Yubaba’s roles as the bathhouse owner further removes her from the idealized form of motherhood, thus challenging the expected “social rules that prohibit women from participating in or having contact with some realm in which the highest powers of society are felt to reside” (Ortner, 7). Through her role as the bathhouse owner, Yubaba deviates from the expected notions of motherhood by mimicking the upper-class male behavior of adopting western culture during the Meiji period. According to Japanologist, Thomas Lamarre “Spirited Away may be read as a voyage into the past” (96). We can see evidence of the Meiji period through the bathhouse’s design. The bathhouse gathers inspiration from shrines and temples, and we can see this through the bathhouse’s…show more content… As we see in the film, Yubaba spends a lot of time working. This is due to “the male model [determining] what working conditions should be” in Japan (Molony, 285). Therefore, in order to work and succeed in the workplace, women must adhere to the male model of work. This causes working mothers to neglect their children as they work in a system that fails to accommodate for their needs. We can see the effect of the work culture in Yubaba’s depiction throughout the film, as she is primarily shown working instead of spending time with Bo. Furthermore, none of the characters in the film reference her son, thus removing her association as a mother and only associating her with her work. Because Yubaba works long hours, she cannot spend enough time with her son in order to develop a strong mother-child bond. We can see this in Yubaba’s and Bo’s inability to identify each other—Bo can’t tell Yubaba apart from her twin sister, Zeniba, and Yubaba can’t identify Bo when he is in mouse form. Thus, Yubaba fails to nurture her maternal instinct. However, just like the over-worked Japanese father, Yubaba attempts to make up the lost time by spoiling Bo and giving him everything he wants. However, Yubaba’s spoiling Bo fails to establish the mother-child bond; it only serves as a rationalization that justifies her working instead of staying at home and taking care of
