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As you should know, Princess Mononoke is a film where details
are important to introduce you into this ancient world. Also some little scenes
are not easily understood by non-Japanese people.
Because of this I think it would be nice to explain some of this things and each
of the following topics explain one detail:
 | First off all you shall know that Mononoke Hime is
placed in feudal Japan (XV and XVI centuries) during the Iron Age, a time
during what different lords struggled to take over the islands and even the
Emperor was only a mere figure without real power. |
| In this type of world much people became exiled because of
the persecutions of the different clans and died from famine. With more
important things to think, people started to pay less and less attention to
the spiritual world, the gods and the Nature and started to invade some of
the before sacred places, the forests. That's when the animal gods and such
things also turned against humans, starting an ever-so-present battle. |
| That's when we see Iron Town, a place where all the outcast
and exiled people who didn't mind to work hard could find a place to
survive. Being a town of miners and forgers surrounded by forest, the
villagers were always mining the hills, extracting iron, polluting the water
and cutting trees to supply the furnaces. Obviously the forest's gods didn't
like this at all and also started trying to destroy the humans, beginning
the situation we find at the arrive of Ashitaka there. |
| At Iron Town some men were against women working at the
foot bellows because in that time people considered that this was a very
noble work that only men could do. They believed that if women did this the
iron would turn to be stained, and being this women former prostitutes that
had been saved from that life by Lady Eboshi... |
| The weapons like the one that Lady Eboshi used to shoot off
the head of the guardian spirit can be misunderstood by rifles but they are
new designed hand canons made by the blacksmith lepers from the town. It was
only in by the XVI century that Portuguese navigators introduced this
weapons in the Orient, so the ones in the movie probably came from China. |
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