Spirited Away

Leon Hsu
EAP 101
Prof. Uselmann
Spirited Away
Movie soundtracks play a crucial role in films, often moving the direction of the plot
forward. In the Hollywood movie industry, most movie soundtracks are more likely to be
straightforward and outgoing. The soundtrack usually matches the scene which enhances the
emotiveness of the characters. However, the soundtrack of Spirited Away is more hazy and
ambiguous in terms of conveying emotions of the characters. Often times, the music does not
even match the scene. By composing using these techniques, Joe Hisaishi’s musical
presentation of each scene is atypical and unique.
The music of the opening scene catches the ear. It follows the adventures of a ten year
old girl named Chihiro. Chihiro and her parents are moving to a small Japanese town, in the
countryside, much to Chihiro’s dismay. She sat in the backseat of the car, holding a bouquet
of flowers her friend has given her as a goodbye present. With both of Chihiro’s parents
telling her how she will enjoy the new town by showing her a new school she is about to
attend, Chihiro complains about how her life is going to be miserable comparing to where she
previously lived. Although the scenery is beautiful and peaceful, the music starts with four
serene but slightly melancholy chords at the beginning. The chord progression is non-
functional and three of the chords are quartal harmonies. These provide an ethereal,
mysterious atmosphere to the audience. After the four chord intro, it expands the
orchestration with string pads specifying the functions of the chord progression. Then a piano
melody plays to outline the story. Finally, when all basic story elements are set, the theme
kicks in using piano with the title of the movie showing on the screen. The whole scene is
light, pure, and relaxed until Chihiro’s dad decided to take a shortcut adventure. However, the
music is in A minor, even with some non-functional suspended chord at the beginning,
emphasizing the uncertain and gloomy feeling of Chihiro. The theme that comes with the title
is actually a brilliant idea, so that the beautiful theme will not be covered up by the plots.
Instead, it stands out from the movie while it is showing the title, giving audiences even
stronger impression to both the theme music and the title of the movie.
The music starts to turn vague, odd, and uncanny after they entered the other side of the
tunnel. This plot of the scene looks absolutely normal, just some restaurants and houses. But
the music tends to lead audiences uncertainty, wondering what is going to happen next in this
strange town. It applies major chord to minor chord progression, and also applies flat scale
degree 2 and 5 (Phrygian or Locrian mode) to highlight the sound of tritone and minor
second interval. The mixture of such dissonant chord progressions and scales shows the
unsafe feeling of Chihiro, and a hint to the audiences that something is going to happen.
Furthermore, when all the spirits starting to come out at night, Joe did not make the music
creepy and scary in terms of Chihiro’s point of view. Instead, he made it majestic using large
orchestration, and applied Japanese scales to put more focus on the bustling town in
traditional Japanese style full of spirits. The way that he dealt with the spirit scene is totally
different from other movies. People tend to think spirits are scary and harmful, but Joe gave a
neutral, objective attitude towards the spirits by making the music not horrifying at all. This
blurs out the setting of the characters, or in other words, villain, which makes the audiences
still cannot understand the big picture of the story so that people will be even more interested
in the upcoming plots and scenes.
Another creative musical idea in terms of film scoring is the use of silence. In the scene
when Chihiro first met Yubaba to ask for a job, the music actually stops multiple times.
Sometimes, instead of putting a lot of music trying to trigger the audiences’ emotion or
enhancing the scenes, it is more effective to make it silent. For example, it is a complete
silent when Chihiro was taking elevator to Yubaba’s office. Usually when people are nervous,
we are able to hear our heart beats pounding, which gives us the same effect when everything
is in silent. It gives the audiences a sense of nervousness, being afraid that Chihiro might
happen something bad when facing Yubaba. The other example of silence is when Yubaba
arguing with Chihiro that she does not deserve a job in the bathhouse. The use of silence in
this scene seems like a reflection of Chihiro’s mind. All she wanted was a permission of a
job, rather than listening to Yubaba babbling. Therefore, there is no music when Yubaba was
babbling because Chihiro was not even paying attention to what she said. In short, silence in
the movie is used to draw audiences’ attention, or to illustrate something that does not matter
at all.
The contrast scene of Spirited Away which makes the movie more interesting is when
Chihiro taking the train to visit Zeniba. On the way to Swamp Bottom, there are no plots and
no dialogue, but only scenery and music. This may be the calm before the storm which is
Chihiro met Haku and found out his real name (the climax of the movie), but I believe there
is a deeper context in this scene. It is actually not a certain plot, thesis, or metaphor that the
movie want to convey to the audience. Instead, it is an emotional information that gives us a
sense of calmness and melancholy, giving us to feel the “emptiness” and to breathe after the
messy situation of No Face turning into monster. According to an interview of Hayao
Miyazaki, the director of Spirited Away, “We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It's
called ‘ma.’ Emptiness. It's there intentionally. If you just have non-stop action with no
breathing space at all, it's just busyness.” This scene gives the movie more tension-and-
release to the audience. Well, how does music cooperate this scene? It is mostly E natural
minor with a little Japanese scale in order to blur out the chord progression, reflecting
Chihiro’s uncertainty, gloomy emotions. Also, there are lots of quartal harmonies in the
middle of the music, just to reduce the tonality function and resolution pull between the
harmonies. The soundtrack cooperates with the scene perfectly, but act as its own character in
the film. The music applies misty, floaty quartal harmonies, showing the endless travel of the
spirit passengers and Chihiro exploring the unknown. It makes me feel like the ideal of
impressionism, making music with no beginning and end. The harmonies are really similar to
Debussy’s harmony and his use of whole tone scale. In this musical system, there is no
direction or leading tone but only “colors” of the harmony and parallel voicing to reduce the
resolution, just like the scene’s emptiness and the travel without destination.
In conclusion, Spirited Away is in contrast to Hollywood movies because of its
mysterious, melancholic, and imaginative soundtrack that brings the audience to a unique
journey of Chihiro. Detractors may say that Hollywood movies already incorporate these
ideas and harmonic structures into their music. But, the synthesis of all of the parts in one
place makes the music of Spirited Away a more completely different experience than a
Hollywood blockbuster.

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Leon Hsu

presentation of each scene is atypical and unique.

in the upcoming plots and scenes.

messy situation of No Face turning into monster. According to an interview of Hayao

In conclusion, Spirited Away is in contrast to Hollywood movies because of its

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