60 Fun Facts About Spirited Away

What do Chihiro's parents take the deserted town to be?

An abandoned theme park is her father's guess, one of many that went bust when the economy turned, but at nightfall the empty stalls fill with spirits.

Haku, the boy who helps Chihiro, can change into which creature?

A dragon: Chihiro recognises Haku in that shape when a swarm of paper spirits chases him, badly hurt, into the bathhouse, and he later flies her back there himself.

Chihiro's parents are transformed into which animals after eating the spirit world's food?

Pigs, after gorging on food laid out for the spirits; Yubaba's last test has Chihiro pick her parents from a pen of them, and she rightly says neither is there.

What does Haku warn Chihiro she must never forget if she wants to leave the spirit world?

Her real name: Yubaba rules her workers by taking their names from them, and Haku, who has forgotten his own, can no longer leave her service.

What is the name of Yubaba's twin sister?

Zeniba looks exactly like Yubaba but proves far gentler: she welcomes Chihiro, who has come to apologise for Haku's theft, and gives No-Face a home.

Yubaba's young apprentice, who befriends Chihiro, is revealed to be the spirit of what?

The Kohaku River once carried a small Chihiro safely ashore, and when she remembers and says its name aloud, Haku recovers the identity he had forgotten.

Who composed and conducted the score for Spirited Away?

Joe Hisaishi, Miyazaki's regular composer, conducted the New Japan Philharmonic for the recording and played the score's piano solos himself.

Which company released Spirited Away in North American cinemas in 2002?

Walt Disney had covered about a tenth of the production cost in return for distribution rights, and it also produced the English-language dub.

The Golden Bear that Spirited Away won in 2002 is the top prize of which film festival?

Berlin names its top prize after the bear on the city's coat of arms, and Spirited Away took it there in February 2002.

Which discarded object do the bathhouse staff haul out of the 'stink spirit' during its bath?

A bicycle comes out along with car tyres and heaps of rubbish, and the 'stink spirit' proves to be a river god choked by what people have dumped in him.

Which 2002 hit lost the Best Animated Feature Oscar to Spirited Away?

Ice Age lost along with three other American nominees, and with Miyazaki staying away, the Academy accepted the statuette without a speech.

Which later Studio Ghibli film repeated Spirited Away's win of the Best Animated Feature Oscar?

The Boy and the Heron won in 2024, when Miyazaki was 83; in the two decades between, Howl's Moving Castle, The Wind Rises and Princess Kaguya were all nominated and all lost.

What reason did Miyazaki later give for skipping the 2003 Oscars, where Spirited Away won?

A protest at the Iraq War: he told the Los Angeles Times in 2009 that he had not wanted to visit a country that was bombing Iraq, and that his producer had kept him quiet at the time.

Which film ended Spirited Away's 19-year run as the highest-grossing film ever in Japan?

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train opened in October 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and had taken the record before the year was out.

Which Hollywood blockbuster did Spirited Away overtake to become Japan's highest-grossing film?

Titanic had taken that record from Miyazaki's own Princess Mononoke, so with Spirited Away he won the title back.

Which country, where Spirited Away did not reach cinemas until 2019, then added about $70 million to its gross?

China first screened it in June 2019, eighteen years late, and the run there was worth about $70 million, several times what the film has ever earned in North America.

What must Chihiro get from Yubaba to stay safe in the spirit world?

A job is her only protection, because Haku warns that anyone without work there is turned into an animal; Yubaba tries to scare her off but gives way when she keeps asking.

How does Chihiro's father plan to pay at the unattended food stall?

Credit cards and cash, he tells her, sure that paying later will smooth things over; moments later he is no longer human and his money is no use at all.

How does No-Face first get inside the bathhouse?

Chihiro lets him in, taking the silent figure waiting outside for a customer, and the kindness backfires when he begins swallowing the staff.

Which co-director of 1991's Beauty and the Beast directed the English-language version of Spirited Away?

Kirk Wise directed the English recording, which adds lines the Japanese film does not have, including the very last thing Chihiro says.

Which Pixar figure championed Spirited Away in America and served as executive producer of its English version?

John Lasseter was a longtime friend of Miyazaki, and the hopping lamp that guides Chihiro late in the film is often read as a nod to his Pixar short Luxo Jr.

Daveigh Chase, Chihiro's English voice, also voiced which animated girl?

Lilo in Lilo & Stitch reached cinemas in 2002, the year the dub came out, and the same year Chase played Samara, the villain of the horror remake The Ring.

What creature had Yubaba planted inside Haku to keep him under her control?

A slug: Haku coughs it up and Chihiro squashes it without a second thought, and only later does Yubaba's twin explain that it was what kept him obedient.

David Ogden Stiers, the voice of Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast, plays which character in the English dub of Spirited Away?

Kamaji is the boiler-man who commands the soot sprites, and the part reunited Stiers with the dub's director, for whom he had voiced Cogsworth a decade earlier.

Which voice actress, already Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls, plays Yubaba's giant baby Boh in the English dub?

Tara Strong, also Raven in Teen Titans, was an adult playing an infant, whereas the Japanese Boh was voiced by a child actor, Ryunosuke Kamiki.

Which Cheers actor and Pixar regular voices a bathhouse manager in the English dub of Spirited Away?

John Ratzenberger was Cliff the postman in Cheers and Hamm the piggy bank in Toy Story, and the dub he joined had a Pixar executive producer.

What does Lin scatter across the boiler-room floor to feed the soot sprites?

Star-shaped candy called konpeitō is their reward: Lin throws it down by the handful, the way a farmer feeds chickens, and they swarm over it.

The huge spirit who squeezes into a lift beside Chihiro is a spirit of which vegetable?

A radish: the English credits call him the Radish Spirit, while his Japanese name, Oshira-sama, is borrowed from a household deity of Japanese folklore.

The soot sprites that the boiler-man commands, first seen in My Neighbor Totoro, are known by what Japanese name?

Susuwatari scuttle through the old house in My Neighbor Totoro, and here they sprout thin arms and legs to haul coal to the furnace.

What is the English title of 'Itsumo Nando Demo', the song that closes Spirited Away?

Always With Me is sung over the credits by Youmi Kimura to her own lyre, and Miyazaki later said the song may have helped shape the film while he was making it.

Once night falls, why can't Chihiro leave the spirit world the way she came?

The path is under water: the grassy riverbed she crossed by day turns into a wide river at dusk, and a boat is soon landing spirits on her side of it.

Spirited Away's closing song was first composed for what?

A Miyazaki film that was never made: a fan wrote it for his planned Rin the Chimney Painter, and after that was scrapped the tape lay unused until he played it again while making this one.

Who was Miyazaki's model for Chihiro?

A friend's daughter: Seiji Okuda's ten-year-old spent each summer at Miyazaki's mountain cabin with her friends, and he set out to make a film just for them.

Which real Japanese hot spring bathhouse is cited as an inspiration for Yubaba's bathhouse?

Dōgo Onsen in Matsuyama is the one he conceded: asked outright, Miyazaki said many hot springs were blended and there was no single model, but that Dōgo was certainly among them.

Which town, often claimed as Spirited Away's inspiration, has Miyazaki explicitly denied using as a model?

Jiufen, Taiwan, is an old mining town whose shopkeepers say he came there to sketch, but when a Taiwanese television crew asked him, he said he had not used it as a reference.

While making Spirited Away, Miyazaki regularly visited which Koganei institution for building references?

Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum stands near the studio, and the old public bathhouse preserved there gave him the idea of a bathhouse towering over a street of shops.

The word kamikakushi in Spirited Away's Japanese title literally means what?

Hidden by the gods was the old folk explanation when someone vanished without trace, and 'spirited away' is how dictionaries render the word in English.

Yubaba renames Chihiro 'Sen', another reading of 千, the first kanji of her name, which means what number?

'One thousand' is what 千 means, and Yubaba makes the new name by lifting the other characters of Chihiro's signature off the contract she has just signed.

Why is Chihiro's family on the road at the start?

Moving house has put Chihiro in a sulk, and it is her father's wrong turn on the way to the new home that brings the family to the tunnel.

What protective gift does Yubaba's twin make for Chihiro?

A hairband: it glints in her hair as she looks back at the tunnel at the end, one of the film's few hints that her adventure was not a dream.

What has Haku stolen from Yubaba's twin that carries a deadly curse?

A golden seal: Yubaba's twin has cursed it so that whoever steals it will die, and Haku is saved only when Chihiro's medicine makes him cough it up.

Yubaba's giant baby Boh spends much of Spirited Away transformed into which small animal?

A mouse: Yubaba's twin shrinks him with a spell, and when his doting mother next sees him she shoos him away as a dirty pest, never guessing who he is.

What token of gratitude does the cleansed river spirit give Chihiro?

A magic emetic dumpling: she feeds half to the wounded Haku and the rest to No-Face, and each time it forces up what should never have been swallowed.

What does No-Face hand out to bathhouse workers in exchange for food?

Gold: he conjures it after watching the staff scrabble for the river spirit's tips, and they fawn over him for it, but it is fake, no more than dirt in disguise.

No-Face borrows his first voice by swallowing what kind of creature?

A frog: No-Face tempts the greedy little worker with a handful of fake riches, gulps him down and speaks in his croak. In the English dub Bob Bergen voices them both.

Why did Miyazaki cut back his first Spirited Away plot?

Too long: Miyazaki says he saw, once work began, that filming his whole outline would take more than three hours, so he cut much of the story and reworked the rest.

Who played Chihiro in the 2022 Tokyo stage show?

Two actresses in turn: Kanna Hashimoto, in her stage debut, alternated with Mone Kamishiraishi, while Mari Natsuki, the film's voice of Yubaba, came back to play the witch in person.

How was the stage Spirited Away performed in London in 2024?

In Japanese: the Japanese cast came over for the European premiere at the Coliseum and played it in the original language, with English captions for London theatregoers.

Which pop star's 2024 song Chihiro is named after the heroine of Spirited Away?

Billie Eilish, a long-time fan of Miyazaki's films, put the song on her third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft.

In 2016, critics polled by the BBC ranked Spirited Away fourth among the greatest films of what?

The 21st century: each of the 177 critics could name only ten films made since 2000, and their pooled ballots put it above every other animation, with WALL-E next at 29th.

Where in Tokyo did the Ghibli Museum open in October 2001, soon after Spirited Away's release?

Mitaka is part of the museum's official name, and nobody can simply turn up there: every ticket has to be booked in advance.

Netflix took the Ghibli films to most of the world in 2020, but which of these countries did it leave out?

United States: HBO Max had signed the films there in October 2019, the first time Ghibli licensed them to any streamer, so Netflix's deal three months later had to leave America out.

Which company distributed Spirited Away in Japanese cinemas?

Toho, the company behind Godzilla, released it across Japan in July 2001, and two decades later staged the play of the film at its own Imperial Theatre in Tokyo.

What make of car does Chihiro's father drive up the forest track to the tunnel in Spirited Away?

An Audi: when the road turns into a rough forest track her father refuses to turn back, tells the family the car has four-wheel drive and races on to the tunnel.

Miyazaki left Studio Ghibli in 1998, before Spirited Away, to begin what?

Retirement: he quit in January 1998 and built a private office nearby for it, though he meant only to stop directing features. A year later he was formally back, and his next feature was Spirited Away.

What does Haku offer Yubaba for Chihiro's freedom?

Her baby's return: Yubaba learns that Boh is gone only when Haku comes to tell her, and she takes his offer, but only if Chihiro can pass one final test.

What does Haku give Chihiro to eat that leaves her sobbing between mouthfuls?

Rice balls: Haku tells her he has put a spell on them to bring her strength back, and as she weeps with every bite he stays beside her and comforts her.

Chihiro, No-Face and Boh travel to Swamp Bottom by what means?

A train across the sea: the boiler-man gives Chihiro tickets he has kept for forty years, and warns her that the line now runs one way only.

Before Spirited Away, what reading left behind by young girls did Miyazaki find offered nothing but crushes and romance?

Manga magazines: the girls who stayed at his mountain cabin each summer had left them behind, and he decided that what they held dear was something else, and set out to film it.

What does Chihiro say in a closing line added for Spirited Away's English dub?

She can handle it: her father frets about a new town and a new school, and the girl who sulked through the opening shrugs it off; in the Japanese original she says nothing.