49 Fun Facts About Princess Mononoke

In the title Princess Mononoke, what does the Japanese word "mononoke" mean?

A spirit or monster. It is a description, not a name: the townspeople use it for San because she runs with the animal gods of the forest and fights like one of them.

In which period of Japanese history is Princess Mononoke set?

Muromachi. Miyazaki chose the era because charcoal-hungry furnaces were then stripping the forests, the moment when people began to feel they could master nature.

Ashitaka, the young prince who rides west to cure his cursed arm, belongs to which people?

Emishi. Their real defeat by the Japanese court lay some five centuries in the past; Miyazaki imagined one last clan surviving in a hidden village.

San, the girl the townspeople call Princess Mononoke, was raised by which animals?

Wolves. Her parents threw her at a wolf god's feet as they fled the forest, and instead of eating the baby the god raised her as a daughter.

Who produced Princess Mononoke and led its marketing campaign?

Toshio Suzuki. When the American distributor pressed for a shorter film, it was Suzuki who handed its boss a samurai sword with the message "No cuts".

Which company distributed Princess Mononoke in Japan?

It opened on 260 of the country's 1,800 cinemas with record queues.

What is found lodged inside the demon boar that Ashitaka kills at the start of Princess Mononoke?

A bullet. It had shattered the boar god's bones and driven him mad with pain, and finding out where the shot came from is what sends Ashitaka west.

Which short film did Miyazaki direct during a break from Princess Mononoke?

On Your Mark. Stuck on the feature's story, he made this music video for the rock duo Chage and Aska instead, then returned to Princess Mononoke in April 1995.

Who composed the score for Princess Mononoke?

Joe Hisaishi. He first recorded an "image album" of musical sketches, issued a full year before the film, and reworked those demos with Miyazaki into the final score.

Asked why he has come to the west, Ashitaka says he wants "to see with eyes unclouded by" what?

Hate. The line sums up his part in the film: cursed by one side and shot by the other, he refuses to choose between the forest and the town.

Which studio handled the English dub and North American release of Princess Mononoke?

Miramax Films. Disney gave the film to its art-house label rather than its family brand, and the contract with Ghibli barred it from cutting a single frame.

Which fantasy author wrote the English-language script for Princess Mononoke?

Neil Gaiman. He expected to say no until he was flown to Los Angeles to watch the film on a big screen; then he turned a literal translation into lines actors could say.

Which director was reportedly the first choice to write the English script for Princess Mononoke?

Quentin Tarantino. By the eventual scriptwriter's account, Tarantino told the studio boss he was the wrong man and named the novelist who got the job.

What is the name of the boar god whose corruption curses Ashitaka?

Nago. With his last breath he tells the villagers they will all suffer as he has suffered, and the mark left on Ashitaka's arm begins to prove him right.

Which monk advises Ashitaka to seek the Forest Spirit in the mountains?

Jigo. The genial wanderer is no simple monk: he is an agent of the Emperor, hunting the very god he sends Ashitaka to find.

At sunset the Forest Spirit of Princess Mononoke transforms into which towering form?

The Nightwalker. Beheaded in mid-change, the giant spills over the land as a dark flood that kills whatever it touches while it searches for its head.

What are the tiny forest creatures that guide Ashitaka through the forest of the gods?

Kodama. Tree spirits are old in Japanese folklore, but the little white figures with rattling heads were Miyazaki's own invention.

What is the name of San's adoptive mother, a 300-year-old goddess of the forest?

Moro. Gillian Anderson voices her in the English dub; in Japan the goddess was played by Akihiro Miwa, a male actor famous for his female roles.

Ashitaka arrives at which settlement that has deforested the land to mine ore?

Irontown. Its Japanese name is Tataraba, after the tatara furnaces whose appetite for charcoal is the reason the town keeps cutting into the forest.

Eboshi's town shelters former prostitutes and people with which disease?

Leprosy. Miyazaki drew on visits to a sanatorium near his Tokyo home, and in the film the patients repay Eboshi's shelter by making her guns.

Which blind boar god leads the clan's doomed assault on the humans' town?

Okkoto. He would rather die fighting than watch his kind shrink into dumb game for hunters, and the humans use that pride to draw the boars onto their guns.

Who beheads the Forest Spirit during its nightly transformation?

Lady Eboshi. "I'm going to show you how to kill a god," she tells her gunners; the deed costs her an arm, and she ends the film vowing to build a better town.

Miyazaki first sketched ideas for Princess Mononoke in 1980, just after directing which debut feature?

The Castle of Cagliostro. The 1980 picture boards found no backer, so he published them as a book and reused some of their ideas in My Neighbor Totoro.

Miyazaki's original 1980 concept for Princess Mononoke was loosely based on which fairy tale?

Beauty and the Beast. In that version a nobleman's daughter was forced to marry the creature; the finished film kept almost nothing of it but the title.

Which 1983 illustrated book by Miyazaki foreshadows Princess Mononoke?

Shuna's Journey. Its young prince rides a mount called Yakkul, the model and namesake for Ashitaka's own Yakul.

Before leaving his village for ever, what does Ashitaka cut off in front of its elders?

His hair. The topknot marked him as a grown man of the village, so cutting it meant giving up his place among his people.

Which island did Miyazaki and his art directors visit to research the forest of the gods?

Yakushima. They spent days sketching the island's dense, mossy forest, and its Shiratani Unsui gorge became the model for the film's forest of the gods.

At the end of Princess Mononoke, what do San and Ashitaka agree to do?

Stay apart but keep meeting. San loves Ashitaka but cannot forgive humans, so she returns to the forest while he stays to help rebuild the town.

Which actress voices San in the English dub of Princess Mononoke?

Claire Danes. The dub cast screen stars rather than voice specialists, as Ghibli had done in Japan, where San was played by the television actress Yuriko Ishida.

Besides slowly killing him, what does the curse on Ashitaka's arm give him?

Superhuman strength. With the cursed arm he alone forces open a town gate that takes ten men to move, though fear and anger make the mark spread faster.

Which company developed the Toon Shader program used on the film at Ghibli's request?

It processed 3D sequences so they resembled traditional animation.

Before Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibli first tried computer graphics on which of its films?

Pom Poko. The 1994 comedy used only a little computer imagery; for Princess Mononoke the studio went further and set up a computer graphics room of its own.

Which ancient poem, in which heroes kill a sacred forest's guardian, helped inspire Princess Mononoke?

Epic of Gilgamesh. The philosopher Takeshi Umehara had turned the tale into a play and asked Miyazaki to film it; he declined, then found its god-killing in his own story.

Which one-word tagline fronted the Japanese advertising campaign for Princess Mononoke?

Live. The copywriter Shigesato Itoi reached it only after many rejected drafts, and it is the word the wounded Ashitaka says to San when she threatens to kill him.

What title did Miyazaki want for Princess Mononoke before his producer overruled him?

The Legend of Ashitaka. The producer preferred the older title and simply ran the first television spot under it; Miyazaki's choice survives as the name of the score's opening theme.

In its daytime form, the Forest Spirit of Princess Mononoke has the body of which animal?

A deer. Called Shishigami in Japanese, it is a god of both life and death: flowers spring up where it walks, and it heals Ashitaka's wound while leaving his curse.

The deal that took Princess Mononoke worldwide paired Disney with which company, then Studio Ghibli's parent?

Tokuma Shoten. Their 1996 agreement let Disney dub and distribute Ghibli's films but change nothing else, a clause the studio soon had to defend.

Which Hollywood film's Japanese box-office record did Princess Mononoke break in 1997?

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg's film had been Japan's biggest hit for 15 years; Miyazaki said that overtaking it left him baffled.

Which Hollywood film overtook Princess Mononoke within months to become Japan's highest-grossing film?

Titanic. The record went back to Hollywood for only three years before another Studio Ghibli film took it home again.

Which actor voices Jigo in the English dub of Princess Mononoke?

Billy Bob Thornton. The dub made no attempt to copy the Japanese performances, so the Emperor's agent speaks in Thornton's own American accent.

Why was Princess Mononoke's North American DVD delayed from August to December 2000?

Petitions to keep the Japanese audio. Fans' letters and online petitions took the studio by surprise: an executive admitted it had not known anyone wanted the original soundtrack.

What parting gift does the village girl Kaya press on Ashitaka as he rides away?

A crystal dagger. In the original it is the token a girl of her people gives a man as a pledge of her constant heart, and she breaks a village rule to see him off.

Which critic told Miyazaki in 1999 that Princess Mononoke deserved an Academy Award nomination?

Roger Ebert. Interviewing Miyazaki in Toronto, he ranked him with Bergman, Hitchcock and Fellini; the director met the Oscar suggestion with a little bow and a thank-you.

Miyazaki resigned in 1998 but returned to direct which film after Yoshifumi Kondō's death?

Spirited Away. Kondō, the director Miyazaki hoped would succeed him, died a week after the resignation; a year later Miyazaki was back at the studio.

Which 2009 science-fiction film's director has cited Princess Mononoke as an influence?

Avatar. Its director, James Cameron, told a Japanese newspaper that he never misses a new Miyazaki film and that a scene near the end of his own is a homage to Princess Mononoke.

In Princess Mononoke, what is the Forest Spirit's severed head believed to grant?

Immortality. The Emperor has licensed the hunt for that reason, and the head is the prize that brings riflemen and trackers into the forest of the gods.

On the original Japanese poster for Princess Mononoke, what is smeared around San's mouth?

Blood. The image comes from Ashitaka's first sight of her across a river, and the campaign led with such scenes so that parents knew this was no film for small children.

What do the apes of Princess Mononoke gather each night to do?

Plant trees. The humans tear the saplings up again, and in despair the apes ask San to hand over the wounded Ashitaka so that they can eat him and take on the humans' power.

What work do the women of Lady Eboshi's town do in shifts, day and night?

Tread the bellows. The great furnace must be kept roaring for days on end, and Eboshi gave the work to women she had taken in from the brothels.