Chihiro steps through a dark tunnel, and into an unknown and abandoned world.
The bathhouse represents what becomes lost to time, in what is sacrificed to the up and down elements of life, in the parts of ourselves that have become “employed” to do our bidding, repressed or ignored, treated as creatures or monsters when stripped away of understanding and meaning.
Chihiro crosses a bridge into a new consciousness and reality. She embodies what it feels like to fully come into contact with our terror, and to be lost inside of something, where the maps of our lives don’t seem to make sense anymore. Chihiro’s forward movement through the vertical labyrinth of Spirited Away reflects the illumination of what feels dark and monstrous within ourselves.
Her terror is a driving force towards understanding, not something to be split-off or ignored, but rather what causes transformation in the bathhouse.
Chihiro accepts her feelings towards her situation. We see her freeze, hiding under covers at night, trembling in front of broken staircases and powerful and magical beings, yet she still sacrifices her name and puts on a uniform, understanding that she will find a way through. It’s accepting the terror that comes with losing what’s important, and the bigness of feeling that comes with recognizing our smallness.
Fear is not contained in the vertical situation for Chihiro, in the hierarchy and the roles of the bathhouse, but in the horizontal and personal task of rescuing what is known to be meaningful.
The possibility of losing what is valued and loved is constantly looming on the horizon, in parents as pigs, Haku’s injuries, in losing her name to a nightmarish world. The bathhouse places her in the vertical world of life and death, and in the possibilities of being reduced from a human being to a mere worker and nuisance.
Chihiro’s survival of her terror is illumination that becomes outward facing. We see it develop in the slowing of her stride, calm expression, and improvised solutions. She’s in that flow state we find ourselves in when things just click, and when we feel we’ve survived the insurmountable.
From the sense of smallness that comes with feeling disturbed and isolated, a conscious awareness develops. It’s the courageous aspect through admitting we feel lost or scared, against the backdrop of something we feel is home within ourselves.
No-Face is the shadow side of courage, where smallness is a confirmation of non-existence, rather than a confirmation of being alive.
No-Face haunts. We see him lurking on the bridge and outside of windows. He’s that element within us that unconsciously aims to self-sabotage our own forward movement, plodding and scheming in the face of our anxieties.
When Chihiro frees the river spirit from its confinement, she receives a treasure in the bitter dumpling. Pieces of gold rain onto the bathhouse floor, which workers greedily scoop up. We see the value not in the gold itself, but in the gold of the moment. She reaches deep into what’s neglected to find the gold and the spirit of the situation. She reflects that capacity in ourselves to find what is beyond fear, and to “get to the heart” of things.
In contrast, No-Face creates gold out of nothing. There is nothing “real” in his gold, there is no gold in what he does or what he sets out to do. It’s a cheap imitation of Chihiro’s act.
No-Face embodies what we understand to be shameful in cutting corners, or creating something with no real weight to it. It’s the shamelessness that comes with treating relationships as a means to an end, and the element of ourselves that feels a need to give away ourselves.
It’s what it feels like to put up a front with others when we feel our emptiness is something monstrous and unacceptable, when we feel the bottomlessness of our desires consume us, rather than guide us towards meaning.
Against Chihiro’s desire to move through her journey is No-Face’s desire to overtake it. Where Chihiro accepts the reality of her situation and understands what she must move through, No-Face attempts to devour it all.
She gives him a taste of his own medicine, giving him half of the dumpling from the river spirit, her “gold.” Her horizontal effort and the rewarding medicine bring him back down into his smallness.
Chihiro accepts what is uncontrollable, yet a growing shadow reflects the growing stakes. Smallness is inherent to both Chihiro and No-Face, but one inflates where the other cuts through. No-Face has to get more to be more. He has no horizontal orientation and no horizontal movement. He is the thing in us that threatens to undermine when we see the actual scale of what has to be moved through, on the path towards what is meaningful.
Chihiro carries the envy we have for people who seem to assert their will, who bring something “new” into the traditional and the established, who express the more “taboo” elements of being sincere and naive to the ways of the world.
She reflects the envy we have for those who have drive, in the horizontal movement we give up in losing personal identity. The train to the Sixth Station embodies that loss of the horizontal aspect of life, where faceless passengers remain on a passage towards nothing on the horizon. It is the emptiness of feeling that comes with having “no face” in life.
Reflected in No-Face are what we disown in feeling small, lowly, or uninteresting. Chihiro reflects a smallness that we often want to overpower, rather than accept within ourselves and in others. No-Face is a reflection of envy gone deeply underground, where a “selfless” existence masks a passive-aggressive rage.
It’s the envy that results from seeing the “gold” that comes out of others’ actions, when we resent our sense of smallness and envy the acceptance and ease with which others live theirs. Chihiro represents the value of owning our smallness, where No-Face reflects the shadow of our denial.
Where No-Face is regrounded and brought back into smallness, Haku is brought back into earthly form. In Haku’s dragon is the archaic, something that exists on an instinctual level. Where Haku’s human form is guiding, wise, and grounding, his dragon contains the aspects of ourselves that feel primal and untameable, of what feels difficult to put into words.
With Haku, Spirited Away becomes brutal. Haku represents the shadow side of our stoic efforts, where the hidden damage we carry becomes our residue.
Haku is treated as a looming question. Good or bad, human or monster, he’s the ambiguity we have to develop to keep our own potentials for damage employed, serviceable, and out of sight.
He appears to have good intentions, but we’re never certain. His ambiguous intent shows the value of “playing your cards right,” never fully relenting to the vertical elements of the bathhouse, but also sacrificing his forward movement in maintaining his neutrality. It’s what it takes to exist in a world of hierarchies, while still keeping your fingers crossed.
Chihiro’s potential loss of self is something that Haku immediately recognizes. Where others are quick to label and other Chihiro, he recognizes what is worth protecting in her. He immediately commits to her forward element.
When Haku is monstrous, bloodied, and near death, Chihiro embraces him. Chihiro is able to tolerate her ambiguity, and see Haku as an individual regardless of his form. She reaches into his mouth to feed him the other half of the dumpling, the “gold.” Haku writhes violently. It’s the “bitter pill to swallow” in remembering your smallness.
Chihiro recounts the fragment of a memory to Haku, one from long before the events of this story, of when she nearly drowned and he saved her. This causes him to remember his name, which releases him from his split and reintegrates him into his original spirit form.
It is revealed that Haku is a river spirit. His dragon is the containment of the natural, forward movement of life, repressed into a serviceable role.
When Chihiro first crosses the bridge into the bathhouse and begins to disappear, Haku shows up at just the right moment. It was Chihiro’s terror, “drowning” in this new reality, that brings them together again.
He’s part of a thread that’s run through Chihiro’s life, which she remembers through fragments and flashbacks. They’re indicative of something important to Chihiro that was significant but hardly remembered, yet still lives deeply in her.
Chihiro returns to a mirror of the original situation she began in: leaving behind an entire world she has become accustomed to, and finding herself in the back seat of her life. Chihiro is left with just the thread of a single hair tie, the entirety of her experience reflected within its smallness.