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50 free Princess Mononoke trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Princess Mononoke arrived in 1997 as the most expensive animated film Japan had ever made, and it paid the bet back by becoming the country's highest-grossing film of all time. Hayao Miyazaki had been sketching a princess living in the woods with a beast since 1980, but the story that finally reached screens was something else entirely: a cursed Emishi prince, a girl raised by wolves, a leader who shelters outcasts while felling a forest of gods, and a deer-like spirit whose head is worth an emperor's reward. This quiz covers the whole story of the film: the Yakushima research trips, the 144,000 cels, the first digital ink-and-paint at Ghibli, Toshio Suzuki's one-word tagline and his decision to rename the film, Neil Gaiman's English script and the Miramax fight over cuts that never happened. Fifty questions run from easy identification to details only the sternest Ghibli fans will know. Play through them in sets of ten and see how much of Muromachi-era Japan you remember.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and directed Princess Mononoke?
Hayao Miyazaki
It was his first jidaigeki, a period drama about the lives of historic Japanese people.
Q 02In which period of Japanese history is Princess Mononoke set?
Muromachi
Miyazaki chose it to show Japan before deforestation and rice agriculture had tamed the land.
Q 03The young prince who journeys west to cure his cursed arm belongs to which people?
Emishi
The film uses his outsider status to challenge the idea of a single homogeneous Japanese ethnicity.
Q 04San, the girl the townspeople call Princess Mononoke, was raised by which animals?
Wolves
Her adoptive mother is the wolf goddess Moro.
Q 05Who produced Princess Mononoke and led its marketing campaign?
Toshio Suzuki
The promotion budget of at least ¥2.6 billion exceeded the film's production budget.
Q 06Which company distributed Princess Mononoke in Japan?
Toho
It opened on 260 of the country's 1,800 cinemas with record queues.
Q 07What was the final production budget of Princess Mononoke?
¥2.35 billion
It was more than double that of any previous Studio Ghibli film, and the most expensive animated film at the time.
Q 08Which short film did Miyazaki direct during a break from Princess Mononoke?
On Your Mark
He took the side project after hitting writer's block in December 1994.
Q 09Who composed the score for Princess Mononoke?
Joe Hisaishi
He first produced an image album of demos that he shared with Miyazaki and Suzuki before writing the final score.
Q 10On what date was Princess Mononoke released in Japan?
July 12, 1997
By the end of its first week it had drawn over a million viewers.
Q 11Which studio handled the English dub and North American release?
Miramax Films
The Disney subsidiary marketed it as an art house film and opened it on very few screens.
Q 12Which fantasy author wrote the English-language script?
Neil Gaiman
He nearly declined until a shot of a stone getting wet in the rain convinced him it was 'real filmmaking'.
Q 13Which director did Harvey Weinstein reportedly first offer the dub script to?
Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino recommended Gaiman instead, according to Gaiman.
Q 21Which blind boar god leads the clan's doomed assault on the humans' town?
Okkoto
His pain turns him into a demon that engulfs San before Moro and Ashitaka free her.
Q 22Who beheads the Forest Spirit during its nightly transformation?
Lady Eboshi
She later resolves to rebuild Irontown better, and Ashitaka stays to help.
Q 23Who first sketched the Princess Mononoke concept in 1980, after which film?
The Castle of Cagliostro
The original idea was a Beauty and the Beast retelling in historical Japan.
The 1980 concept was roughly based on which fairy tale?
Q 14What is the name of the boar god whose corruption curses Ashitaka?
Nago
An iron ball lodged in his body, fired by Eboshi, turned him into a demon.
Q 15Which monk advises Ashitaka to seek the Forest Spirit in the mountains?
Jigo
He is secretly after the spirit's head, which is believed to grant immortality, on behalf of the Emperor.
Q 16At sunset the Forest Spirit transforms into which giant form?
The Nightwalker
Its beheaded body floods the land as a dark fluid searching for its head.
Q 17What are the tiny forest creatures that guide Ashitaka through the forest of the gods?
Kodama
Stuffed kodama were among the merchandise sold during the film's release.
Q 18What is the name of the wolf goddess who adopted San?
Moro
Her reanimated head bites off Eboshi's arm after the spirit is beheaded.
Q 19Ashitaka arrives at which settlement that has deforested the land to mine ore?
Irontown
It was inspired by metalworking settlements in China and a tatara furnace in Shimane Prefecture.
Q 20Eboshi's town shelters former prostitutes and people with which disease?
Leprosy
Miyazaki was inspired to include them after visiting the Tama Zenshoen Sanatorium near his Tokyo home.
Beauty and the Beast
The Beast was an animal spirit, a mononoke, whom a nobleman's daughter was forced to marry.
Q 25Which 1983 Miyazaki work most closely resembles the eventual film?
Shuna's Journey
Its hero rides an elk to the land of the gods, much as Ashitaka rides Yakul.
Q 26Miyazaki considered adapting which 1212 Japanese literary classic instead?
Hōjōki
He found its concept too far from common sense to sell tickets, but its grim tone shaped the film.
Q 27Which island did Miyazaki and four art directors visit to research the forest of the gods?
Yakushima
The island had already inspired environments in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
Q 28Art director Kazuo Oga went to which mountains for the look of Ashitaka's village?
Shirakami-Sanchi
He was the fifth art director; assigning five to one film was unprecedented.
Q 29Roughly how many cels were used to make Princess Mononoke?
144,000
Miyazaki is estimated to have drawn or retouched nearly 80,000 of them himself.
Q 30Approximately how many minutes of the film were animated entirely digitally?
Five
Another ten minutes used digital ink and paint, a technique every later Ghibli film adopted.