No Face: Disconnection and Consumption
Miyazaki’s Spirited Away continues to be one of the most beautiful animated movies ever made. It tells the story of a young girl, Chihiro, who gets unwillingly whisked off to a spiritual world where she has to work at a bathhouse for the spirits in order to try and find a way to save her parents and return to her world. Its a movie filled with strange creatures, scary moments, but also moments of peace and beauty.
One of the most interesting characters encountered in this movie is No Face - a creature who, at first, is a silent figure standing on the bridge. Originally, this was going to be the only time Chihiro saw this figure, but during production Miyazaki needed a figure to fulfil some plot points, so decided to use the bridge figure in this fashion. No Face is quite a simple design - just a black figure that drifts into nothingness. Unlike the other creatures in Spirited Away, No Face is not based on any pre-existing Japanese figure. He’s purely from Miyazaki’s mind. But No Face is also a perfect examination of the main themes in the movie, and so today we’re going to do a deep dive into No Face and Spirited Away more generally, specifically it’s representation of the issues of disconnection and consumption.
Let’s start with disconnection. I’ve read some stuides on Spirited Away using the idea of liminality in their discussion of Spirited Away’s characters and locations. Liminality was made more popular in usage by anthropologist Victor Turner, and it’s a designation of a position between positions. It’s the bit where you’re no longer in one category, but not quite yet in the other one. For Turner, this was mostly used in relation to rituals, where at the start of the ritual you are no longer of your previous identity, but not quite finished the ritual where you are recongised as your changed state.
In this sense, Spirited Away’s liminality is seen primarily in location and setting. The fantasy world of the spirits is a world between worlds, one which is both like and unlike the world before. It’s also placed in an abandoned theme park. This is fair, but I think most of the movie makes more sense if you think of things in terms of connections rather than positions. The locations are not markers of liminality but of disconnection.
We start the movie with Chihiro and her family in the middle of a move. They are no longer living in their old house, but not quite yet at their new residence. They aren’t connected to place yet. They are new to the area they are moving to, but no longer connected to their old location. The abandoned theme park is also a place that once served a purpose, and was a location in which connections were made and fostered, but now is disconnected from the community it once served.
Disconnection extends to the characters as well. The way Chihiro’s parents act at both the beginning of the movie and at the end shows a disconnect between generations. The parents don’t seem to pay attention to how Chihiro feels about the situation they are in, and the mom even comments that Chihiro is clinging too hard when her parents are finally back.
After Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs, Chihiro is unable to connect to them anymore entirely - they can’t communicate with her, nor her with them. According to Haku, they are also disconnected from themselves, having forgotten their human form. Chihiro being forced to work at the bathhouse and find a way to solve her parents puts her in a lonely position. She is the only human at the bathhouse, and clings to the characters she recognition in desperate hopes to create new connections in her environment.
No Face is similar to Chihiro in this regard. No Face is quiet, and unable to communicate verbally with people at the beginning. His whole form is also a demonstration of his lack of place and connection. His body fades, not even connecting to the ground. I think this is a reason for No Face’s attachment to Chihiro. He recognises that she, like him, is disconnected and lonely. However, the two deal with their disconnections in two distinctly different ways.
This is where the second theme comes in: consumption. In fact, for most of the characters in the movie, their experiences of disconnection is what leads them to consumption. Haku has lost his name, and when Chihiro remembers that he’s the spirit of the Kohaku river, she explains that the river was filled in and is no longer a river. Earlier in the movie, someone says that Haku just “showed up” one day, and no one knows his origins. Like other figures, Haku is disconnected and lonely. He no longer has his river to return to, and even for most of the movie is unaware of who he is - disconnected from his sense of self. In response, Haku turned to greed. Zeniba points this out to Chihiro when she is trying to save Haku, that Haku got into the whole mess with Yababa due to his greed.
Greed and consumption are highlighted throughout the movie. When Haku tells Yababa that she hasn’t noticed that something dear to her has changed, she instantly is concerned about her gold, not her child. The parents at the beginning of the movie also highlight consumerism and consumption. When they begin to eat the food and Chihiro begins to object, her father insists its fine because they have “credit cards and cash”.
Sometimes, consumption and disconnection is forced upon a character. This is most present in the River Spirit who is first mistaken as a stink spirit. When Chihiro finds the thorn in its side, and finally manages to get it out, a large amount of pollution and waste comes pouring out of him. The consumption and disconnection to environment felt by the humans who polluted the river directly caused a disconnection to self from the River Spirit.
No Face is an embodiment of the consumption and greed in the movie. No Face is unable to connect to others, and so tries to connect to Chihiro and others through greed and items. First, he sees Chihiro needing a bath token but being refused due to being different and disliked by the other workers of the bathhouse. No Face helps Chihiro by getting her one of the tokens she needs. He comes to her again later, with a whole basket of tokens, but Chihiro refuses them saying she only needed the one.
And this sets up some of the issues No Face deals with in his relationship to Chihiro. He tries to give her things, but Chihiro’s lack of greed and consumption means that she is not brought in by the items. Chihiro is solving her problem of disconnection by forming new connections and friendships. She clings to the need to help others, sometimes sacrificing items she was saving to help her parents (her own quest) for the sake of those around her.
No Face’s embodiment of consumption is pretty literal, and this consumption does lead to him being able to communicate with others. His first consumption is a frog worker of the bathhouse, whose voice he then borrows in order to be able to speak to others. He continuously produces gold, which encourages the workers to cater to him and do what he wants. He sees the greed in others as a way to communicate and gather what he wants, though the connections garnered are not as deep or meaningful as No Face may actually want.
We see No Face gorge on huge platters of food, a direct comparison to the way Chihiro’s parents consumed large amounts of food. Even when at a feast, surrounded by others, No Face is needing to buy their presence and attention through producing large quantities of gold.
As No Face continues to gorge, his form changes. A body within the nothingness is made more directly obvious. The figure that started as emptiness and absence became large, dominating and overwhelming. In the bathhouse, No Face becomes grotesque and over the top.
When he finally sees Chihiro again, he tries to offer her more gold than he had offered the other workers, but Chihiro once again (like with the bath tokens) refuses to accept. This angers him, and he begins to devour everything in a fit of rage, turning the workers against him.
This is not to say that consumption more generally is considered bad in Spirited Away. Food is an important part of the relationships between people. While it is eating and food that changes Chihiro’s parents, and also changes No Face, it is also eating and food that connects Chihiro to her new friends. Haku gives Chihiro a piece of food to keep her from fading away when she first came to the spiritual world. After saving the River Spirit, he gives Chihiro a small piece of food. Haku also gives Chihiro rice balls that are to give her strength. These aspects of food giving and food consumption connected Chihiro to these figures in positive ways. Haku was there for Chihiro to make her feel stronger and to comfort her as she cried. The River Spirit gave Chihiro a way to save her parents, though this food source is also how Chihiro returns the food gift to Haku, and to save and connect finally to No Face.
To save No Face from his consumption, it’s not a lack of eating that saves him but eating. The small ball of bitter seaweed is consumed, and purges No Face of everything he consumed, returning him to the absent and empty figure he was at the beginning.
In fact, after his purge, we still see No Face eat. While he once sat at a huge banquet table with platters of food served to him by people who cared more about his gold than him, at Zeniba’s he is once again sat at a table with people. Instead of large platters of food, he has, instead, cake and tea and is surrounded by people who care for him and do not need his gold to love him. In contrast to his frantic large consumption, here, at Zeniba’s, he partakes in soft and quiet consumption.
In other words, consumption done in the service of filling one’s own void, or in the need to gain others to do what you wish them to do, is seen as something to be avoided. In contrast, consumption in the service to either create or foster the connections formed between yourself and others is something to be privileged and cared for.
In fact, it’s Zeniba’s where No Face finally finds a place to be. He finds connection, purpose and care that is focused on the quiet and humble life Zeniba lives, in contrast to the highly opulent bathhouse. Even when redeemed, it’s clear No Face’s place is not at the bathhouse, but in a life if quiet existence. Of eating cake and drinking tea and spinning yarn.
While consumption and greed are sometimes used to fill voids, it’s healing our disconnect that truly leads to a happy life. This is what Spirited Away teaches us. It’s what Chihiro shows the bathhouse workers through her actions to serve others. It’s what Chihiro taught No Face by refusing his gifts, and despite his actions allowing him to travel with her to Zeniba’s. And yet consumption is what connects us to others, what fills us with hope when there is none. Its what can fill us with strength when we have little left, and it’s what connects us to others. Not in large opulent feasts, but in quiet moments on a train, and in soft bites of cake.