**WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE EARTHSEA NOVELS AND SOME MINOR SPOILERS FOR A FEW GHIBLI FILMS**

EDIT: I’m afraid I might have been a bit misleading with my title. Just to be clear, these are all just my opinions and assumptions, I have no concrete sources for these claims, if you want to call them that. Please don’t take this too seriously, just thought it might be an interesting thing to discuss!

I want to start off by saying that I am actually not going to speak at all about the 2006 Ghibli film adaptation “Tales from Earthsea” in this post. I will instead focus on Le Guin’s many influences on the films and stories that Hayao Miyazaki himself has published throughout his career.

Over the last two months or so I’ve been reading all of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels (which by the way is a fantastic series that I strongly recommend you read if you haven’t already), and I couldn’t help but come across frequent reminders of Studio Ghibli and more specifically Hayao Miyazaki’s works. I was noticing so many things that I just felt the need to share! I don’t find any of these connections too far-fetched since we know that Miyazaki was a fan of Le Guin and of Earthsea, but it’s certainly possible that some of these are just coincidences. Sorry for the long post, but I hope someone is able to get something positive out of it. Please let me know your thoughts and if there are any other connections that I missed!

THE POWER OF NAMES

In the world of Earthsea, basically everything that exists has a true name and knowing something/someone’s true name can give one significant power over it/them. In fact, wizards in Earthsea derive most of their magic from learning the true names of everything which allows them to manipulate them in various ways. This might immediately bring Spirited Away to mind, but there is a particular scene in the second Earthsea book—The Tombs of Atuan (1970)—that (in my opinion) was a clear basis for a scene in Miyazaki’s film. In the book, a child named Tenar was taken away from her family at a very young age and given a new name, Arha, as she is appointed the new Priestess of the sacred Tombs where she is meant to live the rest of her life. Fast forward a number of years when the tombs are now all she knows, a shape-shifting wizard infiltrates the holy labyrinth. Though Arha initially intends to kill him for his crime, she is taken aback when he reminds her of her real name: Tenar. She is overwhelmed with emotion as she had forgotten her real name after all those years, and this realization is the catalyst for her decisions in the rest of the book. In Spirited Away, we see a very similar scene when Haku (who can also shape-shift, by the way) takes Chihiro to see her parents and gives her a card with her name on it. She had already forgotten her own name after she signed it away to Yubaba, who then renamed her Sin, a name that gave Yubaba significant power over Chihiro.

WIND AS A RECURRING MOTIF

If you’re a fan of Miyazaki you've probably noticed that wind is recurring motif throughout most of his films. Sometimes this is pretty obvious such as in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and The Wind Rises (it's literally in the titles), but it pretty much shows up in every single Miyazaki film in some way or another. Even if wind isn’t mentioned, you’ll often see his main characters being blown or fluttered with wind in critical moments, often suggesting great inner power or a strong emotion. When it comes to Earthsea, wind is a critical motif as well throughout the series. In fact, control over wind is an important part of wizardry, often used to help ships navigate through the archipelago or keep unwanted visitors from the School of Wizardry. This has strong echos throughout Miyazaki’s work but especially with Nausicaa of the Valley of the wind, in which Nausicaa is known as one who rides and has mastery over the wind. There is even a Master Windkey at Earthsea's School of Wizardry who is master of the power of wind.

THE RISKS OF LOSING ONES HUMANITY

One of the main protagonists of the Earthsea books is a wizard named Sparrowhawk. One of his abilities is to shape-shift into various animals or people, but most importantly he spends a lot of time as a hawk. Most notably, in the first Earthsea book—A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)—Sparrowhawk finds himself far from home at a very low point. He takes a long journey back home across the archipelago in the form of falcon, eventually making his way back to land at his home island after many days. He nearly spends too long as a falcon though and has forgotten what it was to be a person, which his mentor warns is a common problem with mages who take on other shapes, as it distances oneself from ones own humanity. This idea is strongly paralleled in Howl’s Moving Castle, in which Howl (a shape-shifting wizard) often goes on long bouts in the form of a bird, who is then warned by Calcifer that if he stays in that form too long he might not be able to turn back into a human (an idea that was added by Miyazaki, mind you, notably absent in Diana Wynne Jones’ book). We see the extreme side of this risk among the other wizards in the film who have lost their humanity fully after following Madame Suliman into war. It might also be worth mentioning Yubaba’s ability to turn into a bird in Spirited Away.

THE CONCEPT OF THE DOROK PRINICIPALITIES

If you have only watched the Nausicaa film and haven’t read the manga, you might not know of the Dorok Principalities who's leaders actually serve as the main antagonists in the full story (though it’s not quite that black and white, unsurprisingly). The Doroks are a highly religious society, ruled by a God Emperor who they see as divine. In the capital of the Dorok Principalities called Shuwa, there is a holy crypt which contains ancient knowledge. I strongly believe that the general idea of the Doroks was heavily inspired by the Kargad Lands in the Earthsea novels. Aside from the similarities in general aesthetic and the existence of a ruling Godking, the Kargish people are a highly religious and traditional society who are often in violent conflict with the views and lifestyles of the Hardic people of the archipelago, forbidding the use of magic and instead following the ancient ways and powers of the Old Ones. Similar to the Crypt of Shuwa, the island of Atuan contains the aforementioned Labyrinth in the Tombs of Atuan which holds an ancient power. I mean come on!