Haku

Haku is the river spirit of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001), who appears as a boy and as a flying white dragon, and who helps the girl Chihiro survive in a bathhouse for spirits.

The Story

In Spirited Away, ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents wander into an abandoned theme park that turns out to be part of the spirit world. Her parents are turned into pigs, and Chihiro must work in a bathhouse for gods and spirits run by the witch Yubaba. A mysterious boy named Haku helps her from the start, telling her how to survive and warning her never to forget her own name, because Yubaba controls her workers by taking their names.

Haku is Yubaba's apprentice, and he too has forgotten his true name. Chihiro sees him in his other form, a white dragon, wounded after he steals a magic seal from Yubaba's twin sister Zeniba. Chihiro saves his life and sets out to make things right. Riding on his back through the sky, she remembers that as a small child she fell into a river and was carried safely to shore. That river was the Kohaku, and Haku is its spirit. Speaking his name frees him.

Appearance and Powers

As a dragon, Haku is long, slender, and serpentine, with white scales, a green mane, four clawed legs, and no wings. He flies by swimming through the air, like the dragons of East Asian art. In human form he is a calm, serious boy with a bob haircut. He can change between the two at will, and he knows magic learned from Yubaba.

Origins and Sources

Haku draws on Japanese beliefs that rivers, mountains, and other places have their own kami (spirits), and on the old link between dragons and water seen in figures like the Japanese dragon king Ryūjin. The Kohaku River has been filled in and built over with apartments, so Haku has nowhere to return to. Scholars of Miyazaki's work, such as Susan Napier, read this as part of the film's concern with the loss of nature and of tradition in modern Japan.

Legacy

Spirited Away became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history at the time and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Haku is one of the best-known Eastern-style dragons in world cinema. See Chinese dragons and dragons across cultures for the traditions behind him.

Related

• Ryūjin: Ryūjin is the dragon god of the sea in Japanese myth and folklore, who rules from the undersea palace Ryūgū-jō, controls the tides with magic jewels, and was claimed as an ancestor of the imperial family.
• Mizuchi: A mizuchi is a Japanese water dragon or river serpent, a spirit of rivers and pools that could bring rain or spit poison, best known from the Nihon Shoki tale of Agatamori, who killed one with gourds and a sword.
• Lóng (Chinese dragon): The lóng is the Chinese dragon: a long, scaly, usually wingless creature with four clawed legs that rules rain, rivers, and seas and became the emblem of the emperor and of Chinese culture.
• Falkor: Falkor (German Fuchur) is the white luckdragon of Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story (1979) and its 1984 film, a joyful, wingless flying dragon who carries the young hero Atreyu across Fantastica.
• Chinese Dragons
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Dragon Species

Sources and Further Reading

• Spirited Away, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli, 2001)
• Hayao Miyazaki, The Art of Spirited Away (Viz Media, 2002)
• Susan Napier, Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art (Yale University Press, 2018)

Cite this entry: “Haku,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/haku.