What No-Face Teaches Us About Loneliness

Spirited Away has long been one of this writer's favourite Miyazaki animated films. As a child, I was always drawn to the inner workings of the film's "bathhouse" — contraptions like the boiler room and the great baths that needed wooden tokens to draw their hot water — and to the oddly shaped creatures that moved through it. Back then, what I was most curious about was this: what, exactly, was the meaning of all those encounters and exchanges between "No-Face" and Chihiro, and how did they connect to her eventually managing to rescue her parents and leave that strange spirit world? It was only after graduating from university, as I came to understand society more deeply, that I began to grasp the sociological and psychological meaning woven into the film. In this short piece, I want to draw mainly on a psychodynamic perspective to reflect on the meaning that No-Face brings out in the film.

No-Face is a spirit. He longs deeply to be cared for, yet never quite succeeds — and so his inner world is left empty, lost and desolate. After entering the bathhouse, where everyone is intoxicated by money, he conjures up heaps of gold, in exchange for the staff's flocking attention and adoration (which is really nothing more than the flattery of strangers). But all of this is affection built on material things, not genuine concern. The greed and the cutthroat atmosphere of the bathhouse gradually cause No-Face to lose himself, drunk on the happiness that power and money seem to bring. Yet when the one person No-Face truly cares about (Chihiro) shows no interest in any of these material things, his heart suddenly fills with resentment and hatred, and he even resorts to cruel acts (swallowing the bathhouse servants whole). Late in the story, Chihiro and No-Face sit facing each other in a room; No-Face has eaten himself half to death, and he tries to win Chihiro over with gold. But the kind-hearted Chihiro politely declines, and asks whether he has any family. No-Face feels hurt, and admits how lonely he is. So Chihiro takes out the pellet given to her by the river spirit and lets No-Face eat it. In an instant No-Face vomits violently, spewing out all the food and bathhouse servants he had eaten earlier. In the end, he follows Chihiro to the home of Zeniba at Swamp Bottom, and becomes her helper.

No-Face wants nothing more than to build a pure, simple relationship with Chihiro. From the perspective of Jungian psychology (Jungian Psychology), this is the most basic, most primal desire we have as social animals — you could even call it an instinct (Instincts). And yet this instinct slowly expands into possessiveness and greed, even into aggression, cruelty and ruthlessness in pursuit of satisfaction from the outside world — just as No-Face, rejected by Chihiro, swallows the servants in a frenzy, and just as in everyday life we too commit acts of aggression as we compete over limited resources and wealth (estate agents brawling in the street to "land a deal" being one such example). This instinct has, in truth, always existed within our inner world; it is the dark side of our human nature, the Shadow. Every one of us (including the film's creator) is deeply afraid of this aggressive, instinctual part of ourselves, and so we use every means we can to conceal the dark side within, lest this aggressive instinct slip out and harm those around us — just as No-Face always wears a thick mask (Persona). The design of the No-Face character is, in a sense, an externalization of our instincts through Projection; No-Face symbolises, to some degree, the dark side of our own personality.

The psychoanalyst Adler held that each person's behaviour and drive to grow stem from an innate sense of inferiority, and that throughout our lives we tend to push ourselves to progress, to grow, and to keep overcoming this sense of inferiority — a phenomenon known as compensation, such as exercising more to build up our health, or studying diligently. Sometimes, however, over-compensating for this inferiority gives rise to a superiority complex: such people tend to do as they please, to inflate their own egos, and to disregard the welfare and needs of those around them. The No-Face in the film is an example of someone with a superiority complex. At first he is utterly inferior and unremarkable, but once he realises that money can buy other people's attention, he gradually inflates himself, constantly using gold to entice others into servitude, single-mindedly trying to win Chihiro over with material things, while showing contempt for the lives of others and indulging in aggression at will.

In that room, facing the "frenzied" No-Face, Chihiro keeps her composure in the face of danger. She first declines his gold, then cleverly asks him whether there is anyone else by his side, and whether his family cares about him. Chihiro invites him to eat the river-spirit pellet. In the film, the river-spirit pellet has a purifying effect, and Chihiro's series of questions seems to lay bare the inner need within No-Face. Seen through the lens of psychotherapy, offering the river-spirit pellet and Chihiro's whole exchange with him are, in a sense, an expression of care and empathy; Chihiro understands No-Face's feelings completely, and draws on a range of helping microskills (microskills in counselling). After the chase through the bathhouse, No-Face's aggression dissolves, and he becomes Zeniba's weaving helper instead. What this part of the story reveals to us is this: even though we carry within us some destructive and aggressive traits from birth, the "love" found in relationships can release this resentment and hatred — can even sublimate it into a constructive force.