Chihiro and her family in their international car and global, modernized clothing representing the decline of character and rise of apathy in modern Japan.

The bathhouse exterior, main setting for the story, symbolic of both a return to authentic Japanese culture and moral gray areas of identity formation.

While Chihiro's search and arrival at identity are worthy of study independent of any broader context, it is also emblematic of common debates within Japan summed up in two words: kokusaika, meaning 'internationalization,' and furusato, interpreted as 'native place' or 'old hometown' (Napier, 287). This discussion is a reaction to the spread of homogenizing global uberculture and a desire to recover native Japanese culture.

As a disrespectful, lazy only child, Chihiro embodies the negative stereotype of childhood in modern Japan, and her modern Western-inspired dress and her parents German car are also clear markers of globalization.  By comparing this mundane and apathetic 'human world' with the rich and fantastical realm of traditional Japanese spirits and kami (gods), Spirited Away seems on the surface to argue for a wholesale rejection of the invasive cultural elements of modernity.  But this reading is complicated by the fact that the primary Japanese setpiece, the bathhouse, is simultaneoulsy the site of Chihiro's spiritual transformation and a hotbed of corruption and greed.

So on the one hand we have modern consumerist disinterest and on the other a beautiful cultural past with dubious morality.  How are these reconciled? Scholar of Japanese studies Susan Napier explains: "In neither Princess Mononoke [an earlier Miyazaki film] nor Spirited Away does the "return to Japan" mean an unproblematic acceptance of all aspects of Japanese culture" (Napier, parantheses added).

In this view, the cultural past of Japan was not intended to be fully revived, but only the worthwhile parts--respect, work ethic, and compassion--were to be preserved and syntehsized into the post-globalization landscape.  Chihiro is not a natural part of the spirt world; she cannot live her life in the cultural past.  But she can learn from it, retain the parts that please her, and integrate them into her modern life.  She shouldn't let consumerism and modernity turn her into a pig as it does her parents, nor can she live her life in the past, ignoring the challenges of the present.  The fact that Chihiro ends the film by returning to a mundane consumerist environment is not a resignation to the slow decline of morality in modern society, it is an example of how a nation should go about preserving its native culture. 

The past can and should not be fully revived and Audis and credit cards are here to stay, but the things that make people long for Japan's past, its cultural uniqueness and moral strength, don't need to disappear.  As nations and individuals form and discover their respective identities, what matters is not so much the aesthetic choices (though they certainly play a role), but rather the strength of their convictions and moral fortitude.