to eat, which makes her solid again. He smuggles her into a large bathhouse owned and operated by the evil witch Yubaba, where thousands of spirits come to refresh themselves. Haku tells Chihiro that the only way she can remain in the spirit-world long enough to rescue her parents is by gaining employment in Yubaba's bathhouse. When Chihiro asks Haku how he seems to know her so well, Haku replies that he has known Chihiro since she was very small.
At first, she tries to get work with Kamajī, who works at the boiler room, but is rejected. Kamajī instead hands Chihiro off to the worker, Lin, to take her to Yubaba. In Yubaba's penthouse suite, Chihiro repeatedly asks for a job, overriding the monstrous witch's refusals. Yubaba ultimately consents, on condition that Chihiro give up her name. Yubaba literally takes possession of Chihiro's real name (荻野 千尋 , Ogino Chihiro) by grasping the kanji characters from Chihiro's signed contract, leaving Chihiro with one part of one character of her original two-character name, in isolation pronounced "Sen" (千). Taking a person's name gives Yubaba power to keep its owner in her service permanently; it is revealed that Haku is also in Yubaba's service, and remains so because she has taken part of his full name.
While at work, Sen gives admittance to a wraithlike spirit called No-Face, who returns the favor by helping her obtain water needed to bathe a "stink sigil" whom no one else will help. After bathing, the stink spirit is revealed to be a powerful River Spirit who rewards Sen with a strong emetic dumpling.
Subsequently, Sen sees Haku in the form of a white dragon, and later on helps save him from attacking Shikigami. Searching for the injured Haku, Sen encounters Yubaba's big infant son, Boh at her apartment. Sen finds Haku, who was attacked by Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister, because Haku had stolen her sigil. When Boh distracts Zeniba, she transforms Boh into a mouse, and Yu-Bird into a hummingbird. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic gold seal from her, and warns Sen that it carries a deadly curse. Haku then rips up the remaining Shikigami, causing Zeniba to disappear. After Haku dives to the boiler room with Sen and Boh on his back, she feeds him part of the dumpling. Doing this, Sen causes Haku to spit out the stolen sigil, which he had swallowed. He also chokes up a black slug which Sen squishes, yet Haku remains unconscious. Hoping to lift Zeniba's curse and save Haku from a coma, Sen decides to set out to return the sigil to Zeniba.
Meanwhile, No-Face has become intoxicated with the greedy atmosphere of the bathhouse and swells into a huge monster, giving illusory gold to the bathhouse workers in exchange for food. When the workers do not comply with his demands, he eats several of them; this causes a panic and the entire bathhouse is thrown into pandemonium. Sen manages to solve the problem by feeding No-Face the remaining emetic, making him regurgitate several million tons of black poison and the bathhouse workers, then leads him out of the bathhouse. No-Face reverts to his former size and demure personality, and along with Sen and Boh, takes the sea railway and travel by train to Zeniba's faraway cottage at Swamp Bottom. At Zeniba's home, Sen gives the sigil back to Zeniba, apologizing for having squished the black slug. An amused Zeniba reveals that the slug had been one of Yubaba's means of controlling Haku, and that the curse put on the seal has already been broken by Sen's friendship.
In the bathhouse, Yubaba discovers Boh's absence and is enraged. Haku, now revived and restored to his human form, offers Boh's safe return in exchange for Sen and her parents to be freed and restored to normal. Yubaba accepts, but promises to set Sen one final task. Along with Boh and Yu-Bird, Haku and Sen fly back to the bathhouse, leaving No-Face to live with Zeniba as her assistant. En route to the bathhouse, Chihiro remembers a previously suggested meeting with Haku: some time ago, she had fallen into a river and was rescued by the river's spirit. She then realizes that the spirit of this river, called Kohaku River, and her friend Haku are one and the same, and thus revealing Haku's real name, Nigihayami Kohakunushi, which literally translates to "God of the Swift Amber River." At this realization, Haku's dragon form is molted away, and he is completely freed from Yubaba's control.
Yubaba and a large crowd have gathered to witness Chihiro's final task: to pick out her cursed parents from a group of pigs. Chihiro correctly states that none of the pigs displayed by Yubaba are her parents, and thus wins back both her parents' humanity and her own freedom from the bathhouse. Afterward, Haku takes Chihiro to rejoin her restored parents. He bids her farewell and promises that he will come see her again. As Chihiro and her parents return to their world, her parents lose all memory of their visit to the spirit world. The family then gets back in their car and resume their journey to their new home. Miyazaki himself has stated that Chihiro also forgets her adventure in the spirit world, but it is hard to tell in the dub version whether or not she did because of extra lines of dialogue added at the end. These extra lines are from Chihiro's dad and herself; her dad worries about her having to live somewhere else and go to a different school, but Chihiro replies that she thinks she can handle it. In the sub version, she just silently thinks about her adventure.
Today the world has become ambiguous. The main subject of this film is to portray in a clear way this world which seems to be consumed, and this borrowing, despite this ambiguity, the form of a fantasy. In a world where they are guarded, protected, kept at a distance, children allow their frail arms and legs to hypertrophy. Chihiro's slender arms and legs, the angry expression on her face, typical of someone who doesn't easily have fun, reflects that. But in truth, when she finds herself confronted with a situation of crisis, where relations are blocked, one realizes that her strength of adaptation and her perseverance rebound, and that she commits her life to deploying a faculty of judgment. and a capacity to act decisively.
Under the circumstances faced by Chihiro, most men would panic or refuse to believe it, but these men would end up being devoured. We can say that in fact, Chihiro's talent is to find the strength not to be devoured. In no way did she become the heroine because she would be a pretty little girl with an exceptional heart. On this point, it is one of the merits of this film, and it is also why I intended it for the little girls of ten years.
Speech is a force. In the world where Chihiro got lost, the act of uttering a word constitutes an act of decisive weight. At the baths run by Yubba, if Chihiro pronounces the words: "I don't want," "I want to go home," the witch immediately throws her outside; all that remains is to wander with nowhere to go and disappear, or be turned into a hen and lay eggs until eaten. Conversely, when Chihiro says: "I will work here," witch she is, Yubba cannot ignore it. Today, the word has an unlimited lightness, you can say anything, it is received like a bubble and only restores a reflection of reality. Yet the fact that speaking is a force is still true today. A word is only vain, without force, because it is emptied of its meaning.
The act of stealing the name is not that of transforming it into a nickname, it is an approach which aims to totally dominate his opponent. Sen is scared to find that she has forgotten her own name, Chihiro. In addition, every time she goes to visit her parents at the pigsty, she gradually becomes indifferent to the fate of these changed into pigs. In the world of Yubba, one must continually live in fear of being devoured. In this difficult environment, Chihiro comes alive. Usually frowning, his face will radiate a charming expression for the finale of the film. However, the nature of the world is in no way modified.
This film possesses or appeals to a persuasive force according to which the word represents an own will, an energy. There, the fact of having realized a fantasy taking place in Japan has a meaning. Even though this is a fairy tale, I didn't want to do a western fairy tale, with many loopholes. This film may seem to be in imitation of a different world, but rather I wanted to think about a direct line with the tales of the past like Suzume no Oyado (The house of the hawk) or Nezumi no Goten (The Palace of Mice).
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