Buddhism in Kubo and the Two Strings


The film Kubo and the Two Strings, depicts the different aspects of Buddhist culture. The movie is focused on a 12-year-old boy named Kubo. When he was a baby, the Moon King, stole one of his eyes and when Kubo gets away, the Moon King swears to find Kubo and steal his other eye. With this being said, the entire film focuses in on Kubo and his adventures as well as his fight to beat his grandfather, the Moon King. Interestingly enough, after doing some reading, I found that there are different highlights of other religions besides Buddhism in this film. One major one was the Shinto belief. The representation of Shinto religion in the film is based off of the shrines they have throughout the village where they can communicate with spirits through them. I thought this was interesting because the basic premise of Shinto religion is that one can have the opportunity to communicate with spirits.

In terms of Buddhism, the main relationship between the film and Buddhism that was found is that there is a relationship between the religion and the moon. The belief is that Buddha was born on a full moon day. All other aspects of his journey such as, his day of enlightenment, his renunciation, the first sermon he delivered and other things also happened on a moon day. With this being said, there are many festivals and other events held on full moon days for the very reason that they believe the full moon is associated with Buddha. The same is in the film. There is a high focus on the moon throughout the film and Kubo’s obsession with the moon. Perhaps it’s because his mother never wanted him out at night so he wanted to experience something he’s never experienced before. Or it may be those Buddhist values that are engrained in the film to show viewers a piece of Asian culture.

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