July 27, 2002
Emails part two: Chihiro to Masaaki

(Translator note: you must have an Asian font installed to see the Japanese characters in my comments.
In Japanese, each word is represented by one or more Sino-Japanese characters (Kanji). For example the Kanji 愛 ("Ai", JIS Code 3026 hex) has the meanings "love" and "affection", and 望 ("Bou", JIS 4B3E) means "hope", "desire". This character is not the same character as 坊 ("Bou", JIS 4B37) which is used for the Baby, and means "boy", "priest". Thus a flying word or a word in a tree has to be imagined quite differently than the corresponding English word.)

Date: 2002/07/27
To: Masaaki
From: Chihiro
Subject: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi

Hello, Masaaki.

Here is something that I wrote yesterday. I hope you enjoy reading it, it's kind of long. It may sound a bit stupid or odd to you, I don't know. I've tried writing down the same things lots of times in different variations, and I keep changing the style all the time. This seems to come pretty close to what I'm actually feeling in my head right now.

Chihiro

Attachment: words.doc (converted to 'txt')

Dear Masaaki.

I am trying to write down my thoughts, but that is really not easy, since I don't know where to start. The words are dancing in my mind like butterflies in a blooming cherry tree in springtime. It all makes a perfect picture, but when I want to put them in order, they all fly to sit somewhere else. The words are not used to being seen, and are very shy. They have been free for a very long time, and only few people were allowed near. When there are strangers approaching, they fly away.

I tried to explain them, you are not a stranger any more, you would never misuse them for another purpose, but they don't listen to me. They make fun of me by building new strange sentences, that I've never thought before. So I just sit here in silence and wait for the first word to arrive. If one of them comes, the others get curious and follow. It's always that way.

I'm sitting in the sun a little away from our house, surrounded by some trees. I sometimes come here to think, or to be thoughtless. Sometimes to remember, or to forget. Today I'm here to write. There is a lot that I can't recall, but that doesn't worry me, because nothing that ever happened is forgotten, even if I don't remember it.

But quiet, there's the first word approaching. He's still shy, but I can see him now, it's "Ai". "Ai" isn't always the first one to reach me, but never the last one. And "Ai" is right, I feel a lot of affection towards my memories now. Even though I was still young, what I remember very strongly right now is that there was love everywhere in the Spirit World. Even if people there didn't show it, they felt it. It is a bit like in this world, only here people are not aware of it.

I think of the Spirits and Gods in the other world as just "people", because to me they all have souls, just like everybody else. When it happened, I knew so little of what it all meant. I wasn't thinking of much more than the next thing to do, the next step. Only much later I started to grasp the vastness of what I had experienced.

Oh, look. A friend of "Ai" has come, it's "Bou". They often play together, they seem to be very close friends. "Bou" is always faster than "Ai", and if there was a new spot to discover, then it usually was "Bou" who attracted the other words.

"Bou" has become a little tired in the last year, maybe he's getting old. He's not as active any more as he used to be, sometimes I have to look for him, and when I don't find him then I miss him. I miss the hope I had a few years ago. I always desired for a change, for a sign that tells me that I really am different from everybody else, but I'm not, the sign didn't come. And if it came, I didn't see it.

But today "Bou" seems to be very happy, he's flying back to bring some others along. Now they all come, there's "dream" and "work" and "silence". Oh, and now I already see "Yuu" ("friend"), what a surprise. He usually stays with Rin and Kamajii and Haku and the others, but I think today he wants to get to know you.

And who do we have here? This is "Shin" ("truth", "trust", "faith", JIS 3F2E) sitting on my knee. He wants me to tell you about him first. Well, I have to start somewhere, so why not.

"Shin" hasn't always been easy on me after my return to this world. In the beginning he was by my side, but others couldn't see him. They told me, he isn't there any more, even though I saw him, right there in front of my eyes! Why wouldn't they believe me? Always more questions and questions. And they wanted explanations that I didn't have.

You know the facts, don't you? I don't know which article you have found, so here it is again: We drove to our new home on March 27th 1998, but we never arrived. Nobody had seen us on the way, so to the police, whom my grandmother contacted later, didn't have any clue where to look for us. They said we ran away, although there was no apparent reason for us. But no accident was reported, no car found, and they didn't put much effort into finding us.

We returned three months later, June 25th. My parents had no memory of it, they hadn't even gained weight, but I was aware of what had happened. The car was all dusty, and the forest looked like summer, too, so my parents thought it all very strange. After that it all was a chaos. Luckily our new house wasn't sold yet, but the furniture had been brought to my grandma's house. It took my parents some time to believe how much time actually had passed, and after that they took the time to listen to my version of the story. I think my dad didn't believe me at all at first, but my mom tried to.

The police didn't pay any attention to our return. Maybe they thought our lame explanation an excuse for running and returning with bad conscience. They didn't even examine the place much.

Well, we did, but there was nothing, just the "old" building, not one with new paint. The only spiritual signs there were the old statues and God's houses next to the way. I got the idea that in the past there might have been "magical disappearances" too, and later I even found books with old stories about it. But why did the bath house appear that day, for us? At first I thought it was because my father was driving so fast, so at a certain speed the gate opens, or something. But testing it, we never succeeded again. Now I think is has to be a certain constellation of the stars, a certain time, a time frame of a few seconds, or a combination of everything. Or it's just gone now.

So my parallel universe could not be proven, my father had lost his job, my mother was desperate, and all we had was my story. My father tried to sell it to some newspapers first, by all they did was some tiny articles. You probably read one of those.

School was really awful for me. Nobody had taught me how to lie up until then, so I was always willing to tell them about my disappearance. I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have insisted that I believed it really was true. After some time I didn't say anything anymore. That's when my parents consulted some professional help from doctors and psychiatrists. That too was awful in the beginning, and of course they too never believed me. But they did something else: they believed that I myself believed. It was a start.

Money was short, the opportunity to sell the story came, and we took it. I remember how I was telling them lots of details, and that was the first time anyone was really interested in hearing my story. Except for Risa of course, she always listened to everything I told her. That was in Summer 1999, and I had no idea what kind of movie they would make. They just told us, it's a story that would make a great film, and if it had success, we'd get even some more money.

After that it got really quiet again. That's when I started paying attention to my dreams. I didn't always dream of my disappearance, but when I did, it had been just memories, reliving stuff that I had experienced. But from then on sometimes it seemed like they were alive on the other side.

Of course dreams are meant to seem alive, and I probably would have agreed that the whole thing had been all just a dream, if there hadn't been so much truth in it. I remembered Kanji from my trip that I hadn't learned yet, and after writing them down, they made perfect sense. Even the definitions Rin had given me had been correct. I was able to name and descibe Gods and Spirits that are mentioned in old books, but very rarely, and certainly none from my family knew anything about it.

They told us theories, that people and generations can carry with them a knowledge accessible to all, and passed on to future generations. Oh, we heard a lot of theories, and they all made sense, but none could explain it all.

Needless to say, even though dad got a new job, the town didn't really like us, they thought us too eccentric. School didn't get any better, although I didn't really care any more. I don't remember much, except for my studying. So Spring 2000 we moved again, into this town, and I started Middle School here. And we also decided to keep our names out of the movie.

I wasn't interested in much else than getting my mind filled with words and numbers, so I wouldn't have to think of it all the time. And I was able to forget, although it was hard on days when I had a dream of the Spirit World. Nobody was ever able to help me with that, and maybe I didn't even want to get rid of them. I had experienced something special, and they could take all away and disenchant everything, but I'd keep my dreams.

Risa had been the only one I could always talk to, although I'm not sure at all whether she believes it is really possible and that everyone I saw really exists, or if it is just all in my head.

But here "Shin" can't help any more. What is truth? What does exist? Who's to decide? Is it just a collection of science facts? Then no God exists anywhere. Is it a collection of the beliefs of every single person on earth? Then it's easy for me to create existence just by tricking anyone to believe something. It's somewhere between, but where? Maybe the border is changing each generation, and I feel the changing even now.

You can see, I've spent a lot of reading and thinking, and still there is no solution. It does not matter to me who those grey people in the train were, I've seen them, that's enough for me. I don't need everything explained. When I see those "experts" on Spirited Away in the internet and their theories and explanations, it makes me cry. They didn't get the point of the movie. The point is, that logic doesn't help here any more.

Of course everyone may have his own opinion, and probably there even are people who think it is true, in one of all the meanings of the word "truth". But after that, they should think about how they can use this truth in daily life. This world is the one we have to change, to let the things we learned effect us. In reality there is not much magic, not yet, it takes time to get there, if we really want to.

I'm sorry, I get emotional when I think of it. If you want to know what really angers me, it's the people who understand it, even tell it others, but don't do it, don't live it. Their daily life doesn't change, they don't read any books about philosophy or religion or science, they don't learn. They wait for others to tell them new things, they don't judge for themselves. Others have to change the world for them.

"Shin" looks really sad now, here on my knee. In my heart I know that what I experienced is the truth, for me, but I failed in telling others. I feel, that my duty is to pass on what I've learned. I've let them do the movie, and know everyone knows, but nothing changes.

What did I expect? That the magical disappearance is truth to me is nothing much to change anything in the world. They might say now: "Ok, it's true, Spirits exist, and now what? Pray to them, worship them? We can do that once a year." What else can I do? I don't see a way. I don't even know what my goal is anymore.

Small steps are more important than big ones, and I have time. I might be ahead of my class in verbally expressing my thoughts, but I don't feel like writing a book. I want to learn, before I teach. I feel like there's so much more in this world to learn, that I don't even know where to start.

I start today by telling you what I'm thinking, even if it will change everything between us. You will not see my story the way I do, nobody will, no matter how much I try to explain. But that's ok, that's what makes us individuals. I hope this doesn't sound sad, because it isn't. I'm happy right now, and maybe it's a time now to start something new. I don't know what, but I will when I see it.

You have music to keep you going, I do not have that, but I want to think of it as something similar. You can keep a melody in your head for a whole day, even a symphony. You can hear it in your head, even though it isn't audible to others. And nobody thinks you are nuts. You can claim that your music has a soul, that it is alive, that it is true. And people believe you.

But you can make it true for others by writing your music down, playing your music. That way everyone else can take part in it. Yet nobody will think of the music the same way you do, they all hear something different. And it takes a long time to study, until you succeed letting the music talk.

At least the way to reach that goal is clear. There are teachers who understand what you are trying to do, who help you. For me it is difficult to find anyone who helps me pass on my thoughts. And I do not even know yet what I'm trying to do. But I feel that I'm on the right path now.

But who am I to say what you want and who you are? I do not know more than what you told me, the side you show me. I don't know what you expect, what you wish, what you want. Even when you say it, you say just words, and the sound of them in my ear is likely to be different from the taste of them in your mouth.

Maybe you expected to hear more details from the Spirit World, things that were not in the movie. And all I write is about reality, you might be disappointed. I'm sorry. I want you to understand that I don't think about details any more. Seeing the movie reminds me of things I've known before but forgotten for a long time. I do remember the daily work in the bath house of course, and that's one of my dearest memories. And I remember my friends, Rin and Haku and the others, and I had more friends that were not in the movie, other workers like Rin.

"Shin" is gone again, all that is left is speculation. All other words return to their tree again as well, but I don't feel alone right now. I have confidence. The world seems different today. The sun is brighter than yesterday, but there is more…

All I have now is feelings, the words are gone. Words fly around, are sometimes near, sometimes far, but my feelings stay with me. Words leave me, they don't say when they will be back, and then I miss them. I need them to say what I'm feeling, but they disappoint me. The words aren't mine, they belong everyone, I have to share them. I do that gladly. I just wish there were one of them that I could call my own.

But wait, what's this, hear in the grass? Sleeping… It's one of the words, he didn't return back to the tree. He stayed with me. Maybe he was just tired, and didn't notice the others leaving. I should bring him back to the others. I wonder, which word he is…

How sweet, there're actually two words, real close to each other. I know them well, very well, and they never forget me. One of them reminds me of who I was, the other one of who I will be, and together they tell me who I am. I know my quest is not over yet, it has just begun. And whenever I find an answer in the depth, thousand more questions arise.

I've learned to love "Sen" and "Jin". I know "Sen" very well, I could never forget where I come from. "Jin" makes me curious of the future, of everything that will be. But when they are together like they are now, I know who I really am.

Chihiro

(Translator note: "Sen" + "Jin" = "Chihiro". "Sen" (千, JIS 4069) means "thousand" and "Jin" (尋, JIS 3F52) means "inquire", "fathom". Together they build the name "Chihiro" (千尋), which can be translated as "great depth".)