ABSTRACT
This chapter includes a study of Japanese identity and establishes the importance of its past through war, family, women and culture, and explores Miyazaki's cinema. Miyazaki regards manga as presenting something other than realism. Miyazaki had studied Political Science and Economics at Gakushuin University in the 1960s, but his interests lay in animation. Identities reveal truths and fictions that become transferable and interchangeable; self and other remain fluid, and each represents liberation within Miyazaki's dreamscape. The main themes of Spirited Away are greed, purity and loss of self, set within a nostalgic past. The chapter looks at Place, recollection and selfhood which are valid signs of identity politics within Miyazaki's cinema. The Wind Rises, released in 2013, was Miyazaki's final film before he retired and follows the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Zero fighter plane, which was used during World War II.
