POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND BUILT

ENVIRONMENT

GWENETH E. ENCELA
BS- ARCHITECTURE 2-2

How can the themes in Hayao Miyazaki’s film relate to real world scenarios in the
contemporary times?

Princess Mononoke, being a studio Ghibli film, has executed real-world scenarios in the
form of animation under the fantasy genre. One of the common themes found in films created by
Studio Ghibli is environmentalism, but in Princess Mononoke, this is combined with the concept
of human’s tendency to acquire their needs and wants from nature beyond what is necessary.
Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke showed this through the overall concept of the film and
gave emphasis to this through the traits of the main characters San, Ashitaka, and Lady Eboshi.

The film, which was released in 1997, continues to be relevant today due to its recurring
themes such as human greed which led to the wreckage of the communities mentioned in the
fictional world of Princess Mononoke. While it is still debated whether humans are innately selfish
and greedy, these traits happen to manifest in the past and even in the contemporary period the
same way that greed has ruined the environment in Miyazaki’s movie. The film also perfectly
showed how civilizations can rise and fall due to competition in power, natural resources, and
territory as seen from the events that unfolded in the movie, such as the destruction of the Emishi
village and Eboshi’s quest to seek wealth at the expense of nature.

If contextualized in the current state of society, Eboshi embodies the wealthy people who
are willing to destruct the environment for selfish means masked by globalization. While Eboshi’s
actions in the movie are well-intentioned since she wants to improve the iron town, she is fueled
by selfishness for the most part. She has been warned of the forest’s total destruction if she cut the
head of the spirit off and she still went for the kill just to repay her deal to Jigo, which in return
has jeopardized not only the forest but the very town that she takes pride in. The same could be
said for the capitalists today. Lady Eboshi made it clear in the film that she cared for her
constituents who keep the iron town running. She has the vision for the iron town and if put into
the context of the film which was set in the 14th century, Lady Eboshi’s ideas can be considered
as revolutionary. By taking in lepers and women to run the town, she also reflects the feminists in
the modern times who continue to fight for equality. Lady Eboshi’s workers, regardless of gender
and bodily state, perform strenuous and long hours of ironworks. In the context of the film, this is
understandable. Lady Eboshi can even be lauded for pulling the women out of brothels and giving
them a less harmful line of work compared to prostitution. However, the work environment of the
laborers in the said town can also be compared to the professional workplace system in the modern
times. Employees in real life, most especially blue collar workers, work day in and night out—
while still being undercompensated, and only the bosses get to be wealthy while the overall status
of those in the lower part of the hierarchy remain to be stagnant or they even get poorer.

Princess Mononoke also mirrored how greed and conflicts can lead to the destruction of
environment. Greed, in the form of the powerful people’s quest to heighten their wealth and
societal status, and conflicts in the form of nuclear wars.

Even in today’s time, when communication has already been made easily accessible by
technology, and the society is at its most civilized than it has ever been, conflicts continue to occur
between nations. Similar to the film, these conflicts are commonly triggered by selfish motives—
such as expansion of territories and exploitation of natural resources (i.e. Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine and ‘joint’ oil exploration of China and Philippines in the West Philippine Sea). In this
day and age where diplomacy can be easily practiced with the help of globalization, strife continue
to flourish because nation leaders refuse to really listen to one another, unlike in the denoument
part of Princess Mononoke. In the film, it did take bloodshed before the characters finally
understood each other. In real life, one can only hope that the lives that were lost from the previous
wars would somehow be enough for people to consider stop engaging in wars in the contemporary
world—that the men who lead the countries would actually just settle down in one office and
discuss these conflicts properly.

But of course, this is just wishful thinking… Because even in a world as fictional as the
settings in Princess Mononoke, it took the characters one big catastrophe to realize that they all
have the same goals; the betterment of their communities. Only then did the war stop in the film,
and one could only hope in the real-world that the people in power will resolve global conflicts
like the humans they are, without waiting for disasters to hit.