Magazine representative of kawaii culture.

Director Hayao Miyazaki is said to have been inspired to create Spririted Away by a friend of his daughter's and a growing dissatisfaction with media aimed at preteen girls: "I made this film for five young girls who are daughters of friends of mine and who visit me at my cabin in the mountains every summer...I read some of the manga the girls left at my cabin, and it struck me that we have been providing them with nothing but a certain kind of cheap romance, which is not what 10-year-old girls really dream about" (Solomon, 34).

Much of the media for Japanese girls in this demographic is set in the frame of kawaii culture; as a time where life is easy and carefree and Hello Kitty and flirting are all-encompassing concerns. While this is a popular aesthetic (both within and out of Japan), it can undermine the very real struggles that preteens face, and Chihiro, as an easily identifiable figure, stands in opposition to this narrative.  She faces very real dangers and darkness in her quest, possesses only a cursory interest in romance, and goes through very real emotional struggle that were, and to some extent remain, underrepresented for young Japanese women.

Spirited Away's release in 2001 was just another step in a growing trend away from the trivial and light-hearted to darker themes in anime and manga aimed for a young female audience: "More recently, however, anime and manga have treated the shojo in infinitely darker and more complex terms, from the battling shojo Utena who wants to change the world in Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shojo kakumei Utena, 1977; dir. Ikuhara Kunihiko), to the haunted, death-ridden figures of Asuka Langley and Ayanami Rei in Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinseiki ebuangerion, 1996; dir. Anno Hideaki)." (Napier, 296). Though kawaii culture will likely never disappear from Japan's zeitgeist, its recent evolution is encouraging in this respect.

Hello Kitty consumerism.

The concept of kawaii as we know it can be traced to the end of World War II as Japan came to terms with the sense of being 'a diminished global power,' but as the movement grew it became deeply linked to consumerism (Brown, 3).  Put simply, being kawaii means owning kawaii things, which is why Hello Kitty shows up on everything from T-shirts to shotglasses.

Chihiro in opposing kawaii opposes the culture of runaway consumerism in modern Japan, and in so doing bids Japan itself to reject the dominance of consumer greed as it forms its national identity.