The と signifies "and." It should read eat ( 食べる), drink (飲む) and meet (会う) or something like that, but the last two symbols are backwards on either side. The characters are 飢と食と会 which seem to substitute for 飢える (ueru, to starve), 食べる(taberu, to eat) and 会う(au, to meet). Most obviously is the one syllabary and one Chinese character that are written backwards when we look above at the arch. Some of the Chinese characters are just a little off, enough to make you think. Yet bone or "hone" is used in idiomatic phrases such as hone-nashi meaning to lack moral backbone. Tengu, however, or heavenly dog, a legendary creature or supernatural being (yookai) that can be either harbingers of war or protective spirits of the mountains and forests.įloating at the corner of one building is 骨 which means bone and it could be a restaurant term as in the creamy broth: 豚骨 (tonkotsu) which is literally pig bone. The character 狗 means dog, but can be used for dog meat (狗肉)which is not commonly eaten in Japan (and could suggest the homophone 苦肉 or "kuniku," which literally means bitter meat meaning a countermeasure that requires personal sacrifice. In one frame we see only 天狗 (tengu), with "ten" above and "gu" below. When you see 天 float by you might think 天ぷら (for tempura), but actually the characters are: 天祖 (tensoo) for the ancestral goddess of the sun, Amaterasu. The mother says that all the places are restaurants. Then there are some disquieting Chinese characters. When we get to the main street we see the characters 市場 for market (ichiba) and the word 自由 (jiyuu) for freedom. At first casual glance as we go by, it does seem like they are all part of advertising for restaurants, but on closer examination, that proves not to be true. There's more signs on the shops in the main road. Alone the character 正 would be read "sho" or "sei" and means right, righteous, justice and genuine, but 正 also suggests 正しい, meaning correct, right, honest and truthful. On the first building we see an incomplete phrase. Japanese poetry is filled with wordplay and the following scenes are filled with visual cues and words that can have double meanings.
![watch spirited away english dub watch spirited away english dub](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7cv5p1XNuDw/hqdefault.jpg)
Chinese characters often symbolize concrete things. Katakana is used for foreign words and onomatopoeia. Hiragana is used for post-positionals and parts of words not fully expressed by Chinese characters (such as inflections for verbs and adjectives). The syllabary systems, hiragana and katakana, originated from Chinese characters, but are used to represent syllables. Instead of an alphabet, it uses two syllabary systems and Chinese characters. In the following scenes, Miyazaki exploits the visual nature of the Japanese language. Chihiro's anxiety over the statues isn't the last bit of foreshadowing that Miyazaki provides visually. Out on the other side, there is a grass meadow and more stone statues. She becomes Cassandra, a prophet whose warnings go unheeded. If we consider that Chihiro senses something is wrong, then her pleading with her parents not to enter the tunnel seem less whiny. Chihiro at ten is still more child than adult and thus more intuitive than her parents. Lucy is the most intuitive of the four Pevensies although she too has a moment of envy that signals she won't be able to return. In this respect, she is not unlike Lucy Pevensie from "The Chronicles of Narnia." Narnia is closed off from children when they reach a certain age in the real world (until death returns Lucy, Edmund, Peter, Digory and Polly). She's troubled and a bit frightened by the moss-covered stone statues. When her father, Akio, takes the rural street that leads them to what looks like an old unused amusement park, Chihiro picks up cues that her parents do not. If there are five stages of loss and grief (denial/isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), then Chihiro is at the end of denial, and her comment about how unfortunate it is to get her first bouquet as a farewell gift indicates she is entering anger. Her friends have given her a nice bouquet. Not unlike Riley in Pixar's " Inside Out," she's unhappy with being forced to move away from her friends. In the real world before she becomes Sen, there is no doubt she is a bit sullen.
![watch spirited away english dub watch spirited away english dub](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/2TeJfUZMGolfDdW6DKhfIWqvq8y.jpg)
Chihiro has been characterized as whiny, but I think if you understand her situation and contrast her intuitiveness with her parents' obliviousness, she seems less so.