Lady Eboshi is the founder and leader of Tatara Ba (Iron Town). Calm and collected, she is a proper lady at all times, as well as being an accomplished swordswoman and having a sound business mind. She is well loved and respected by the townspeople, especially the women, as Eboshi is considered something of a hero in their eyes. She buys women originally sold to brothels in order to bring them to work for her, and even hires on lepers to make new kinds of ishibiya (hand canons introduced to Japan from China, though the new ones look more like rifles than canons). As such, Tatara Ba is basically considered to be a refuge for those who have nowhere else to go.
Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) is a 1997 Japanese anime film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. It was first released in Japan on July 12, 1997 and in the United States on October 29, 1999 in select cities and on November 26, 1999.
It is a jidaigeki (period drama) set in the late Muromachi period of Japan, and centers on the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans who consume its resources, as seen by the outsider Ashitaka. "Mononoke" (物の怪, "Mononoke"?) is not a name, but a general term in Japanese for a spirit or monster.
Roger Ebert placed the movie sixth on his top ten movies of 1999. Mononoke also became the highest grossing movie in Japan until Titanic took over the spot several months later. Overall, Mononoke is the third most popular anime movie in Japan,[citation needed] next to 2001's Spirited Away and 2004's Howl's Moving Castle, both also by Miyazaki.