Spirited Away's (Okinawan?) music

[Mark Nornes]

Susan Napier was just at Michigan's Center for Japanese Studies 
presenting some work on the shojo and liminality. The talk was 
interesting, using Totoro, Spirited Away, and Lain to think about the 
shojo as inhabiting a "betwixt and between" space, an ambivalence raked 
by either/both nostalgia and the uncanny.

But what I wanted to ask the list had to do with the short clip we saw 
of Spirited Away, which has yet to come to Ann Arbor. I could have 
sworn the melody of the clip's music (perhaps the first time she sees 
the spirits?) is referencing Okinawa. Do other people have this sense? 
If so, what kind of use of "Okinawa" is this? As carnivalesque? 
Grotesque? Otherworldly?

Curiously,

Markus


A. M. Nornes
Kinema Club	
http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html