Review of Princess Mononoke
This classic Japanese animated fantasy film is a spectacularly insightful allegory for the Anthropocene (review now republished & unpaywalled for new readers!)
This newsletter aims to discuss and support a synthesis of human development and wildlife conservation; basically the idea that our civilization is capable of providing a good life for everyone without destroying the biosphere or causing a mass extinction, and that we should do so. These ideas (sometimes called “bright green environmentalism” or “ecomodernism”) have already produced some amazing works of art and culture, from the science fiction novels of Becky Chambers and Kim Stanley Robinson to to the entire solarpunk art and design movement. This article discusses a mainstay of this nascent canon: the 1997 Japanese animated fantasy film Princess Mononoke, from renowned director Hayao Miyazaki.
It’s an extremely well-done fantasy tale, putting a unique spin on well-worn tropes as a cursed prince exiled from his homeland meets a human raised by wolves in a war-torn semi-magical version of Muromachi-era (late medieval/early modern) Japan. It’s also one of the best, most complex, and most fully applicable fantasy allegories for Anthropocene Earth across film, art, or literature, deeply engaging with real-world complexities.
The story follows a wandering prince, Ashitaka, from the last surviving enclave of the Emishi people. He’s an unusual take on a fantasy protagonist, not chosen by a prophecy or destined for a particular role due to his lineage, but simply a traveler who tries to bring peace to a long-running fight that is not of his making. Much of the story follows his efforts to resolve the central conflict of Princess Mononoke. It’s a struggle between two communities: the animals, spirits, and kami (demigods, essentially) of an ancient and magical forest and the nascent human community of Iron Town, a sanctuary for oppressed women from surrounding lands and the site of an early Industrial Revolution. Both communities are led and defended by powerful, charismatic, and fearless female champions: the eponymous Princess Mononoke for the forest, and Lady Eboshi for Iron Town.
Princess Mononoke is a spin on the classic “human raised by wolves” myth prevalent from Romulus to Mowgli; adopted by the wolf kami Moro no Kimi after being abandoned as an infant, she begins the film identifying as a wolf and fighting alongside her wolf siblings against the people of Iron Town, who hate and fear her in return. (Notably, “Princess Mononoke” is not a human title, but a wolf one, meaning something like “Princess Vengeful Beast” in Japanese).
Lady Eboshi is a social revolutionary, a technological innovator, and a charismatic politician. She forges a new community, Iron Town, from the dispossessed and marginalized of surrounding lands, from lepers to war refugees, and turns it into a growing proto-industrial powerhouse sustained by logging and mining in the forest. Neither “Team Human” nor “Team Forest,” are monolithic: the wolves struggle for dominance with apes and boars, and Lady Eboshi’s authority in Iron Town is challenged by patriarchal local samurai lords and even an envoy from the Emperor.
The really interesting thing here is, the champions of both of these sides are fairly unambiguously heroic, at least in the context of their own communities. Princess Mononoke and her wolf kindred are fighting to protect their home, a rich landscape supporting communities of ancient magical creatures. Lady Eboshi and the people of Iron Town are exploiting the forest’s resources (and, from their perspective, defending against animal attacks) to build a safe, prosperous, and equitable community, using technology to create a better life for their families.
“The trees cry out as they die, but you cannot hear them. I lie here. I listen to the pain of the forest...and feel the ache of the bullet in my chest.”
-Moro no Kimi, the Wolf Goddess
"The sooner we get this rice home, the sooner we'll eat! Let's move!"
-Lady Eboshi, right after shooting Moro no Kimi
In a lot of classic Western “humanity vs. nature” movies, from Lord of the Rings to Avatar (perhaps the two most-cited allegories for environmental conflicts in film), the advanced technology-using side is unrelievedly evil, a force of destruction bent only on conquest. The Resource Development Administration in Avatar and the Uruk-hai of Saruman in Lord of the Rings are brutally tearing up the magical forest with their ugly, sharp-edged machines, and it’s easy to root against them.
Maybe too easy, since we can’t have the clean, pretty lives of the Elves or Na’vi in the real world without technological support. Elves and Na’vi never seem to get dysentery from impure drinking water, see their child starve to death during a harsh winter, or die of sepsis from an infected scratch. In Princess Mononoke, the people of Iron Town are brutally tearing up the magical forest with their ugly, sharp-edged machines, but like many humans in the real world, they’re doing it for a really good reason: to build a better life for themselves and their families. Like many real-world industrializing societies, they’re even evolving fairer, more progressive sociocultural norms in the process.
Lady Eboshi is superficially very similar to Saruman in The Lord of the Rings: they are both powerful, charismatic leaders (of Iron Town and Isengard respectively) who log forests to feed iron foundries, and anger ancient magical creatures in the process. However, Princess Mononoke adds a lot more nuance. Saruman just uses his new industrial resources to build weapons for a snarling orc army bent on conquest. You never see any positive outcome from Isengard’s forges. But Lady Eboshi genuinely wants to use technology to improve life for her people. She builds guns that allow female warriors to fight (upending patriarchal gender norms), takes in lepers that everyone else has abandoned and gives them manufacturing jobs, and consistently works towards a more equitable and prosperous society.
The magical forest in Princess Mononoke is also interestingly complex, with deep interconnectivity similar to a real-world ecosystem. One particularly fascinating aspect is the kodama, the innumerable little forest spirits based on Japanese folklore that have an iconic “bowling ball head” appearance in the movie. To me, the kodama represent all the life-forms that humans don’t normally see or pay attention to: insects, arachnids, mites, paramecia, nematodes, bacteria, fungi, and all the other underpinnings of our ecosystems. Forests really are full of hidden life-forms with incredible mysterious powers, the kodama are a literalization that shows the fantastical world that’s already there.
The most powerful magical creature in the forest is the Shishigami, an all-benevolent deerlike god of life that does not intervene in the conflict. It plays a key role in the climax of the film, when Lady Eboshi and the people of Iron Town (pressed by an immortality-seeking Emperor’s demands for divine relics) eventually go too far. Beheading the Shishigami unleashes a catastrophe: a storm/tidal wave of ooze surges from the body of the god, destroying everything in its path.
This is one of the best metaphors for the climate crisis I’ve ever seen. Industrial civilization’s fossil fuel emissions have disrupted life-giving Earth systems, with the supercharging of the atmospheric greenhouse effect causing problems from ice caps melting to extreme heatwaves to a looming ocean circulation collapse. This isn’t a single inflection-point event like in the film (and many viral depictions of global climate apocalypse are seriously exaggerated, and we’re making amazing progress towards decarbonizing the world economy). But a “wave of death” is already here, just unevenly distributed. A recent report found that climate change caused the five missed rainy seasons which have resulted in famine for millions in vulnerable areas of the Horn of Africa. We’re metaphorically cutting the head off a god, and now it’s getting weird.
The conflict of Princess Mononoke is basically the great conflict of the last few centuries in the real world. The Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment have made amazing, epic progress in making life better for all of humanity even while the human population increased rapidly. Literacy, vaccination, basic education, and democratic representation rates have risen from the privileges of a tiny minority or outright non-existence to fundamental rights for the majority of humanity, while extreme poverty and high child morality have changed from “default state of humanity” to “fast-disappearing scourges to be eradicated” around the globe.
Yet the rise of an Earth-born technological civilization has come at a great cost to the other inhabitants of our biosphere. Wild mammals now make up only 4% of global mammal biomass, with humans making up 34% and our domestic livestock (often kept in horrible conditions) making up the rest. Dedicated conservationists have managed to prevent many extinctions even in cases where wild populations have declined massively, and genetic rescue offers the potential to bring even some extinct creatures back, but we’ve still lost so much.
Princess Mononoke finally ends with a vision of hope for the future: the heroes are able to return the Shishigami’s head and calm the cataclysm, although much of both the forest and Iron Town have already been destroyed. In the film’s iconic final frame, grass and flowers begin to regrow and a new kodama is reborn amidst the ruins of the forest: life will grow back when given the chance. A new magical forest can grow, and the people of Iron Town have perhaps learned enough to be able to share the land this time. In our world, too, we have the potential to create a new equilibrium where technological civilization can survive alongside rich, diverse ecosystems. That’s the kind of thing this newsletter tries to write about.
In summary: Princess Mononoke is a great film, really engaging deeply with complex moral questions. It’s also visually beautiful, emotionally thrilling, and contains a whole bunch of really awesome elements that weren’t even mentioned in this spoiler-filled review. Watch it!
I have that movie in my Miyazaki collection! it's one of my favorites.