Chihiro’s adventure begins when her parents, unable to control their appetite and coveting food that doesn’t belong to them, turn into pigs, and darkness falls over an abandoned theme park. Hayao Miyazaki’s beautiful and colorful animation is meaningful from the start. It is as if it is saying that a child with parents captured by greed is left defenseless in the world of spirits.
Separated from her parents, Chihiro meets a boy her age named Haku and enters a bathhouse. It can be understood through various symbols that this bathhouse actually represents a brothel or a place of prostitution. Although the guests are depicted as various forms of yokai (monsters) and the employees are drawn as cute characters like frogs and fish, giving it a fairytale-like feel, it is ultimately a place where guests eat food and receive bathing services from women in kimonos with exposed cleavages. The bizarre scenery inside the rooms seen through the doors that appear briefly also gives the same implication.
Chihiro, who has come to work in the brothel, faces a moment of choice. It is a test by No-Face (Kaonashi), a faceless spirit who has mingled among the guests. When Chihiro needs bath tokens, No-Face tempts her by offering various hard-to-obtain tokens. At first glance, he seems like a very kind guest. However, Chihiro shakes her head, saying that she doesn’t need this many, refusing No-Face’s gift(?). Disappointed by Chihiro’s refusal, No-Face tempts a frog employee by offering gold that everyone likes, and the frog greedily accepts the gold offered by No-Face. Then, No-Face devours the frog who did not refuse the “free gold.” Other employees of the brothel also cannot control their greed in front of No-Face’s gold, and eventually, several of them are eaten. It is as if they themselves were eaten by the greed that had coiled deep within their hearts.
Perhaps No-Face, who doesn’t even have a face, can be said to be a more frightening being than any horned Satan or devil. He knows what the other person wants and accurately uses that greed against them to cruelly fill his belly. No-Face, who is powerful, rich, and even uses magic, is a “generous guest,” a “benefactor,” and a “capable person” until they realize they have been taken advantage of. The sight of all the employees of the brothel praising No-Face and prostrating themselves to beg for No-Face’s grace before seeing people being eaten resembles the “prosperity gospel” of large churches today. (Churches should pray to have greed removed, not to have their desires fulfilled.)
However, even No-Face, that terrifying final boss of Satan, is powerless before Chihiro. This is because Chihiro knows how to refuse tokens or gold nuggets that she doesn’t necessarily need. Even while working under the witch Yubaba, the owner of the brothel, because she had no choice to save her parents, she did her best and focused only on her “love” for her parents and for Haku. Standing before Chihiro, a pure person who cannot be tempted in that way, No-Face keeps shrinking and eventually becomes a harmless being similar to a pet dog. Miyazaki accurately points out the identity and weakness of Satan or the devil, beings that we inevitably encounter in life. (Perhaps No-Face is a being living in all of our hearts. That’s why he may be faceless.)
Eventually, Chihiro overcomes No-Face’s test and wins the hearts of all the characters with the “power of love” and a “heart without greed,” and with their help, she saves her parents. “Spirited Away” holds the secret of the world that even Satan cannot harm a possessor of a pure heart who touches the conscience of all of God’s creations, including yokai, witches, and the prostitutes and employees of the brothel, and therefore, even parents who have become pigs due to greed can be saved. And the revealed identity of Satan, “No-Face.” It is a work that cannot but be loved.
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