HUYNH HUU DAI

IELTS TEACHER - IELTS GIA SƯ

WORK EXPERIENCE
PASAL - TEACHING ASSISTANT November 2018 - June 2019
PASAL is an academic institution that teaches English to the general public

- Successfully hosted several English classes.

PERSONAL
- Assisted the primary teacher in executing necessary tasks to operate

the class smoothly.

SUMMARY
- Helped with evaluating students and kept records of their

I am a hard-
performance to think of strategies that would engage them more in

working and an
class.
- Was in charge of leading class activities, like coming up with

aspiring individual

interactive games that would enhance the learning experience,..

who has a passion

for teaching and

PRIVATE TUTOR February 2020 - January 2021

educating people.
- Tutored from general English to IELTS
- Developed a teaching plan that suits individual students
- Reported to parental units of their performance
- Commited results to each of the students

EDUCATION October 2018 - November 2021

RMIT UNIVERSITY
Major: Professional Communication
IELTS 7.0 - 2018

ENGLISH SPEAKING PROJECTS:

Here are some projects that I did that demonstrated my Speaking

ability

DUOLINGO PROJECT - click here!

CONTACT RMIT RESEARCH SEMINAR PROJECT - click here!

Phone: 0799661485

E-mail: ENGLISH WRITING PROJECT:

huynhhuudai2000@gmail.

com Here are some projects that were praised by my lecturers for my

outstanding writing and research ability. (See attached file in

Website:

https://daihuynh3010.wixsit

mail)
e.com /my-site/projects

(cick here!)
 COMM2379 Mass Media in Asia
Lecturer: Dr. Davide Girardelli
Full Name: Huynh Huu Dai-s3748147
Group Number: 6
Assignment 2 – Research Report
Due date: August 10th 2019
Submission date: August 11th 2019
Word count: 1546
Cool Japan and the construction of Old Japan through
anime.

Introduction and Literature Review

Ying Fan (2006) coined that Nation Branding is an act of strategically distributing positive
information, and vision with great emotional qualities of one nation/country to the other, which
can be easily understood globally. This is applied by utilizing the country’s communication
system, from visible advertisement to less visible public relations to promote the country’s
investment, tourism and keeping a proper perspective about the country (Dinnie 2008)

Nation Branding has been the most ubiquitous and prominent in Asia, where it is perceived as
crucial for international and national development (Anholt 2008), and Japan is not an exception.
Japan’s nation branding was presented publicly through a project called “Cool Japan”, in which
the government started to prioritize the idea of “cultural diplomacy” and specifically incentivize
business of content industry to be the lead of Japanese economic development (Matsui 2014).

The growth of the content industry or “soft power” has promoted and enhanced the distribution
of popular Japanese culture, hence the massive recognition that Japan received (McGray 2002).
Specifically, anime has been used as a tool to distribute cultural perspectives, and one of the very
famous anime which contributed to the phenomenon of Cool Japan is Spirited Away. With that
said, the role of this essay is to discover themes in the movie that implicitly shows how the
construction of past Japan was presented through the use of textual analysis.

Matsui (2014) discusses how anime and other popular culture is a leading edge to a phenomenon
of “Cool Japan”. The author says that after the influence of the Americans started to deflate in
1970’s, Japan embarked upon a big step to re-discover itself by researching and understand its
consumer’s behavior to produce amazing local products, that eventually outshined the
American’s. Because of the massive popularity, the presence of cultural products like Pokemon,
Tamagachi, and especially the anime Spirited Away also saved Japan’s self-esteem when its
economy collapsed in the 90s. The Japanese creation of content caused its National Cool to
increase and make its dominant path into foreign countries.

The content of the anime is not just “pure and simple” like how the New York Times described
it; it’s a visual deliverance of Japanese culture and folk symbols. Hayao Miyazaki, the author of
the anime, plotted the setting to be “Japanese locale” which emphasizes the importance of
understanding Japanese identity through its traditions (Macwilliams 2008)

Research question: Which themes are used in Spirited Away to represent “Old Japan”?
 Methodology

Textual analysis is applied because it lets me comprehend language, pictures, and symbols
embedded in the text to gain knowledge about how people communicate and their experience
with life (Allen 2017). This methodology has been selected because it allows me to have an in-
depth understanding of how Old Japan is constructed in the anime.

The movie that I have considered for my analysis is Spirited away. It is an award-winning
animated movie (KYODO 2003) made by an anime artist Hayaowza Miyazaki. The movie has
made $289 million dollar from box tickets worldwide (Shephard 2017). It talks about a 10-year-
old girl named Chihiro and her parental units accidentally walked into a mysterious park, where
she encountered spiritual beings. After her parents turned into pigs, she met a boy named Haku,
who is trying to help her and telling her she had to work for a witch named Yubaba in order to
save herself and her parents.

Analysis

Figure 1 summarizes the themes that emerged in my research

 Themes in Spirited Away
that represent “Old
Japan”

Yubaba’s
Japan’s Courtesy
Bathhouse and
of Politeness
Onsen Bathing
Towards The
Culture
Elderly
Japanese
Spiritual Entities

Figure 1. Themes identified in Spirited Away that represent Old Japan

Yubaba’s Bathhouse and Onsen Bathing Culture

Hayao Miyazaki created and turned Yubaba’s bathhouse (Image 3) into one of the most iconic
places in the movie, which shows a bathing tradition called Onsen by starting of with the visual.
The overall look of the bathhouse resembles a traditional Japanese architect (Stringer & Phillips
2007). From outside, the construction resembles an old building which existed in the Meiji Era
(Image 2). From a Japanese style garden, paper sliding doors to miniature golden statues on the
roofs, and glowing lanterns. The interior also resembles such fashion by including red curtains,
and big bathtubs surrounded by wooden painted walls. Furthermore, workers are wearing
“Oriental” and traditional piece of clothing called “Miko”, which includes a piece of formal
garment on top called Kimono, and a baggy short for easy mobility around the bathhouse (Forest
of Japan n.d)
With a history of 2000 years old, hot spring baths not only has tremendous health benefits, like
disease prevention and promotion of welfare, they are also believed to possess a connection with
the spiritual world because they were used as a part of worship to the supernatural beings
(Serbulea & Payyappallimana 2012). Onsen is not simply washing one’s figure, it’s a process of
purification for debris and bad spiritual remnant (Merry 2013), like when “Kami” (Spiritual
gods), came to the bathhouse to clean and purify themselves with the help of Chihiro, and the
other workers after a day on earthy realm.

Image 2: A Mejia Era Bathhouse Image 3: Bathhouse in Spirited Away

Japanese Spiritual Entities

Miyazaki used non-existent presentation of Japanese supernatural beings to demonstrate the

relationship between the anime and “Old Japan”. The creation of the spirits and monsters in the
anime are from an indigenous religion from Japan called Shintoism (Boyd & Nishimura 2016).
A primitive religion that existed 1000 B.C.E ago, it comprises of folk beliefs called “Kami” or
“God”, moreover, practitioners of this religion believe that there’s a spiritual world living among
our reality, and the God spirits can habituate and live their lives in both living and non-living
things like animals, trees and rivers (URI n.d). What is believed to be the connection between the
two worlds of “Kami” and human is a bridge, the crossing resembles the leave of an earthly
world to a spiritual realm (Altman 2002), like the scared bridge (Figure 4) that Chihiro crossed
before she embarked on her journey in the spirit world.

Chihiro’s first experience encountering with the spirits happened when both of her parents
suddenly turned into pigs, then she started to see more spirits surrounding her. Almost all
“Kami” are considered as divine spirits or good spirits, in which they help human with farming
and fishing like the River Spirit, Haku, however, they can be hazardous and see human beings
like monsters (Hartman 2017). Yubaba, an evil witch that turned Chihiro’s parents into pigs and
Chihiro into a slave, is an example of a hostile “Kami”.

Japan’s Courtesy of Politeness Towards The Elderly

East Asia is prominent for its tradition of respecting the elderly (Sung 2001), in this case, is
Japan. Derived from religions like Buddhism and Confucian, Japan has the perception of aging
ingrained in its roots while explicitly stating that the more you age, the more you know
(Karasawa, Curhan, Markus, Kitayama, Love, Radler, Riff 2011). Through this, you can see the
importance of exerting politeness to the elderly and to people who are older than you is
considered immense in the Japanese tradition.

I will be applying Sung (2001) research about different kinds of respect in conjunction with
actions done by disparate characters in the movie, which Miyazaki has imbedded to express the
Japanese tradition of politeness to other people, particularly the elderly.

1. Linguistic respect: This kind of respect requires the usage of formal and appropriate words
or languages to talk to the elder. This polite action is shown in the movie when Haku said the
word “Watashi”, which means “I” to express his formality and respect to Yubaba and Zeniba,
two old witches and the other servants.

2. Salutatory Respect: This respect needs formal greeting to the people who are older than
you. It appeared when Chihiro bowed down to the other servants while saying “hai”, which
means “yes” when they gave her jobs to do. She also bowed down to a radish spirit to show her
sincere appreciation for his help.

3. Acquiescent Respect: An act of obedience is involved in this kind of respect. Chihiro

listened and did what Kamaji, an old and friendly spirit, and Lin, one of the servants, told her to
do without any resistance.

Conclusion
By creating a plot talking about a girl’s journey through a spiritual realm while using iconic and
prominent traditions, the effort of Hayao Miyazaki to promote his country’s national image to
the world through the themes that I have found are successful. Firstly, the importance of Onsen
to the Japanese Bathing Culture is addressed. Secondly, the promotion of Japanese spirituality
and its strong connection with its roots is highly stated, while saying that Japan is built upon its
tradition. Thirdly, a clear understanding of Japan’s culture of politeness towards the elderly and
other people is crucial to its own tradition. This movie has had a strong impact to Japan and
contributed to the “Cool Japan” phenomenon. Not only does it save its country’s image when it
encountered the economic crisis era, it spreads its history to the world, so people can have a
better acknowledgment and greater respect for it.
References:

Allen, M 2017, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, SAGE

Publications, Thousand Oaks, UNITED STATES,
<http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=4841518>.

Altman, N 2002, Sacred water: the spiritual source of life, Paulist Press, p. 97.

Anholt, S 2008. ‘Nation branding’ in Asia, p. 265-266.

Boyd, J.W & Nishimura, T 2016, ‘Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film" Spirited
Away"’, Journal of Religion & Film, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 4.

Dinnie, K 2008, ‘Japans nation branding: recent evolution and potential future paths’, Journal of
current Japanese affairs, vol. 16, no. 3, p. 56.

Fan, Y 2006, ‘Branding the nation: What is being branded?’, Journal of vacation marketing, vol.
12, no. 1, p. 5-6.

Forest of Japan n.d, ‘Identity’, Forest of Japan, viewed 1 August,

<https://forestofjapan.wordpress.com/identity/>.

Hartman, E 2017, ‘Tradition vs. Innovation and the Creatures in Spirited Away’, The Digital
Literature Review, vol. 4, p. 104.

Jiajia, Onsen, photograph, accessed August 2019, < https://japanbyjapan.com/discover/dogo-

onsen-main-building>.
Karasawa M, Curhan KB, Markus HR, Kitayama SS, Love GD, Radler BT, Ryff CD 2011,
‘Cultural perspectives on aging and well-being: A comparison of Japan and the United States,
The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 75-76.

KYODO 2003, 'Spirited Away' bags Academy Award, The Japan Times, 25 March, viewed 1
August 2019, <https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/03/25/national/spirited-away-bags-
academy-award/#.XU7Uqm8zbIU>.

McGray 2002 “Japan’s Gross National Cool”, in: Foreign Policy, May-June 2002, pp. 44-54.

Merry, A.M 2013, More than a bath: An examination of Japanese bathing culture, p. 13.

MacWilliams, M.W 2014, Japanese visual culture: Explorations in the world of manga and
anime. Routledge, p. 197.

Matsui, T 2014, ‘Nation branding through stigmatized popular culture: The" Cool Japan" craze
among central ministries in Japan’, Hitotsubashi journal of commerce and management, p. 81-
82.

Phillips, A & Stringer, J 2007, Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, p. 312.

Serbulea, M & Payyappallimana, U 2012, ‘Onsen (hot springs) in Japan—Transforming terrain

into healing landscapes’, Health & place, vol. 18, no. 6, p. 1371.

Shephard, J 2017, ‘Your Name beats Spirited Away to become highest-grossing anime ever’,
Independent, 17 January, viewed 1 August, <https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
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a7530876.html>.

Sung, K.T 2001, ‘Elder respect: Exploration of ideals and forms in East Asia’, Journal of aging
studies, vol. 15, no.1, p.14.

URI n.d, Shintoism, viewed 1 August 2019, < https://uri.org/kids/world-religions/shintoism>.

Wallpaperset, Spirited Away Background, accessed August 2019, <
https://wallpaperset.com/spirited-away-background>.