Daughter of Kami: Shinto and Christian themes in 'Nausica of the Valley of the Wind'

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Daughter of Kami:

Shinto and Christian themes

in Hayao Miyazaki’s

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Introduction

Religion has affected art for centuries, because human responses to art and religion involve similar processes: imagination and emotional involvement (Beit-Hallami, 1983). It seems natural for religion to continue its influence on popular culture, especially film, because of its wide reach. However, looking at Japan, is it possible for a “non-Japanese” religion like Christianity to exert influence its popular culture, and to what extent?

To answer this question, we look at the 1984 animated film of Hayao Miyazaki, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa). Nausicaä is said to be the quintessential Miyazaki film (Osmond, 1998) and it earned 740 million yen, with almost a million viewers. It owes its popularity to the incorporation of universal themes like religion, the environment and industrialisation. It contains so many themes, both Japanese (feudalism, Shinto) and non-Japanese (Greek Mythology, Christianity, European medievalism). It is interesting to note that Miyazaki is often described as a humanist, following no particular religion, yet Nausicaä contains an almost equal amount of references to Shinto and Christianity in the film.

There are many English versions of the various terms and names of the characters in the film, partly because there is a more complex manga of the same name. For ease of reference to the film, I use names and terms as they appear in the English-dubbed version of Nausicaä released in 2005, to convey the Shinto and Christian elements found in the film, looking at broad themes as well as symbols.

Film synopsis

The story in Nausicaä takes place a thousand years after a global war, the "Seven Days of Fire.” Great Warriors, biological weapons with nuclear capabilities, destroyed everything. However, enclaves of surviving human colonies exist throughout the Fukai, or the Sea of Decay. The Fukai is a new ecosystem consisting of a vast toxic forest of giant fungi and giant insects with the Ohmu as guardians. The main protagonist is Princess Nausicaä, daughter of the ruler of the Valley, a feudal community protected from toxic spores by strong sea winds. She is a nature-loving pacifist with a gift for communicating with insects and animals. Lord Yupa, a wandering mentor, inspires her to find a way to stop the spread of the Fukai. Nausicaä often explores the Fukai to obtain plant samples and cultivate them in her secret room.

One day, an airship carrying a Great Warrior embryo crashes into the Valley. This embryo was first unearthed by the Pejites, but it was stolen by the imperialistic Tolmekians. These two states intend to use the Great Warrior to destroy the Fukai and the insects. In the struggle for the Great Warrior, Tolmekia invades the Valley. The Fukai and the insects are assaulted in this struggle, and the Ohmu are baited to the Valley to destroy it. Nausicaä sacrifices herself before the Ohmu, thereby calming their rage. They bring her back to life and heal her wounds, and then return to the Fukai, leaving life to return to normal in the Valley.

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Now we will look at two religions that are referred to extensively in the film: Shinto and Christianity.

Shinto

Traditional Japanese religiosity is a mixture of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and folk religions. “Shinto”, meaning “the way of the kami”, refers to the ancient native Japanese religious practices and sentiments. Shinto has four general tenets: worshipping and honouring the kami; love of nature; tradition and the family; and cleanliness (Picken, 1994, as cited in Wright, 2004). Muraoka Tsunetsugu (1964) distinguishes philosophical and ethical distinctive characteristics of Shinto: 1) accepting life and death, good and evil, as inevitable parts of ...

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