Author(s) :

Fangzhou Zhai.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Released during Japan’s prolonged post-bubble economic stagnation, Spirited Away (2001) reflects widespread social anxieties surrounding consumerism, labor uncertainty, environmental degradation, and the erosion of traditional values in late-capitalist Japan. This paper examines Spirited Away as a cinematic critique of capitalist modernity in Japan, focusing on consumerism, identity erosion, hierarchical labor, and environmental pollution. Drawing on Adrian Ivakhiv’s Ecologies of the Moving Image, the analysis applies the anthropomorphic, geomorphic, and animamorphic dimensions to explore how cinematic spaces, characters, and spiritual beings within the film actively produce meaning rather than merely telling a story. Situating the film within Japan’s postwar economic growth, bubble-era excess, and Shinto belief, the paper argues that Miyazaki portrays capitalism as an ecological system that reshapes human behaviour, undermines spiritual values, and disrupts the balance between humans and the environment. Through close analysis of key figures including Chihiro, Yubaba, No-Face, bathhouse workers, and the polluted river spirit, the paper demonstrates how consumerism dehumanizes subjects, hierarchy normalizes exploitation, and environmental degradation emerges as a lived, embodied consequence of industrial development. Ultimately, Spirited Away proposes an alternative ethical vision grounded in Shinto principles of purification, relational identity, restraint, and collective responsibility, offering a critique of capitalism that is moral, ecological, and cultural instead of purely economic.