By Fernando Márquez

Princess Mononoke is an animated film from the famed Ghibli Studios of Japan that was launched in 1997. The film was acclaimed by the critics and won several prizes in Japan. The film portrays a fictional story based in the Muromachi period of feudal Japan, where Ashitaka (the prince of the Emishi people) sets off in a journey to the spirits forest in the western lands to find a way to break the curse that has taken him by killing the demon that took over the boar god Nago. In this journey he stumbles upon a war between the forest gods and the humans of “Irontown”, an iron foundry complex, because humans have been destroying the forest and the animals living in it to expand their production.

This film is a very interesting artwork where various philosophical thoughts can be analyzed and where issues like capitalist production, accumulation and environment destruction are criticized. One of the main philosophical elements discussed is pantheism. Pantheism is the idea that reality and divinity are the same thing, the divine is engrained in all-things in existence: in daily life, in nature, in the cosmos (León Portilla, 2006). This is clearly appreciated in the dialogues of Moro, the wolf goddess; she argues that she and her children (wolf and San, who is the adoptive human daughter of Moro), as well as all the animals of the forest, live and die with the forest; if the forest dies they die with it. This pantheistic idea is part of the cosmovision of various indigenous groups in the Abya Yala, which is the indigenous conception that surged from the Kuna/Puna people in Central America to refer to the whole Latin America region (Del Valle, 2015), such as the Nahuas, the Krenak, the Quechuas, the Aymaras, the Incas, the Ayuujk (Mixes) and the Mayas (Díaz Gómez, 2001; Gudynas, 2016; Krenak, 2019; León Portilla, 2006; Pérez Ruiz & Argueta Villamar, 2011; C. Walsh, 2008).

The pantheistic conception that is portrayed in the animals, spirits and deities of the forest gives them a different philosophy than humans, where the goal of existence is not to produce, accumulate and profit more, but rather to preserve life and harmony. This cosmovision is closely related to the “sentipensar” (which can be translated as feel-think) philosophy of the Amazonian indigenous groups, where the relation with the land and water in their territory is sacred, and as such should be respected and preserved; thus, humans have to co-exist respecting nature in balance (Escobar, 2016). This philosophy challenges the anthropocentric philosophy of humans, in which humans think they are the superior and only important species and as such, they believe they have the right to destroy the forest, its deities and animals (Dyer, 2017; Gudynas, 2016).

Another relevant philosophy that challenges anthropocentrism and that is appreciated in the film is perspectivism; perspectivism is the philosophy that Amazonian indigenous groups such as the Wari and Vaupés conceive, in which humans and animals have the same type of soul, they can think and speak, the difference between them is that they wear different garments, animals wear animal skin and humans wear human skill, but if they “took off” these skins they would be the same, and as such these indigenous groups respect and co-exist in balance with animals and nature in the Amazonas and argue that can communicate with animals (Viveiros de Castro, 1998). This philosophy is portrayed in the film; the animals (including monkeys, the wolf deities and the boar deities) talk between them and with humans and criticize the anthropocentrism philosophy of humans, especially Moro that argues that humans won’t stop to destroy everyone and everything in the forest just for ambition.

On the other hand, the respect, preservation and harmonic relations with nature are important elements of the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, where balance, harmony and peace are central, and earthly ambitions are useless and as such, Taoists detach from them (Boedicker & Boedicker, 2009; Vandier-Nicolas, 2002).

All of the philosophical thoughts and arguments portrayed in the film are a broad critique to the economic and social system that we live in (capitalism that bases in extractivism and neocolonialism), where the environment is destroyed without caring for the consequences for life in the planet and for humans in the long run (Calixto Flores, 2010; Carr et al., 2018; Escobar, 2004; C. E. Walsh, 2013), ideas that have a clear Marxist sense (Marx, 2000) and also a decolonial sense.

Films like Princess Mononoke are very relevant because they are popular films that can raise awareness and critical consciousness about our current pressing issues (Fraser, 2018; Panagia, 2013); in this case capitalist oppression, extractivism, neocolonialism and environment destruction.

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