A link between the German existentialist Martin Heidegger and Japanese mainstream animator and author of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki, seems unlikely. But they share a recurring theme — the relationship between humans and nature. In Miyazaki’s animes, this relationship is mediated through technology which threatens the sacredness in nature. But despite the human-nature conflicts, Miyazaki is optimistic, and surprisingly close to Heidegger’s thoughts in his later works.

Technology and the Loss of the Gods

Nature, or earth, in Heidegger’s thought is introduced in the Origin of the Work of Art, where it is contrasted to the human world. Heidegger sees earth as darkness and sheltering because it can never be completely grasped or structured by humans. If humans, Heidegger states, live in a clearing, earth would be the rocks, soil and trees around and beyond the clearing.

This understanding of earth as something beyond human grasp is also seen in Miyazaki’s Laputa (Castle in the Sky, 1986): the shining crystals hidden in the rock disappear when that rock is broken by the hammer. This directly parallels Heidegger’s description of a stone: “if we attempt a penetration by smashing the rock, it still does not display in its fragments anything inward that has been opened up. The stone has instantly withdrawn again.” If we break the stone open, we cannot reveal the original inside of the unbroken stone. This is because this original inside withdraws as soon as we break the stone. In this sense, earth is ungraspable, being in darkness.