ABSTRACT
The above is in short the plot of ‘Spirited Away’,1 Hayao Miyazaki’s celebrated animated film that shortly after its release in 2001 became Japan’s biggest ever box office hit. The film is a remarkable work of art, but its mass appeal suggests that it also struck a timely theme many Japanese can relate to because it is symbolic of current social trends. Chihiro is the lonely Japanese child of our day, surrounded by elderly people with strange habits and stranger demands, having to find her way in, or rather out of, a hostile, alienated and unashamedly hedonistic society with little regard for its offspring. In this monstrous world of deviants, freaks and survivors of pathological families that appear normal only on the surface, Chihiro musters the strength, almost on her own, to cope with the social catastrophe of postmodernity, the breaking away of all reliable social ligatures.
