Character · Spirited Away
Kamaji
Six arms, a wall of drawers, and a boiler room nobody in the bathhouse ever wants to visit.
In Otakana the clue reads: Six-armed man who runs the boiler room
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Spirited Away
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Kamaji runs the furnace under the bathhouse, feeding it coal and mixing the herbal waters that go up to the tubs. His arms stretch clear across the room to reach the drawers, all of them, without him ever standing up. He calls himself a slave to the boiler and says it in the tone people use about a desk they cannot leave.
The soot sprites do the carrying, small and round and easily distracted, and when Chihiro helps one with a lump of coal Kamaji has to explain that a job half done will make the sprite vanish. It is the first rule of the place she learns. Work is what keeps you real here, and pity without work is no favour at all.
He is also the first spirit who lies for her. He tells Yubaba's forewoman that Chihiro is his granddaughter, hands over train tickets he has been saving for forty years, and sends her off with as little ceremony as he can manage. Miyazaki gives the warmest moment in the film to its sootiest character.
Spelling KAMAJI
KAMAJI is six letters, and the name is a description rather than a name. Kama is the boiler or cauldron he tends, and ji is the affectionate tag attached to an old man, so he is roughly boiler grandpa. Two A's in the second and fourth positions, and that J is the tile players expect to be a G or a Z.