Chihiro

Lesson Plan

SPIRITED AWAY

Paul Gomes, MA student and Teaching Assistant, Department of Religion, UHM

Produced by Toshio Suzuki
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
Running Time: 125 minutes
Rating: PG
Winner of:
Golden Bear Award for Best Picture;
52nd Berlin Film Festival
Best Animated Film;
New York Film Critics Circle
Best Animated Feature;
National Board ofReview
Best Animated Feature Film;
75th Annual Academy Awards
Buy through Disney : http://disneyshopping.go.com/

OBJECTIVES OF PLAN
1. Students should be aware of differences in presentation and content of Western
Animation and Japanese Anime.
2. An understanding of cinematic metaphor, and Miyazaki’s message delivered via
the metaphors of spirits, the spirit world and the personaldevelopment of
characters.
3. An ability to compare and contrast between their own culture and Japanese
culture.
Prepared with support from the University of Hawaii’s National Resource Center
East Asia (U.S. Department of Education/Title VI)

CURRICULUM APPLICATION
Teachers of history, social studies, global issues, Asian studies, Japanese language,
Cinematography, and related courses may usethis lesson plan. As such, certain sections
and activities are more applicable to certain curriculums than others. Non-applicable
elements may be dispensed with at the instructor’s discretion.

STANDARDS ADDRESSED

1

This lesson corresponds with the following standards established by the National
Council for Social Studies:
Standard I:

Students develop an understanding of thedifferences in various human
cultures, and evaluate the dynamics behind cultural change.
Standard IV: Students observe how an individual’s personal development is shaped by
one’s culture and understand the mechanisms behind it.
This lesson also corresponds with these standards of the Hawaii State Social Studies
Guidelines for Cultural Anthropology.
Standard 1:
Standard 3:
Standard 4:Understand culture as a system of beliefs, knowledge, and practices
shared by a group.
Understand culture as dynamic, selective, adaptive, and ever changing.
Use the tools and methodology of social scientists to explain and interpret
ideas and events.

PREVIEWING NOTES
FILM SYNOPSIS
Chihiro Ogino is a ten year old Japanese girl moving to a new town in the middle
of nowhere with her parents. Sheis not happy to be making the move and misses her
old school and friends. When her parents make a wrong turn on the way to their new
home, they stumble onto the grounds of an old shrine and a tunnel into another world.
When her parents walk into the tunnel, Chihiro is scared, clinging tightly to her
mother. When her parents stumble across an empty restaurant with hot food all around,
theybegin to eat and Chihiro goes off to explore. She runs into a strange boy who tells
her that she must leave before night falls or she’ll be trapped. When she returns to the
restaurant, she finds that her parents have been transformed into pigs and the way out
has been turned into a river. Chihiro panics as she begins to literally fade away, trying
to convince herself that it is all just a dream.The strange boy named Haku returns to
rescue Chihiro and tells her the only way that she can survive in this strange world and
save her parents is to get a job at the bathhouse for the gods and spirits run by the
sorceress Yubaba.
Putting aside her fears and with a little help from kind characters she meets
along the way, Chihiro makes her way to the top floor of the bathhouse and requests ajob from Yubaba. Yubaba attempts to scare her off but fails, and duty bound by the
rules of the world, she gives Chihiro a job on the condition that Chihiro magically sign
away her name and memory of her identity.
Renamed Sen, she undertakes the difficult task of recovering who she is, saving
her parents and finding a way out of the world all while toiling away at the bathhouse.

2

In...