Animism inside Japanese animations Focused on animations by Hayao Miyazaki Mikyung Bak Abstract Animism and the Nature-friendly ideology are something like the air that exists naturally for the Japanese. The common values such as a sacredness of the Nature and the sweetness of the Nature for human beings also work as important themes in today‟s design. Elaborate structure and stability found in the Japanese animation are important values discovered by Japan in its religion and the perspective about the Nature. And these values do not remain as something Japanese, as they are related to have international agreement. Introduction The power of animation comes from the exquisite inner structure of character-building and from the outer structure of environment-friendly structure. The number of characters set in the animations is enormous and the animations‟ perspectives for religion and the Nature are elaborate and relatable to Japanese people. In particular, quite a number of characters those appear in fantasy genre work as connection point to the sensitivity of the Japanese. In Japanese, god is called “kami,” i and this is based on the Japanese animism and it‟s a number of gods that were created naturally. They also present nostalgia from the past in the world market and they present refreshing shock by giving a new perspective about the Nature and human beings. For example, Hayao Miyazaki‟s “My Neighbor Totoro” presents the ideology of the wood while “Spirited Away” presents the ideology about water and the Nature. Also, his “Princess Mononoke” presents a thinking of circulation and rebirth. This paper aims to make a solid analysis into the Japanese animation and the Japanese ideology by looking into these three animations and by giving diagram analysis into their structures inside them between reality and the other world. 1. Anima, Animism, Animation The term animism was used from the early 18th century by philosophers, and it was the British anthropologist Taylor who completed and announced the theoretical frame of the animism in 1871. Animism came from the Latin word, anima, meaning breath, life and spirit, and it is also a religion of spirits in a kind of an original form of religion. That is, it refers to the thoughts or religion that all the things in the Nature carry spirits. In the primitive age, people did not essential distinction among human beings and other beings in the Nature, so animals and plants like everything in the universe carried spirits and souls. When people died, they were believed to be an eternal spirit in the world of the dead or to go into the bodies of animals to become the souls of animals. They believed that there are a number of spirits in the universe, and they believed that these spirits dominate the world of life. Therefore, worship of souls is not only the original form of religion of human beings but also universal thing for all human beings. After all, gods are only a form of souls. The etymology of the word, animation, can be traced in the act of a god that gives life to an object. 2. Folk religion of the Japanese In the folk religion of Japan, there are human beings and gods under the Nature. This is different from the western religions of the one-and-only god that exist high up there that created the Nature and human beings. In the modernist rationalist thinking, human beings dominate the Nature and the god. In other words, in the course of the one-and-only god of the western religions, the god dominates the Nature through human beings. However, in the Japanese animism with many gods, neither human beings nor gods belong to the Nature and there is a tendency that the gods and the Nature are almost identified. The Nature and human beings do not have the dominated or dominating relations, and they are neither equals. The Nature has the sacred character. The Nature and human beings give mutual influences to each other. This is the difference from the western concept of one-and-only god.