Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke(Studio Ghibli Official) was released in 1997. I saw it in a cinema as a child and still love it. But my first Ghibli film on the big screen was Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko(Studio Ghibli Official), released in 1994. It remains my favorite film of theirs.
I own both on Blu-ray and have watched them again and again. Somewhere along the way, I began to think: Princess Mononoke is Miyazaki’s version of Pom Poko.
They are very different films, of course. Yet I feel something running through both.
I want to explore that connection from a few angles, beginning with the unexpected resemblance between Tsurukame Oshō and Lady Moro.
*This is a translated version. The original (Japanese) is available here.
- Complex Feelings Toward Humans
I imagine Tsurukame Oshō began by impersonating a priest to trick people, only to end up fulfilling the role. Moro’s care for San, meanwhile, suggests to me that she does not simply hate humans. Both may once have had better relations with them, until circumstances forced them into conflict. - Stories Whose Endings We Already Know
We know what has become of the worlds of Princess Mononoke and Pom Poko. I read both as stories of defeat, seen from different sides: Pom Poko from the tanuki’s side, and Mononoke from the humans’. In each, something of the past is being lost. - Living On After Defeat
Pom Poko ends with its characters somehow living on; Princess Mononoke with what Miyazaki called “a pathetic revival.” Neither ending is ideal, but both affirm life beyond loss. - The Ending of the Nausicaä Manga
The Nausicaä manga concluded in 1994 with the resolve to live, even in the knowledge of eventual extinction. I see a connection with Pom Poko and Mononoke: stories for an age of upheaval, insisting that the world is still beautiful despite what has been lost.
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Princess Mononoke and Pom Poko: Three Connections
Tsurukame Oshō and Moro: Complex Feelings Toward Humans
The old, wrinkled tanuki Tsurukame Oshō and the alluring wolf god Moro hardly look alike. But consider their lives, and a resemblance begins to emerge.
Tsurukame Oshō is the easier place to start. These lines offer an important clue:
- “We raccoons are too trusting. It’s easy for humans to fool us. Then we get into trouble. Does everyone understand?”
- “The humans who died were victims of this war. First, we should pay our respects to the memories of those who died.”
Both lines become more revealing when their Japanese wording is examined. The first describes the tanuki as excessively good-natured rather than merely gullible, while the second uses unusually formal language of mourning. See the original Japanese, romanization, English subtitles, literal translations, and dub differences in our analysis of Tsurukame Oshō’s memorable lines.
Before considering those words, notice how odd his name is. “Oshō” means a Buddhist priest—a human occupation in a religion created by humans. Why would a tanuki bear that title?
The first line suggests an answer. Perhaps he once disguised himself as the priest of the run-down Manpuku-ji Temple to fool people. But the trick worked too well: people treated him as their priest, and he ended up carrying on as one for years. He had overdone the service.
And even after people neglected the temple and it fell into disrepair, he stayed there. To me, this suggests an underlying friendliness toward humans.
I sense something similar in Moro from Princess Mononoke.
Moro embodies a striking contradiction: she shows hatred toward humans, yet lovingly raises San, who is human.
Why? I have explored that question in another article:
Read my analysis: Eboshi’s Sympathy and Moro’s Contradiction
That article considers Moro in relation to Eboshi. For this particular contradiction, the key is something Miyazaki says in the documentary How Princess Mononoke Was Born (「もののけ姫」はこうして生まれた, in Japanese), while correcting animation of Moro and the wolves:
“I can’t help but remember the dog I used to have.”
(Original Text, in Japanese)
「つい、自分の飼っていた犬を思い出す。」
“After all, you didn’t grow up with a dog that was like a part of you…”
(Original Text, in Japanese)
「やっぱりね、子供の頃に一心同体の犬と育たなかった・・・」
These remarks let us glimpse the feelings of a director who grew up with a dog. Would someone who felt that way depict a wolf god as simply cursing humanity? My own answer is no.
I therefore think Moro, as a canine, does not hate humans at the deepest level.
Like Tsurukame Oshō, though, her circumstances have changed. With the other forest dwellers and her children to consider, she has had to oppose humans.
Her decision to raise San may come from a feeling she has long carried. But in the “now” of Princess Mononoke, she finds herself in conflict with humanity.
Looked at the other way round, perhaps Moro once got along with humans.
The other forest dwellers direct their hostility toward “humans,” while Moro directs hers toward Eboshi, their leader at that moment. I also see support for this reading in the fact that Eboshi is the only person Moro actually injures.
The parallel, as I see it, is this:
- Tsurukame Oshō’s title suggests a past in which he impersonated a human priest and then continued to live as one.
- Moro’s devoted care for San lets us imagine that she, too, once had some kind of good relationship with humans.
Defeat in Stories Whose Endings We Know
Perhaps the most important resemblance between Princess Mononoke and Pom Poko is that they are stories whose endings we already know.
We know our world has not become a tanuki paradise. We also know there are no giant forest gods around us today.
In that sense, the tanuki and the spirits are bound to lose.
Pom Poko tells that story from the tanuki’s—or the spirits’—side. Princess Mononoke tells it from the human side.
Mononoke seems to depict both sides well, but with Ashitaka as its protagonist, it cannot entirely escape the human perspective. San is human too, after all. Alongside Tsurukame and Moro’s resemblance, this shared story of nonhuman defeat makes me feel a connection. The endings offer another.
Living On and “A Pathetic Revival”
If both films can be read as stories of defeat, they also show a little of what comes afterward: in Pom Poko, somehow living on; in Princess Mononoke, “a pathetic revival.”
I take Pom Poko to mean that even without the victory we wanted, and however undignified we may look, we live on.
“A pathetic revival,” meanwhile, comes from the production documentary. Miyazaki says that is how he wants the ending of Mononoke to work.
If we frame the conflict as humanity against the ancient spirits, humans do win. Yet losing the Forest Spirit’s rich forest makes that victory incomplete. At the very least, it seems impossible to continue the wood-hungry tatara ironworks in that same place.
Even so, the forest achieves its small, “pathetic revival.” In that forest, people undergo a similarly humble recovery and continue to live.
Neither ending is ideal. The characters have lost something precious, yet they go on living as the people they have become.
That is why I have come to think, Princess Mononoke is Miyazaki’s version of Pom Poko. Other readings are welcome, of course.
The Ending of the Nausicaä Manga: Another Perspective
That is enough to explain my comparison of Mononoke and Pom Poko. But bringing in the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga may give it another dimension.
Miyazaki’s Nausicaä began serialization in the February 1982 issue of Animage and, after interruptions, concluded in the March 1994 issue—the year Pom Poko was released. I think its completion was also an important point for Miyazaki before he made Princess Mononoke.
The Ending of the Nausicaä Manga
Many people have seen the animated film, but the manga develops into a very different story. Its opening does form the basis of the film; later, the plots diverge. A full synopsis would take us away from this article’s purpose, so here are the crucial points—with complete spoilers:
- The Sea of Corruption is a device created by the old humanity to purify the world.
- Nausicaä and her people are a kind of artificial humanity, modified to live in polluted air.
- They cannot survive in the clean air produced by the Sea of Corruption.
- The old humanity waits in cocoons for the time of its return.
- Nausicaä confronts that old humanity on a mental level and is told that her people can be treated so they can live in clean air.
- She refuses, destroys the old humanity, and chooses to live in a world where the Sea of Corruption is spreading—even knowing that her people will eventually perish.
Only a very few people, including Nausicaä, know of this desperate choice and what it means. Very few indeed—perhaps enough to count on one hand.
That is the startling conclusion of the manga.
Nausicaä’s Resolve: “We Must Live”
The final panel of the Nausicaä manga closes with “We must live.” It expresses responsibility for her decision, but I also read it as a message to people living around 1994.
By the 1990s, Japan had experienced two great reversals: the end of the war and the collapse of the economic bubble.
I did not exist at the first, and, fortunately or unfortunately, I was a child at the second. I never truly felt the moment when the world turned upside down.
What did it mean to tell stories after experiencing both reversals, as adults when the second occurred?
I think one answer lies in the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga, Pom Poko, and Princess Mononoke.
Each ends with people living on in a world that has lost what was there—or what they wished had been there. And importantly, that diminished world is not depicted as especially ugly.
In the Nausicaä manga, people still have spirit. In Pom Poko, friends thought lost are still there. In Princess Mononoke, the forest and its people retain a beauty as they struggle to recover.
Perhaps “We must live,” “Somehow, go on living,” and “A pathetic revival” were telling those of us who were children then that the world is still beautiful.
And if so… what a stylish gesture.
The images used in this article are from “Studio Ghibli Still Images“.
Can you name the movie before the scene comes into focus?
Put your visual memory to the test with a blurred Studio Ghibli scene.
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