Princess Mononoke - 1997
From the "Princess Mononoke Planning Memo" April 19, 1995
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Project Plan
To depict the unchanging nature of humans by overlapping the turmoil of the Muromachi period - just as the medieval framework collapsed - with the upheavals of our era as we head into the twenty-first century.
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This is a vivid period action-adventure drama woven from two threads - a vertical thread of the struggle between humans and spirits of a beast god, and a horizontal thread of the meeting between a girl (raised by wolves, a fierce fighter who despise humans), and a boy (who has a death curse placed upon him). This meeting is the key to their liberation.
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Ashitaka is the isolated Emishi clan's last prince. After being cursed by a fallen god festering with hate, Ashitaka is exiled from his village. The curse in his arm gives him great strength, and will one day kill him.
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Seeking answers, the kind-hearted warrior journeys to industrialized Irontown on the edge of a great forest
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With him is his red elk, Yakul.
Yakul is gangster (see farthest right)
The trembling of the taut bow
Your heart gleams in the light of the moon
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The beauty of the keen-edged blade
Your profile like the tip of the sword
Those who know your true heart hidden
in your sadness and anger
Are only the small spirits of the forest
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Lady of Irontown, Eboshi is ruthlessly cold in her pursuit of power. She mines the forest of ore, ripping it apart while actively battling the forest's wolves, apes and boars. Irontown's men are soldiers and miners while the women work the bellows of Irontown's massive forge and craft weapons capable of killing gods.
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Despite her disdain for the forest, Lady Eboshi displays kindness to her people and to those she respects.
"In this film, samurais, lords and peasants who are customarily featured in period heavy dramas hardly make an appearance. Even when they do, they perform only in very minor supporting roles."
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These supporting roles include the samurai of a faction opposing the workers of Irontown, an emperor's lapdog, and the desperate forest gods.
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"The film depicts the relationship between nature and man as a very entangled interaction."
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Princess Mononoke is certainly the darkest endeavor by Miyazaki, and the color represented in the film is representative of the movie's maturity. Ashitaka travels between the shady Forest of the Gods and the industrialized Iron Town, whose kiln burns hot night long. The forest is, naturally, represented in the lively greens and dusky blues of the barcode, while Iron Town (and the surrounding ravaged forest) is shown in the browner scenes. There is much bloodshed and battle throughout the film, evident in the intermingling red. This almost unnatural mixing of progressively murkier greens and darker hues paints the story of an unnatural world plagued by hatred and greed.
Below is a "smoothed" version, in which the vertical pixels are averaged out.
"The young male protagonist is a descendant of the Emishi people who disappeared after being defeated in ancient times by the politically powerful Yamato people.
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And if we search for a likeness for the female lead, she is in appearance not unlike a clay figurine from the Jonon period (12,000 BCE - 300 BCE)" (bottom left)
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Ashitaka and San are both representative of the transition of time in Japan's history. Ashitaka is from a tribe that has, in reality, been wiped out to war, symbolizing the transitional period in Japan's history toward industrialization and centuries of war. San (also known as Princess Mononoke) represents the a time in Japan's ancient history when people had respect for the world around them.
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Disorder and fluidity were the norm in the world the Muromachi period (1336-1573) (below), the setting for this film. It was a time when present-day Japan was being formed out of social upheaval, when those below overcame those above from the days of social upheaval, when those below overcame those above... and the chaotic rise of new arts held sway."
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The setting Miyazaki describes here was a tumultuous period in Japan's history as its warring medieval states vied for the shogunate. However, the film purposely does not cover the samurai and nobles, instead struggling to represent the changing way of the world and the depletion of nature in his will that Princess Mononoke not be just another period drama.
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Several Japanese mythological creatures feature in this film, including Kodama (top left), a type of tree spirit similar to Greek Dryads; and the daidarabotchi (bottom right), an enormous spirit-giant.
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Miyazaki has also cited the story of Gilgamesh (top right) as an inspiration for Princess Mononoke. In this classic Mesopotamian Epic, Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to the Cedar Forest, realm of the gods, to slay the forest's guardian and achieve eternal life.
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