中道

[randomness]

bedfull_o_books just called me over to watch a scene in Spirited Away: the scene in which Chihiro takes a train to get to Zeniba's house.

The first thing I noticed was the "中道" placard on the front. On a transit vehicle, this might mean "Central Line". It also means something else.

From the Wikipedia article:

The Central Path, Middle Way or Middle Path (Pali: majjhimā paṭipadā; Sanskrit: madhyamā-pratipad[1][a]; Chinese: 中道 zhōngdào; Japanese: 中道 chūdō) is the term that Siddhartha Gautama used to describe the character of the path he discovered that leads to liberation.

There's not much in English about this, but there is a bit in Japanese.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Run the scene by me and I'll have a look if you like. I'm sure there are similar touches throughout the film.