Anamnesis

During our recent class discussion regarding anamnesis or the idea of recollection of another existence, I couldn't help but think of the cartoon film Spirited Away. Spirited Away is written by renowned Japanese animator and director Hayao Miyazaki. This film is incredibly imaginative, ingeniously clever, heartwarming, as well as beautifully written and animated. Many of Miyazaki's pictures investigate complex themes of nature, life, and existence. In this film, he investigates the idea of anamnesis and recollection as the essence of life. Plato spoke of the relationship between the two. 

Meno: "And how are you going to search for [the nature of virtue] when you don't know at all what it is, Socrates? Which of all the things you don't know will you set up as target for your search? And even if you actually come across it, how will you know that it is that thing which you don't know?"

Socrates: "They say that the soul of man is immortal and never perishes, though at one time it makes an end, called dying, and at another is born again...Since the soul is immortal, and has been born many times, she has beheld all things in this world and the next, and there is nothing she has not learnt; so it is not surprising that she can remember what she once knew about virtue and other things. For since all nature is akin, and the soul has learnt all things, there is nothing to prevent her, by recollecting one single thing--what men call 'learning'--discovering all the rest, if her search is untiring and courageous. For learning and inquiry are nothing but recollection."

In Spirited Away Yubaba, the owner of a bathhouse for spirits, takes the names of her workers so that they are unable to recall them and be able to leave. They are indentured because of their inability to remember their lives before they came to work in the bathhouse.

The anamnesis of Haku frees him from slavery to the bathhouse and Yubaba. Chihiro helps awaken him to his prior existence.

 

In the final scenes of the movie, Chihiro is asked to identify her parents who have been transformed into pigs in order to free herself and them and return to the "human world." Her awakening is more literal than that of Haku. After completing the test she is returned to her parents and eventually goes back home. Much of what has happened to her reveals itself as a dream.