Character · Spirited Away
Chihiro Ogino
A sulking ten-year-old on a family drive loses her parents, her nerve and most of her name in one evening.
In Otakana the clue reads: Ten-year-old girl who takes a job at a spirit bathhouse
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Spirited Away
- Letters
- 7 · Easy
Chihiro Ogino does not want to move house, and she is making that clear from the back seat when her father takes a wrong turn. The tunnel leads to a bathhouse for spirits. Her parents eat food that is not theirs and become pigs, and Chihiro is left with exactly one option, which is to ask the witch who owns the place for a job.
Yubaba's contract costs her part of her name. She signs as Chihiro and is handed back Sen, and the film is explicit that forgetting your real name is how the bathhouse keeps its staff. Everything she does afterwards is work: scrubbing out a filthy tub, carrying a dumpling to something enormous, saying thank you to spirits who are used to being ordered about.
Miyazaki made the film for the ten-year-old daughter of a friend, and the animation gives her a real child's body, all knees and hesitation. Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003 and held the record for the highest-grossing Japanese film for nearly twenty years.
Spelling CHIHIRO
CHIHIRO is seven letters, and the name itself is the plot: Yubaba strips the second character away and leaves the first, read as Sen, which is why the heroine answers to two names. The tiles want the full given name rather than OGINO. CHI at the front is the ta-row syllable that romanises as CHI and never as TI.