Humanities · wisecrack2018-06-23

The Philosophy of Miyazaki

In one sentence: The forest gods, soot sprites, and furious mountain spirits that keep showing up in Miyazaki's films aren't just fantasy dressing — this Wisecrack episode argues they're the fingerprints of a specific religious worldview, Japanese Shinto's belief that spirit (kami) runs through everything, and its long-running argument with the West's more human-centered way of valuing nature.

Films and Recurring Motifs

The episode moves across several of Miyazaki's (and Ghibli's) features — Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Spirited Away, The Wind Rises, and Castle in the Sky — and keeps landing on the same handful of motifs:

War between humans and nature: Princess Mononoke stages an all-out conflict between an industrial iron town and the forest's gods; Nausicaä pits human armies against a swarm of giant insects, and the film's opening credits literally carry the World Wildlife Fund's stamp of approval.
Spirits woven into ordinary life: In My Neighbor Totoro, sisters Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe move to the countryside and end up living alongside soot sprites and a forest god (Totoro) housed in a gohei charm — and the local wise-woman treats them like familiar wildlife rather than something otherworldly.
Nature's intrinsic value vs. instrumental value: In Ponyo, the magician Fujimoto opposes his daughter's wish to become human specifically because humans use the ocean only for their own gain.
Nature vs. technology: In Princess Mononoke, Lady Eboshi's iron town clear-cuts the forest to feed its mining operation, sparking open war with the mountain god.
Nature and spirits aren't automatically good: Nausicaä's toxic jungle can kill you in five minutes without a mask; Spirited Away's witch Yubaba and the intruder No-Face are nowhere near as friendly as Totoro.
Technology isn't automatically bad either: In what the episode calls Miyazaki's "last film" (a description that reflects how things stood when this was made in 2018), The Wind Rises frames its protagonist Jiro's airplanes as "beautiful dreams," while it's freak natural events — an earthquake, disease — that actually drive the film's conflict.
Balance and reconciliation: In Castle in the Sky, the abandoned city of Laputa has been fully overtaken by plant life a century later, and even its giant guardian robots tend the wildlife and lay flowers on graves — nature and technology in a kind of synthesis.

The Philosophy Underneath

Shinto's core unit isn't a single god but kami — a word that's both singular and plural, naming both the countless specific spirits inhabiting the world and the divine essence connecting all things. The episode's key point is that this worldview is fundamentally about interconnectedness: a tree that looks to most of us like, in the host's words, "a big fking tree" might be a yorishiro** to a Shintoist — an object a god can reside in — which makes it part of the sacred fabric of reality rather than just scenery.

The episode brings in historian Lynn White's argument that religion shapes how a culture treats its environment: Judeo-Christian tradition grants humans "dominion over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth," placing nature beneath humanity, while Shinto — because everything carries a spiritual component — is non-anthropocentric: humans aren't the center of the universe. That difference, the episode argues, is the root of the peace-with-nature theme running through Miyazaki's work.

It then lines that Shinto view up against two Western philosophical postures toward nature: Aristotle's claim in the Politics that "nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man" (an instrumental view of value) — which the episode links to the logic behind American Manifest Destiny — versus a Kantian move it borrows and repurposes: rational agents "must be treated as an end, never merely as a means," so if the land itself is full of thinking, rational spirits, it too deserves to be treated as an end, possessing intrinsic value rather than merely instrumental value. This clash between intrinsic and instrumental value is what the episode identifies as the root of conflict across Miyazaki's films, from Fujimoto's standoff with humanity in Ponyo to the forest-versus-ironworks war in Princess Mononoke.

On the technology side, the episode calls in Martin Heidegger (jokingly dubbed "philosophy's Ron Swanson"): once we view nature only through the lens of science and rationality, we become blind to the true essence of things — trees become mere wood, beaches become mere iron sand, and a giant walking god becomes nothing more than an obstacle. That, the episode argues, is exactly the mindset driving Irontown's residents in Princess Mononoke: not villainy so much as a way of seeing that reduces everything to raw material.

The episode ties it all together through Shinto's idea of ritual purity and balance: the dead must be properly buried for their souls to rest; the sacrifices of local gods and wildlife, even when made for humanity's benefit, must be honored and respected, or angered spirits turn into curses. Miyazaki's actual stance, per the episode, isn't a simple "nature good, technology bad" binary — it's about respect and balance. Castle in the Sky's ending is offered as the definitive image: Laputa is destroyed, but the tree growing around its crystal power source and the crystal itself survive intact, soaring off into the sky together — technology and nature in perfect synthesis.

Thinkers and Concepts Referenced

Shinto: core concepts of kami (spirit/divinity, same word singular or plural), yorishiro (an object a spirit inhabits), and ritual purity.
Lynn White (historian): argues religion shapes a culture's treatment of the environment, used here to contrast Judeo-Christian dominion doctrine with Shinto's non-anthropocentrism.
Aristotle: the Politics line "nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man," presented as the Western instrumental-value position.
Kant: the principle that rational agents "must be treated as an end, never merely as a means," repurposed by the episode to argue for nature's intrinsic value.
Martin Heidegger: cited for the idea that a purely scientific-rational lens obscures the true essence of things, used to explain Irontown's relationship to the forest in Princess Mononoke.
Manifest Destiny: the American expansionist narrative, drawn as a parallel to Aristotle's instrumental view of nature.

Questions Worth Sitting With

Watching something like My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away, have you ever felt like some ordinary corner of the frame had "something" living in it? After this episode, would you look differently at an old tree or a quiet spot near your own house that you'd never really thought about before?
Shinto, as the episode frames it, holds that land has intrinsic value — worth valuing not because it's useful to you. Is there anything in your own life you value not because it's useful, but simply because it matters in itself?
In Princess Mononoke, industrial progress gives the town's women work and dignity and also brings curses and war — it's not simply good or bad. Do you think technology itself is good or bad, or does it depend entirely on who's using it and why?
The host closes the episode by asking the audience directly whether we should value wildlife for its own sake or for what it offers us — maybe not materially, but in quality of life. Is that actually a different answer, or the same one in disguise? What would you say, and why?
In The Wind Rises, Jiro's dream is simply to build beautiful airplanes — and those same airplanes end up used for war. Is loving the thing you make separate from how it's eventually used? Can you think of an example like that from your own life or the world around you?

Quotable Lines

"Insects and humans cannot live in the same world. You know that." — Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

"Ohm, please forgive us for disturbing your nest. We're very sorry. We are not your enemies. We mean you no harm." — Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä addressing a giant Ohm

"Don't worry, dear. They're nothing to be afraid of. If they decide you're nice people, they won't harm you, and after a little while they'll just go away." — My Neighbor Totoro, the local wise-woman on the soot sprites

"Nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man." — Aristotle, Politics, quoted in the episode

"...as an end, never merely as a means." — Kant's principle, repurposed by the episode to argue for the land's intrinsic value

"Human? What do you know about humans, Brunnhilde? They spoil the sea. They treat your home like their empty, black souls. I was once, long ago, a human myself. I had to leave that all behind to serve the earth." — Ponyo, Fujimoto

"I love all the Ponyos." — Ponyo, Sosuke

"She's not even afraid of the gods, that woman." — Princess Mononoke, a townsperson on Lady Eboshi

"Airplanes are not tools for war. They're not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality." — The Wind Rises, Giovanni Caproni

"In short, we're consumers and the earth is our Walmart." — host Jared's own aside, not a line from any film

Rich Details and Trivia

The episode introduces Miyazaki as "the Walt Disney of anime," crediting him with eleven feature films and over 125 major awards (the episode's own figures, not independently verified here).
Nausicaä's opening credits literally carry the World Wildlife Fund's stamp of approval — the host rewinds specifically to show the frame.
Kami is grammatically both singular and plural: it can name one specific spirit or the divine essence running through everything at once.
A yorishiro is whatever object a spirit chooses to inhabit — it can be a great tree, or, as in My Neighbor Totoro, a gohei charm meant to bless a house.
The episode notes Japan is among the least religious countries in the world by self-identification, yet over 80% of its population participates in Shinto traditions — the host jokes that Japan has more vending machines than shrines.
Even the host admits defeat describing the catbus that helps find Mei at the end of My Neighbor Totoro: "Seriously, I don't know what to call that!"
The episode jokingly nicknames Heidegger "philosophy's Ron Swanson."
At the time of recording (2018), the episode mentions Miyazaki was about to open a nature sanctuary later that year, and describes The Wind Rises as his "last film" — both framed as true at that moment, recorded here as stated rather than updated with anything that happened afterward.

Cross-Domain Connections

A check against the rest of the wiki — the acquired (business history) domain and the science domain's NPR Short Wave episodes — turned up nothing substantively connected to this episode: acquired's corporate histories don't intersect with Japanese religious philosophy or animation criticism, and Short Wave's science explainers don't touch Shinto or the Western philosophers cited here. Honest verdict: there's nothing in the wiki to link to right now. If the humanities domain later ingests more material on technology ethics or East-West comparisons of religious/natural-value frameworks, a connection could be added then.

Pages Worth Building

shinto — a concept page for Shinto's core vocabulary (kami, yorishiro, ritual purity), useful background for any future Ghibli- or Japan-culture-adjacent entries, especially if more Wisecrack Miyazaki/Ghibli episodes get ingested.
hayao-miyazaki — an entity page for the director himself, the natural connective node for this episode and any future Ghibli-related content.
martin-heidegger — Heidegger's philosophy of technology (cited here for the claim that a scientific-rational lens obscures the true essence of things), likely to recur if the humanities domain later covers technology ethics or critiques of modernity.

Source · wisecrack