Miyazaki, Mediators, and the Messiah, Mirroring the Master: Messianic Traits of Nausicaä and Ashitaka in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997)
Paul Haymon
Film 151.003: Hayao Miyazaki
Professor Alexander Cohen
This paper includes clips from Hayao Miyazaki's films Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997).
Used by permission.
If art is meant to communicate an idea from artist to audience, then all artists must come to terms with the question of how to properly utilize one’s chosen medium to communicate one’s intended message. (ref)
Animation director Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most well-known and respected artists in that regard. Animation, because it is such a powerful medium, requires a requisite amount of skill to wield properly. Concerning that fact, Miyazaki stated,
Those who join in the work of animation are people who dream more than others and who wish to convey these dreams to others. After a while they realize how incredibly difficult it is to entertain others. Anyone who has tried to describe the wonderful or bittersweet qualities of his dreams should be able to understand how hard this is. And, because it requires group effort to create a film, animation is further complicated. (ref)
Judging by the critical acclaim surrounding his films, it evident that Miyazaki has mastered his medium; if not, his films would be regarded as technically poor, ideologically lacking, or both. Therefore, he understands how to use animation and film techniques to communicate his viewpoints, including character development.
Regarding the importance of creating believable characters, Miyazaki stated, "What's really important, I think, is to have fully fleshed out characters, characters who are life-affirming and have clear hopes and goals."(ref)
I would like to interrogate one aspect of Miyazaki’s character development, arguing, perhaps controversially, that Miyazaki owes a great deal to what I will call “messianic traits.” Messianic traits, as I define them, are heroic characteristics that are found in the protagonists of ancient heroic tales and accounts, especially that of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Although I do not think Miyazaki necessarily intended to base his characters on the model of Christ, the degree to which Jesus and Miyazaki’s protagonists share these messianic characteristics is, in my opinion, rather striking.
As case studies, I will use the character of Nausicaä, the eponymous protagonist of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Ashitaka, the protagonist of Princess Mononoke (1997). This particular choice of characters has two rationales. For one thing, it shows that although Miyazaki matured quite a bit between 1984 and 1997 as a director, he nonetheless continued to rely on messianic traits. The other rationale is that the thematic elements of these films are very similar, both dealing with a critique of humans’ relationship to nature, which should facilitate more straightforward analysis. First, though, I will attempt to set a foundation for the following discussion, since the idea of messianic traits is not necessarily a self-evident element of Miyazaki’s films—indeed, it is one Miyazaki denies to some extent.
Miyazaki came up with the character of Nausicaä very early in his career; in fact, he originally invented her while he was still drawing manga. He based her on the character by the same name in The Odyssey, melding her with his interpretation of “The Princess Who Loved Insects,” a Japanese short story. (ref) Thus, while Miyazaki acknowledges a connection between Nausicaä and legend, he does not acknowledge a connection to Christian themes here. However, many see connections between Nausicaä and Christ, including Susan Napier, who mentions the messianic themes of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in her book on anime (Napier, Anime, 2005). In an interview, Miyazaki responded to the idea that Nausicaä is meant to be a Christlike or Christian figure:
I didn’t intend to make her [Nausicaä] a Joan of Arc and I wanted to get rid of any religious undertone. But in the end it became a religious picture with that [final] scene. I really wavered. What I thought I could draw in a more physical style perhaps turned out to look more religious. (ref)
While Miyazaki did not intend to make Nausicaä a “Joan of Arc” or a Christ-like figure, he in fact created a savior archetype in the form of Nausicaä. In Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki reused elements of Nausicaä’s character in the character of Ashitaka, while complicating and disguising them somewhat for the purposes of that particular story. Whether Miyazaki consciously intended to make his characters saviors or not, Nausicaä and Ashitaka nonetheless each bear a striking resemblance to Jesus Christ.
One remark by Miyazaki, however, might be taken to suggest the contrary, but I would argue that it is not what it first appears. On choosing not to punish the humans at the end of Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki stated,
That was my plan at the start, but finally I felt that this way of thinking was definitely a sign of the part of me that hates people; that it’s okay if the people you don’t like don’t exist. Now especially, I think we are getting deeper into that situation, so I thought we have to get rid of this idea that comes from this part of us that thinks that people rather than God can punish mistakes. (ref)
However, in Princess Mononoke, the closest we get to a concept like the Biblical God punishing humans for their mistakes comes when the Deer God, robbed of its head, scours the landscape in search of it, killing any living things its oozing body comes in contact with:
However, rather than being portrayed as a purposeful act by the Deer God to deal out just retribution to the humans that offended it, the Deer God does not seem to have much control over this destruction. One contrast to an apparently similar action by the Biblical God is the Flood, which God used to wipe out humanity but ensured the safety of Noah and his family until that destruction had ended. By contrast, the Deer God does not seem to be able to restrain its own destructive assault on humanity.
Now that a suitable foundation has been laid, the first messianic trait I would like to discuss is self-sacrifice for the sake of others. To the contrary, Miyazaki has stated that
Nausicaä acted for her own sake, not for the sakes of those in the Valley of the Wind, but because she could endure no more. Rather than considering the risk to her own life, Nausicaä felt that unless she returned the baby ohmu to the pack, the hole in her heart would never be filled. (ref)
Based on a close reading of the relationship of the ohmu to the film as a whole, I would question Miyazaki’s assertion that Nausicaä’s act here was selfish rather than selfless. The ohmu, the guardians of the Sea of Decay, are representatives of the wrath of nature. They appear, enraged, whenever it is necessary to defend nature from human interference, and until they attain their goal of retribution, they cannot be easily pacified, except by Nausicaä. Thus, if we read the ohmu as the representatives of nature’s wrath, the parallel between Christ and Nausicaä becomes clear.
On the cross, Christ Jesus paid the penalty for sins committed by others, although He Himself was sinless, taking on the wrath of God against sin. He absorbed that wrath, and it killed Him. (ref)
Similarly, Nausicaä dies as a result of the wrath of nature, embodied in the ohmu. Although Nausicaä herself is not responsible for the devastation of nature perpetrated by others, she pays for the evils perpetrated by Kushana and the other characters through her suffering and death. In saving the people from being overrun by the representatives of the wrath of the forest, the ohmu, Nausicaä is slain by those wrath-bearers:
Nausicaä’s sacrifice is all the more shocking because she had previously enjoyed such a fellowship with nature, including an uncanny ability to pacify the ohmu. This is paralleled in the life and death of Christ: When Jesus became sin for us, His Father abandoned Him on the cross for the first and only time ever, and “Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (ref)
Jesus, generally calm and in command of the situations He encountered, even in the trial and humiliation preceding His crucifixion, here was abandoned by His Father and, to onlookers, must have seemed to be acting out of character, though the pain and grief He experienced in that period of time was greater than I can imagine.
Miyazaki ostensibly subverts the Christian model of a pure savior sacrificing him/herself for others with Ashitaka, who sacrifices himself for San. The reason is that the curse, although it is destructive and evil, gives him the strength to help San. Ashitaka, empowered by the curse, has the strength to take a fatal wound through his body and still push the city gate open, rescuing San from Lady Eboshi:
However, I would question the degree to which we read Ashitaka’s actions as unlike Christ’s.
The idea of a curse is not unique to Princess Mononoke; in fact, in a sense, Jesus became a curse for us on the cross, so that we could be freed of it. (ref)
Pastor John Piper explains it this way: “The heart of the gospel is that Christ, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God…So when he experienced the curse of the law on the cross it was not his own but ours.” (ref)
Although Miyazaki temporally splits up Ashitaka’s initial cursing and his death, Ashitaka in fact takes on the curse for the sake of others in an effort to prevent others from being harmed by the rampaging demon-afflicted boar god. Ashitaka knows of the consequences that will likely befall him; as a reminder of this, Ashitaka’s companion exhorts him, “Ashitaka! Don’t touch it! Its curse will be on you!”
Ashitaka refuses to be selfish, however, and sacrifices himself for the endangered villagers, although he knows how much it will cost him. Thus, Ashitaka and Christ both were pure until afflicted by a curse for the sake of others, and it was due to that curse that they both eventually died.
Another interesting connection between Ashitaka and Christ in regard to their affliction for the sake of others is Ashitaka’s expulsion from the village as a result of the curse. The Scripture states, “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” (ref)
In His death, Jesus was crucified outside the city of Jerusalem, in a place called Golgotha. But symbolically, He also suffered outside of the presence of God, for His Father forsook Him on the cross when He became sin for us. This expulsion and the accompanying dishonor is what Christians bearing the name of Christ Jesus are called to emulate in this Scripture. This is very similar to the expulsion from the community Ashitaka endured. Resurrection is the next messianic characteristic I will examine in detail. While it is apparent that Christ, Ashitaka, and Nausicaä all died and were resurrected by supernatural means, it is more interesting to investigate the effect of their respective resurrections, since they are strikingly similar despite Miyazaki’s attempts to differentiate them. Essentially, all three resurrections are validations of identity.
Ashitaka’s resurrection by the Deer God enables San to trust Ashitaka more deeply. San remarks, “The Deer God brought you back to life, so I’ll help you.”
In a touching if strange scene, San proves that devotion by feeding Ashitaka by chewing his food for him, who is unable to chew on his own because of a lack of strength.
Similarly, Jesus’ resurrection was a validation of His identity by His Father that He is indeed the Christ, the Son of God. This also causes believers in Him to have a strong reason to trust Him, because we believe that God will raise us as well. The Apostle Paul wrote, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (ref)
In Nausicaä’s case, her validation of identity is closely tied to the prophecies surrounding her. It is her identity as the heralded savior that is in question, and it is that identity that is proven upon her resurrection. As already stated, God the Father validated Christ Jesus as His Son (and thus validated His mission of salvation) by raising Him from the dead. Miyazaki expressed regret but a certain inevitability to the similarity between Christ and Nausicaä:
[W]hen Nausicaä is held up by the ohmu and bathed in a golden color by the morning light, it becomes a religious painting! ... Mitsuki Nakamura-san and I said to each other, "We've got a problem." I’ve been wondering all along if we couldn’t have dealt with it some other way. (ref)
Apparently, the decision was to some extent out of Miyazaki’s hands. However, in addition to the “golden color” used by Miyazaki as a coloristic motif connecting Nausicaä to her memories and nature, another connection is the fulfillment of prophecy.
In fact, there is a connection between a fulfillment of prophecy or a sense of destiny in each of these cases. In the case of Jesus Christ, the Old Testament prophesies of His coming, His actions, and His characteristics, which He fulfilled at His first coming. The Book of Revelation and parts of the Old Testament tell of His future acts. Particularly relevant to our discussion here is the prophecy regarding His salvific acts—that is, the Messiah would be the Savior of His people. While this was too narrowly interpreted in the time of Jesus’ coming as a political salvation from the Romans for the Jews, the fact turned out to be much broader and wonderful, if confounding to the Jews of the time: Christ came to save Jews and Gentiles alike, not politically but from their sins and the wrath of God. Since the Jews were expecting this political savior, they did not recognize Jesus when He actually showed up in much humbler circumstances than they thought the Messiah would come through. This is in spite of Old Testament prophecies explicitly stating the humble circumstances the Christ would come in. The Apostle John wrote of this lack of recognition on the part of the Jews but the subsequent opportunity afforded to Gentiles:
He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (ref)
Thus, when Christ came, He appeared differently than people expected, and while the prophecies regarding Him were fulfilled, the exact nature of those fulfillments was likewise unexpected.
In Nausicaä, Miyazaki similarly handles the ignorance of those who “know” the prophecies regarding Nausicaä, subverting what they think they know and what actually happens. However, Miyazaki condenses these people into a single person, Obaba. The first assumption Obaba holds is that the savior will be male. As Napier points out, Nausicaä, a female, turns out to be the promised savior of the Valley of the Wind. Similarly, the “field of gold” turns out to be the tendrils of Ohmu. Even the blue garment which Nausicaä is clad in is made so by Ohmu blood rather than the original dye of the fabric. The prophecies turn out to be true, but do not happen in ways that Obaba and the Valley of the Wind dwellers quite expect. Miyazaki handles Obaba’s realization that Nausicaä is the savior of her people in a filmically beautiful way. He uses a shot of Nausicaä walking across the golden fields created by the Ohmu, and then cuts to a close-up of Obaba, who remembers the prophecy. Then, Obaba, who is blind, has a vision of her (previous) conception of the coming savior, against a golden field. The three shots are linked by the swell of triumphant music. This is basically a match cut, punctuated by the insertion of Obaba’s face for emphasis.
In contrast to the clear statement Miyazaki employs in Nausicaä, Miyazaki handles Ashitaka’s identity-fulfillment differently. Rather than explicitly stating that Ashitaka is a warrior of legend, destined to save, Miyazaki implies it through sequences that might not be quite as riveting but are nonetheless indicators of the larger world of the film and destiny of Ashitaka. Jigo says, "You remind me of the old tales. A brave people, far to the east, who used stone arrowheads and rode red elk… the Emishi."
Ashitaka does not affirm the implication that he is a descendant of some sort of royal line or something similar, although he is in fact a prince, but he does prove his superiority throughout the course of the film by his heroic actions and centrality to the course of history in the film. While Ashitaka’s destiny is not foreshadowed as much as Christ and Nausicaä’s respective destinies, it nonetheless turns out to be a salvific one.
Destiny in itself is not exactly a messianic trait, but when combined with a certain disposition, an attitude toward life, it is. I suppose this disposition can be described as a confident awareness and acceptance of one’s destiny. It is another messianic trait shared by Christ, Nausicaä, and Ashitaka. Throughout the accounts given in Scripture of Jesus’ life, Jesus describes His actions as ultimately governed by His Father, God, and destined for Him to accomplish, as though they had already occurred. For example, Jesus confidently stated to the Jews who demanded a sign from Him,
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (ref)
The Gospel accounts are filled with these sorts of statements, reminding the reader of Jesus’ destiny and His awareness of it and willingness to adhere to it.
Similarly, Nausicaä is rarely perturbed or distracted. She maintains her confident attitude toward life, guided by a strong sense of purpose. She even maintains this disposition while being shot at:
As has been pointed out in lecture, there is only one moment during which Nausicaä’s cool is broken, when her father is murdered. With reckless and frightening ferocity, Nausicaä slaughters a group of soldiers and is only stopped from continuing her assault by Yupa’s intervention:
This incident is reminiscent of Jesus driving out those who sold animals and money changers in the temple, angered by the people’s disrespect of His Father’s house. (ref)
Ashitaka, like Nausicaä and Christ, has a very confident, secure attitude, which is rarely broken. When Lady Eboshi, flanked by Gonza, confronts Ashitaka and asks why he has come, he answers that he wants to "see with eyes unclouded."
This is very similar to Jesus’ calm speech in the face of mobs attempting to kill Him, even at the trial preceding His death. (ref)
To move on to the extent and effectiveness of the salvation enacted by these messiahs, Jesus accomplished eternal salvation for all who believe in Him, by means of taking on the sins of others and suffering the wrath executed on Him by His Father. Even on earth, prior to His ultimate salvific act, Jesus forgave the sins of others. Now having ascended to the right hand of His Father, He is able to save all who call upon Him.
With Jesus’ redemptive act as a model, we can see how much Miyazaki attempts to subvert it in Ashitaka’s salvation of the village. While the people are ostensibly saved from being killed by the self-destructive Night-Walker when Ashitaka and San give it back the Deer God’s head, the salvation is unsettling and does not seem quite complete. For one thing, the Night-Walker/Deer God dies. For another, Ashitaka’s curse remains, albeit in scar form. For a third, only a remnant of the people are in fact saved—many of the townsfolk have perished. While this might seem an irreversibly antithetical subversion of the messianic trait of accomplishing salvation which I have heretofore argued in favor of, it is actually not so different from what Jesus did.
In regard to the curse, it is true that it remains, but not in a deadly form. Rather than being a curse unto death, as it previously was, it becomes merely a scar, a reminder to Ashitaka of his sacrifice. This is not unlike the nail scars and spear wound in Jesus’ hands and side, which He showed to His apostles after His resurrection. Blood does not ooze from those wounds any longer, but Jesus retains them as a reminder (to us, I think) of His payment for sin.
In regard to only a remnant of the townsfolk being saved, it is a topic of contention among theologians as to how many people Jesus saved with His death. Universalists hold that Jesus died for all and that all will therefore be, eventually, saved, while non-Universalists believe that Jesus died for a smaller subset of humanity, not every single person.
Thus, the fact that Ashitaka was unable to save the whole of the village is not necessarily indicative of a failure as a messiah.
The death of the Night-Walker/Deer God is admittedly a confusing element of the story of Princess Mononoke, one which is difficult to explain in its own right. Ambiguity surrounds that strange event, but there are two clues that suggest that it may not be a truly final death and therefore not incompatible with an effective salvation by Ashitaka. For one, the Deer God’s death is accompanied by a wave of healing which resurrects the landscape, heals the leprous villagers, and restores a level of order (though an incomplete one). Were the Deer God’s death meant to be received as a purely catastrophic event and a failure on Ashitaka’s part as a savior, it would likely not have been accompanied by rebirth. Rather, the film could very well have ended with a deadly explosion, a la many Hollywood films. But the other clue is Ashitaka’s own statement, offered as a rebuttal to San saying that the Deer God had died: “The Deer God can’t die. He is life itself. Life and death are his to give and take. He’s telling us we should live.”
Here, Ashitaka suggests that the Deer God is alive and still retains agency, albeit perhaps in some other form. One might argue that the Deer God, rather than dying, has actually transcended his previous physical forms into a purely spiritual form. At any rate, the death of the Deer God is not conclusively a failure of Ashitaka to save, because the consequences are not posited as very dire. Rather than destruction, Miyazaki emphasizes that the world will merely be different—in fact, it may be better. San states, “Even if they [the forest trees] grow back, they won’t be the Deer God’s woods.” This is apparently a pained statement on her part.
Yet, one benefit is that Lady Eboshi has had a change of heart due to Ashitaka’s selfless actions. She states, “Someone bring Ashitaka. I want to thank him. We’ll start over again. We’ll build a good village.”
This shift in Eboshi’s attitude is due to Ashitaka’s actions and includes the death of the Deer God, without which Eboshi would still be pursuing the death of the Deer God. So while the death of the Deer God seems tragic at first, it is really the beginning of a new life, which could not have taken place without Ashitaka’s actions.
Nausicaä is an effective savior because she actually saves two groups by her deeds: Humanity and the animal world. She reconciles the two together by the sacrifice of herself. The similarities between Nausicaä and Christ Jesus are pretty apparent and I will not dwell much on them here. I will, however, point out that while the death of Jesus is often interpreted as one-sided, reconciling humans to God, it is more widespread than that. Ephesians describes Christ’s death as part of God’s plan “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (ref)
There is a sense here of a cosmically critical salvation that concerns more than humans’ relationship to God, but concerns everything else that has been created as well. According to Romans, “we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” (ref)
In these Scriptures, it stands to reason that Jesus Christ’s death for men is at the center of a larger plan of God to transform the entire universe. Similarly, Nausicaä intervening in the conflict between humans and the ohmu has implications for the entire world, since she prevents catastrophe.
My goal in writing this paper has been to point out the similarities between Miyazaki’s protagonists and the Messiah, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Admittedly, the comparison has been an uphill battle. I hope, however, that I have shown that the archetypal, all-encompassing quality of Jesus Christ, even when it comes to a non-Christian director making animated films about humans’ relationships to the environment, cannot be ignored. What is interesting about Miyazaki’s films, and films in general, is how often they include Christian elements, although they are not Christian films. It really shows, I think, the wide applicability and the all-encompassing nature of who Jesus is. In closing, we as human beings are drawn to greatness, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest. I would suggest that rather than rejecting religious interpretations or associations, Miyazaki and his fans might consider embracing them as appropriate and powerful models of greatness on which to base great works of art.
