Spirited Away

In this series of The Essay, five leading cultural voices choose a great work of art and talk about a small, under-appreciated aspect of the piece that carries great meaning for them.

In this edition, we hear from Welsh journalist and author Angela Hui. Her memoir is called ‘Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter’, and in this essay she draws our attention to a moment in a movie which others might have seen hundreds of times before but may have missed.

For Angela, there’s a small uneventful scene in Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘Spirited Away’ where No Face, one of the spirits in the film, is politely drinking tea and eating a slice of cake that makes her laugh out loud and warms her heart to the core.

Producer: Emma Betteridge

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2025.
Broadcast on Radio 4 Extra in August 2026 as part of our season 'The Stories Of Studio Ghibli'