The Works of Hayao Miyazaki E-Book

Gael Berton

• Herausgeber: Third Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 288

Beschreibung

Through this study of Hayao Miyazaki's universe, discover the major influence of the Japanese animation master, whose works have marked Japanese animation and the world of cinema.

Through his creativity, technical wizardry and talent for storytelling, Hayao Miyazaki has left an indelible mark on Japanese animation and world cinema. The animation master has been able to create magical worlds for a children’s story or a darker tale. But he has also known how to cast a cynical and innocent look on a world and its societies undergoing great changes and facing grim futures. And yet, his work is often reduced, firstly, to his handful of feature-length movies created under the auspices of Studio Ghibli, but also to a superficial view due to cultural elements that are extremely difficult to grasp for anyone outside of Japan. This work, which explains biographical elements and presents Studio Ghibli and the master’s entourage, will give you a detailed analysis of Hayao Miyazaki’s works, decrypting their themes and offering transversal keys to their understanding.

This book will offer you a detailed analysis of Hayao Miyazaki's works, enriched with explanations on biographical aspects. The book will also provide you with reading keys that will allow you to better understand the specifically Japanese cultural elements present in the works.

Leseprobe

Cover

Title

PREFACE

Ever since I watched my first Studio Ghibli movies, I have always been fascinated by the universe contained in their animation films, little realizing that this attraction was all down to the artistic vision of one director in particular.

My first contact with the works of Hayao Miyazaki dates back to 1996, when the French television channel Canal + had the fantastic idea of broadcasting Porco Rosso, a film from the middle of Miyazaki’s career. On December 28 of that year, while the majority of children were delving into the annual Disney fare (that year, it was The Hunch-back of Notre Dame, following on from Aladdin, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast which had swept the world the preceding years), I took my first steps into the kaleidoscope of Japanese animation (outside the French TV program Club Dorothée) through this melancholic work that I still cherish today. It could well be the one that has left its mark on me the most. About eighteen months later, on May 30, 1998, the same station introduced me to My Neighbor Totoro, which finally piqued my curiosity about the man behind these masterpieces.

Porco and Totoro acted as two cultural shocks that not only ignited my love for Japan, but also roused such a strong interest in Hayao Miyazaki that it has never petered out. I had discovered manga some years before, but Japanese animation was opened up to me by the man I still consider today as its most unfettered and worthy ambassador, although he can well appear as uncompromising and even overly strict in other ways.

In 2012, I nurtured my desire to chart out this fantastic adventure by delving into the origin stories and analyzing each and every one of Hayao Miyazaki’s works on the website Kanpai!, which I had created at the turn of the century. While the director has received good press all around the world, and especially in France, mainly since the release of Spirited Away in many movie theaters in the West, knowledge about the work of this master is often limited because it is reduced, firstly, to his handful of feature-length movies created under the auspices of Studio Ghibli (it is wrong to confine him to this straitjacket) and secondly, perhaps especially, to a superficial view whose roots are in the lack of deciphering a vision that is both Shintoist and societal, extremely difficult to grasp for anyone outside of Japan.

I have sought to discover and rediscover his major works within a more global perspective that has enabled me, beyond delving into individual works, to understand their language, appreciate the development of the message and its expression, ponder on the maestro’s surroundings and finally uncover keys to a multi-level understanding that is more expansive than when I published my first articles on Kanpai!.

For me, this has been a new and altogether extraordinary look into a universe that I thought I already knew, but which surprised me anew and, without doubt, will never cease to amaze me. By offering you this detailed and unprecedented perspective on Hayao Miyazaki’s creations, I hope to share my unquenchable interest and enable every reader to understand their substance and their ramifications.

ABOUT THEAUTHOR

Having fallen in love with Japan at a young age, Gael Berton traveled there for the first time in 2003 as part of his Japanese language studies. He has returned several times since, exploring its cities and countryside from north to south. The website Kanpai!, which he founded in March 2000, offers advice on traveling to and around Japan as well as introductions to Japanese culture. In 2014, he founded Keikaku, a travel agency teamed by other Japanophiles in both its French headquarters and its Japanese subsidiary. The agency was set up to improve on the offer of services to the Land of the Rising Sun.

THE WORKS OF

HAYAO

MIYAZAKI

THE JAPANESE ANIMATION MASTER

CHAPTER I ‒ HAYAO MIYAZAKI

FOR THOSE relying on articles about Miyazaki published outside of Japan, his private life and work are unfortunately out of reach. Besides the tip of the iceberg known to the public (his eleven animated movies), Hayao Miyazaki has worked on numerous media throughout his career (mangas, short movies and others) and many well before he founded Studio Ghibli. This part will provide a more accurate and complete biography of the artist, with a presentation of his works, from the most iconic to the lesser known. It will also provide the extremely important clues for better understanding his works.

It is crucial to note that the man often demonstrates a very Japanese humility and reservation that sometimes make it difficult to collect information and clarifications on his mindset at particular moments of his life. While Miyazaki can be very verbose and cutting on certain subjects in the public arena, he is taciturn, even secretive, with regard to many of his personal and professional choices.

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

Hayao Miyazaki1 was born on January 5, 1941, in the Bunkyo ward of Tokyo with the Second World War as the backdrop. He is the second of four boys: Arata being the eldest, with Yutaka and Shiro coming after him. His mother, Dora, was a housewife with a strong and resolute personality. Katsuji, his father, was an aeronautical engineer who managed his uncle’s company, Miyazaki Airplane. The business produced rudders for the A6M Zero fighter planes of the Japanese Imperial Army, used in World War II. This background nurtured his love for mechanics, cars and aviation. Shortly after his father’s death in 1995, Miyazaki wrote about him in the paper Asahi Shimbun: “My old man […] announced to the officer, ‘I have a wife and baby, so I can’t possibly go to the front lines.’ In those days, saying something like that was unthinkable. A sergeant who had taken him under his wing harangued him for disloyalty for two hours. As a result, my old man ended up being left behind in Japan. And then I was born, so I am grateful on that score. During the Pacific War, he headed the Miyazaki Airplane factory, making parts for military planes. He had unskilled workers mass-produce parts, many of which were defective. But he told us that if he bribed the people in charge, the parts were usually accepted. And after the war, he had no sense of guilt about having been involved in the military arms industry, of having produced defective parts. In effect, for him war was something that only idiots engaged in. If we were going to war anyway, he was going to make money off of it. He had absolutely no interest in just causes or the fate of the state. For him, the only concern was how his family would survive.”

In 1944, as Tokyo began being bombed, the Miyazakis moved to Utsunomiya in the Tochigi prefecture, a couple of dozen miles north of the capital, near Kanuma where the company his father worked at was located. In 1947, his mother was diagnosed with Pott disease (a form of tuberculosis), which kept her cloistered away in a hospital for three years. Once she returned home, she was confined to bed until 1955. His mother’s illness obviously affected the young boy to such an extent that the maternal figure in many of his works would be a strong woman suffering from an internal ailment.

The Miyazaki family returned to Tokyo in 1950, and there Hayao would have a fairly traditional education. He has remarked that he was “clumsy and weak, protected by [his] big brother who was the strongest in the school.” He began reading mangas in his spare time, especially the works of Osamu Tezuka2 whose drawings he loved to emulate from high school, yet he would also later show his dissatisfaction for the style. Over many years, he perfected his drawings and paneling. His father, a cinema lover, and the other family members regularly brought him to the movies. In fall of 1958, while in his last year at Toyotama High School, Miyazaki saw the first Japanese feature-length animation film in color: Panda and the Magic Serpent by Tœi Animation studios. Directed by Taiji Yabushita and inspired by a popular Chinese folktale called Legend of the White Snake, it recounts the love story between Xu-Xian, a young boy, and Bai-Niang, a white snake transformed into a beautiful princess, over the course of an adventure filled with spirits and magic. The movie would leave an indelible mark on him for both its techniques and the emotions conveyed. He watched it numerous times and fell in love with Bai-Niang’s beauty. It was then that Miyazaki chose to become an animator.

Once Miyazaki received his high school diploma, he went to the prestigious Gakushuin University in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward to study at its Department of Political Economy. The university did not have any manga club, so he fell back on a children’s literature research club, while working on a thesis about Japanese industry. During these years, he perfected his skill as a manga artist, building up a repository of unfinished comics counted in thousands of pages. He sent some to publishers but each one was systematically rejected. In 1963, he graduated from university with degrees in economics and political science, but ready to set forth on his career as an animator.

FROM ANIMATION TRAVAILS TO CREATIVE EMANCIPATION

Miyazaki took his first step on this path at the Tœi Animation studio, where he began as an in-between animator in April of that same year. It was the bottom rung of the ladder, far from exciting but highly informative. He had to draw all the animation frames between two principal frames created by the key animators. His salary at the time amounted to 19,500 yen3 (quite decent pay, considering young adults with no college education were receiving about 13,000 yen). It was also enough to cover the 6,000 yen rent for his 80 ft2 apartment in Tokyo’s Nerima ward. He worked on various movies for the studio such as Doggie March (1963), Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon (1965), Flying Phantom Ship (1969), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1971) and Animal Treasure Island (1971). He also had a hand in animated series: Wolf Boy Ken (1963-1965), Fujimaru of the Wind (1964-1965), Hustle Punch (1965-1966), Rainbow Sentai Robin (1966-1967), Sally the Witch (1966-1968) and Akko Chan’s Secret (1969-1970). Several of these works have never left Japanese shores.

In 1964, Miyazaki began participating in leftist movements and was appointed chief secretary of the Tœi labor union. As part of the union, he met three other animators who would change his life and his career: Isao Takahata, vice-president of the union and future main director of Studio Ghibli; Yasuo Otsuka, renowned animation director who was an in-between animator on Panda and the Magic Serpent and would work with Miyazaki on many projects over the next twenty years; and finally Akemi Ota, who would marry him in October the following year. The couple moved to Higashimurayama, a small city within greater Tokyo, and would have two children: Goro born in 1967 (the year when Miyazaki bought a Citroën 2CV) and Keisuke born in 1969.

In 1965, the young animator joined Takahata and Otsuka in designing the film The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun. Its eight-month production schedule ended up lasting three years before it had its theatrical release in July 1968. Despite its strong artistic impact, the film turned out to be Tœi Animation’s largest commercial flop, almost causing the studio to go bankrupt. At the end of production for Horus, Tœi entrusted Miyazaki and his wife with animating the final long action sequence of the feature film The Wonderful World of Puss’n Boots (1969). The sequence was a genuine artistic success, showcasing their talent and shining a spotlight on them. A little later, after the birth of their second son, Akemi Ota left Tœi Animation to devote her time to housework and raising the children, the usual decision in Japanese society, albeit made grudgingly. This allowed Miyazaki to fully concentrate on his career, while his wife became responsible for their children’s education; however, the filmmaker would write twenty years later: “I tried to be a good father, but I actually wasn’t. I’ve heard my children say, ‘Father didn’t scold us with words, he scolded by turning his back on us.’” Nevertheless, during their formative years, Goro and Keisuke remained Miyazaki’s best audience and a great source of motivation for his work.

Between 1969 and 1970, Miyazaki, under the pen name Saburo Akitsu, saw his first short manga/graphic novel, The Desert Tribe, published. In 1970, he participated in an episode of Moomin for Mushi Production, Osamu Tezuka’s animation studio and direct rival of Tœi Animation. He and his family moved house a few miles away to Oizumigakuen in April 1969 before moving again the following year to Tokorozawa.

Miyazaki left Tœi Animation in 1971 and joined his colleague Isao Takahata at another rival studio: A-Pro Telecom. He began working on an animated version of Pippi Longstocking and went to Sweden with Yutaka Fujioka to obtain the adaptation rights from the author Astrid Lindgren. She refused. It was his first time out of Japan. The story-boards for Pippi Longstocking were recycled for the two Panda! Go, Panda! short films (1972-1973), in which Miyazaki acted as head of design and screenwriter, Otsuka as animation director and Takahata as director. They also co-directed fourteen episodes of the first television adaptation of the successful Lupin the Third series (1971-1972). At the start of summer 1973, the three former Tœi employees joined Zuiyo Eizo ‒ the predecessor to the future Nippon Animation studio. At that studio, Takahata directed animated series such as Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974) and 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother (1976). Miyazaki supervised the scene design for them and as part of his preparation he traveled to Switzerland, Italy and Argentina. He also participated in other projects: Akadô Suzunosuke (1972), Demetan Croaker, The Boy Frog (1973), Kôya no Shônen Isamu (1973), Samurai Giants (1973-1974), A Dog of Flanders (1975) and Rascal the Raccoon (1977). Over this time, he refined his style in both character design and characteristic faces as well as in frenetic sequences and highly precise movements.

In 1978, Hayao Miyazaki finally directed his own animated series, with Yasuo Otsuka alongside him: Future Boy Conan represents a prototype of the creation and script elements that would be seen in his later works. In the course of an interview that same year, he crossed paths with Toshio Suzuki, who was a writer for the magazine Animage and would later become Studio Ghibli’s top producer. In 1979, Miyazaki worked on Anne of Green Gables but left Nippon Animation during production around the end of the fifteenth episode to join Tokyo Movie Shinsha (later known as TMS), again accompanied by Otsuka. At the new studio, he directed his first animation movie: The Castle of Cagliostro, an offshoot of the series Lupin the Third. He then worked for a subsidiary, Telecom Animation Film, on the second series of Lupin the Third, directing several episodes (1979-1980). In 1981 and the following year, he wrote the scripts and directed the first six episodes of Sherlock Hound. For research, he traveled to the United States and Italy. The series was continued by Kyosuke Mikuriya and broadcast in 1984-1985.

Hayao Miyazaki’s relationship with Toshio Suzuki became increasingly close, so much so that it provided the opening for the publication of his manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in Animage starting from February 1982. The manga was a raging success from the first chapter. He also published his graphic novel The Journey of Shuna in the same magazine in 1983. That year with Topcraft studios, Miyazaki adapted Nausicaä for movie theaters; it was produced by Tokuma Shoten, Hakuhodo and Isao Takahata. The studio hired a number of animators including Hideaki Anno (future creator of the cult saga Neon Genesis Evangelion) who would become a friend and provide, thirty years later, the voice of Jiro, the protagonist of The Wind Rises. In the summer of 1983, while Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was still in production, Miyazaki’s mother passed away. It was a watershed moment in his career. Whereas he had previously looked into light-hearted, cheerful themes, he would now add a deeper examination into humanity and its actions, creating very serious characters who could still convey manifest warmth. The film was released in Japanese movie theaters in March 1984 and marked his first collaboration with the composer Joe Hisaishi. The box office takings allowed Miyazaki and Takahata to found Studio Ghibli in June 1985 out of the ashes of a bankrupt Topcraft. The new studio laid off many of the Topcraft animators and, although a subsidiary of Tokuma Shoten, gained greater creative independence.

These later years demonstrate the immediate success garnered by projects on which Hayao Miyazaki worked, whether as the instigator or leader (author, manga cartoonist or animation film director). This critical and public success shows without any doubt the exceptional talent of the artist to imagine and portray his tales on both paper and film.

THE STUDIO GHIBLI YEARS

At Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki had of course greater freedom in his projects and choices. This allowed him to devote his time to original feature-length animation movies. The first to appear was Castle in the Sky in August 1986, which drew almost eight hundred thousand viewers. He had scouted locations in England and Wales for this film. The following year, through his company Nibariki4 based in Suginami, Tokyo, he produced the documentary The Story of Yanagawa’s Canals, which was directed by his compatriot Isao Takahata. The documentary used live action spliced with short animation sequences. It had a running time of almost three hours and dwelt on the history of the canals in Yanagawa, a city on the southern island of Kyushu. In April 1988, My Neighbor Totoro was released in movie theaters as a double feature with Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies. Although it had initially been turned down by producers, its success (eight hundred thousand viewers) and the impact of Totoro on the public exceeded everyone’s expectations. Totoro would eventually become the studio’s mascot and one of the most obvious gateways to Miyazaki’s films.

The next summer saw the release of Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was the box office smash of the year in Japan with over two and half million tickets sold. Toshio Suzuki, who for years had already been advising the team from the shadows, joined his two friends becoming an official producer at the studio. Miyazaki started production on Only Yesterday in 1990, with Isao Takahata back in the director’s chair. It was released in July 1991. That same year, Miyazaki decided to draw up the blueprints of the new Studio Ghibli buildings to be constructed on the outskirts of Tokyo in Koganei. Porco Rosso arrived in theaters in July 1992. It sold over three million tickets and was a bigger box office draw in Japan than both Hook (a sequel to Peter Pan starring Robin Williams and directed by Steven Spielberg) and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. This success unshackled Studio Ghibli from being under a financial do-or-die threat with every new film and bestowed greater freedom on its animators.

The next year, Miyazaki’s father died; he has never spoken about it. The animator then participated in the production of Pom Poko for Isao Takahata, released in the summer of 1994, as well as in the production of Yoshifumi Kondo’s Whisper of the Heart, for which he wrote the script and drew the storyboards. In March 1994, Miyazaki completed the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind after fifty-nine chapters spread out over twelve years. He then began production on The Legend of Ashitaka, which would become the well-known Princess Mononoke. For this movie, he spent several weeks on Yakushima, a small island off the coast of Kagoshima in the south of Japan. There, the natural scenery of the film blossomed in his mind. At the same time, he worked on the storyline for a Japanese rock duo’s music video ‒ Chage & Aska’s On Your Mark (1995). Its production was entrusted to junior animators at Studio Ghibli.

In July 1997, following three long exhausting years, Princess Mononoke finally hit cinema screens. It was a resounding success, watched by over fourteen million people. It became the most watched movie in Japan up to that time, winning numerous awards and placing its director firmly in the international spotlight. It was also his first movie to use computer generated imagery. However, Miyazaki had been sapped by the long and sometimes painful production. Physically drained (he was then 56), Hayao Miyazaki quit Studio Ghibli six months later to found Butaya (literally meaning “pig house”), a more private studio even if it was only a dozen or so yards from Ghibli. The sudden death of Yoshifumi Kondo, who was supposed to succeed him, led Miyazaki to reluctantly rejoin Studio Ghibli in January 1999.

Spirited Away made landfall in theaters in the summer of 2001. Almost twenty-five million tickets were sold, the largest audience draw in Japanese cinema; this record remains to be beaten at the time of publication. Its critical and public acclaim resounded around the world. It received numerous awards, such as the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003 (the only Japanese movie and only hand drawn animation to have received this accolade5). On October 1, 2001, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka (near Tokyo) was inaugurated. For the museum, Miyazaki created several animated short films that are still shown today in the small movie theater open to visitors.

He was invited to attend the 2002 Academy Awards in Hollywood but refused as a protest over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He did visit the States after all in September to promote Spirited Away and to visit Pixar Studios in San Francisco, where he met the director and producer John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars). In 2003, Miyazaki produced The Cat Returns; it was directed by Hiroyuki Morita and is a loose sequel to Whisper of the Heart. His next film as director, Howl’s Moving Castle, hit screens in November 2004 and was watched by fifteen million people. Despite being another box-office hit, the movie was on the receiving end of many criticisms about its complexity and lack of coherence in its narration: problems emanating from behind the scenes due to a complicated start to production that would see Mamoru Hosoda leave Studio Ghibli and a difficult salvaging by Miyazaki.

The following year, a Golden Lion was bestowed on the director at the Venice Film Festival in recognition of his work, while Time magazine listed him in its top 100 most influential people. He then rented out, for two months, a house on top of a hill overlooking Tomonoura, a harbor town on the Seto Inland Sea located between the islands of Honshu and Shikoku. Ponyo, inspired straight from this coastal landscape, entered production in October 2006. It had its theatrical release in July 2008 and sold thirteen million tickets. For Miyazaki, it was a return to more childlike, oneiric concepts, a cross between My Neighbor Totoro and Panda! Go, Panda!

At the beginning of 2009, his short manga Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) was published in Model Graphix magazine and would be the basis for the development of its film adaptation. He participated in the scripts for Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi) and From Up on Poppy Hill (by his son Goro Miyazaki) in 2010 and 2011, respectively. At the end of the summer of 2011, Miyazaki and Suzuki visited Rikuzentakata, a city hit hard by the March 11 tsunami, to help in the preparation for From Up on Poppy Hill and to give a morale boost to the children in the area. The Wind Rises, developed as a swan song for his career and life, was released in July 2013 and attracted almost eight million people to theaters.

ON-AND-OFF RETIREMENT

A few weeks after the release of The Wind Rises, on September 1, Koji Hoshino, President of Studio Ghibli, announced at a press conference at the Venice Film Festival that Hayao Miyazaki was officially retiring. The director was not present for this statement. As a result, he organized a press conference in Tokyo the following Friday to announce his retirement from directing feature films. He stated he would continue to be at Studio Ghibli every day working on other projects until the end of his life, but he also indicated that his eyesight was worsening and that was making animation increasingly difficult. He also mentioned that he had been leaving the office earlier and earlier in recent years to take a rest. This was not the first time he had talked about his retirement, but his age at the time (almost 73 years old) and the reverberation his announcement had (especially online and in social media) gave it all renewed credibility.

The director received an Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on November 8, 2014 in recognition of his career. But before that, toward the end of 2013, he announced he was working on a new manga: Teppo Samurai (“The Samurai with the Rifle”). Some panels were even unveiled during a documentary shot for the Japanese T.V. channel NHK in November of the same year. However, he announced in an April 2015 interview with the scale model magazine Armour Modelling that the work on this manga had been shelved indefinitely for many months by then.

At a short press conference in July 2015, Hayao Miyazaki announced he had been working for a year on a 12-minute short film entitled Kemushi no Boro (“Boro the Caterpillar”). Contrary to expectations, the film, which was to be shown at the Ghibli Museum, would be produced using computer animation. Its production was to last three years, meaning it was expected to be ready by July 20176. In November 2016, it was announced in an interview with the NHK channel that the director had been working on a new feature animation movie since the summer, although the producer Toshio Suzuki would not confirm this until 2017. Suzuki stated in October 2017 that the principal reason for Miyazaki’s return lay in his desire to leave something for his grandson (then aged 8) before his death. For a time, many commentators speculated on Boro the Caterpillar transforming from a short film to a feature film. It was in fact a totally new movie called Kimi-tachi wa Do Ikiru ka, which could be translated as “How Do You Live? ” This is the title of a 1937 children’s book written by the Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino (1899-1981). The book tells the story of a young man called Koperu and his uncle and looks at the experience of living through the spiritual development of the protagonist. However, it has not been mentioned whether the animation movie would be an adaptation of this book, but it has been described as a fantasy action adventure. Although a theatrical release in Japan is expected sometime in 2020, Miyazaki had only drawn twenty minutes of storyboard a little more than one year after starting work. The smart money is once again on the schedule falling by the wayside.

AKEMI OTA: THE DEVOTED WIFE

Akemi Ota (大田朱美), born in 1938, got her first job in animation in 1958 with Tœi Animation as an in-between animator. She worked on some cult animes such asHakuja-den(Panda and the Magic Serpent) andSaiyuki(Alakazam the Great). She met Hayao Miyazaki in those very studios in 1964. In 1965, she was promoted to the position of animator and in October she married Miyazaki, although she was three years his senior (an unusual occurrence in Japan). In January 1967, she gave birth to their first child, Goro. She played a role in the animation ofThe Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun(1968) and became the key animator in 1969 forPuss’n Boots. Hayao looked after Goro a lot during this time, bringing him to and collecting him from daycare every day. He had made a promise to Akemi upon their marriage that the two would continue their careers. Akemi gave birth to a second child, Keisuke, in 1969. Miyazaki would later write that he was unable to bear seeing his second son returning home half asleep every evening and enduring the work rhythms of his parents. Two years later, on the request of her husband who was spending more and more time at work, Akemi gave up her career in 1972 to concentrate on looking after her children, becoming the traditional housewife. She has stated that this was a very reluctant choice but one that would give Miyazaki the time necessary to concentrate fully on his creations. In 1987, she published a book entitledGoro et Keisuke ‒ Photo Diary of a Housewife. Keisuke has remained a very private person; little is known about him beyond the fact that he studied design at the University of Tokyo. Akemi is today a board member of theTotoro no FurusatoFoundation which promotes and works on reforestation.

Akemi is a very private person. She has been almost completely removed from the public view since withdrawing from her career; so, we are reliant on the small glances and peeks offered through Hayao Miyazaki’s own eyes in his scant interviews over the years.

1. In Japanese, his name is written as 宮崎駿. The individual kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) for his surname mean “palace/Shinto sanctuary” and “headland/peak.” His first name is more complicated: the Chinese character today forms part of a list of some hundreds of characters known as jinmeiyō, used only for personal and uncommon names. It signifies a “quick person” and can also be read as “Shun.”

2. Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) was a mangaka, animator and screenwriter with about seven hundred works under his belt. He created cult manga series such as Kimba the White Lion, Astro Boy, Black Jack, Buddha and Metropolis. He is known as the “father of modern manga” and many artists (both mangakas and animators), including Miyazaki, point to him as a major influence.

3. To put this in perspective, 19,000 yen in 1963 was the equivalent of $60. In today’s money, that would be $580.

4. Literally “two horses,” a nod to that car he bought in 1967.

5. The Academy Award for Best Animated Film only began being awarded in 2002. Previously, animated films competed in the same categories as live-action movies, and only Disney’s Beauty and the Beast received a nomination for “Best Picture” in 1992. Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Pixar’s Toy Story (1995) won Special Achievement Oscars, awarded to films that make an exceptional contribution to motion pictures. Two exceptional cases followed with Pixar’s Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010), both of which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film while also being nominated for “Best Picture.”

6. In fact, there was a small delay and it was finally shown from March 21, 2018 until the end of August that year. Its final running time was fourteen minutes and twenty seconds. The full soundtrack (voices and sound effects) was entrusted to the comedian Tamori, except for a piano piece by Joe Hisaishi.

THE WORKS OF

HAYAO

MIYAZAKI

THE JAPANESE ANIMATION MASTER

CHAPTER II ‒ STUDIO GHIBLI

IT GOES without saying that the history of Studio Ghibli1 is tightly intertwined with Hayao Miyazaki’s own story. The legendary studio, which he co-founded, has been his home away from home for almost half of his life. Since its creation, Studio Ghibli has gradually placed itself as one of the largest studios in the history of Japanese animation cinema, as well as one of the most famous and distinguished both domestically and abroad. It would be remiss if a chapter in this book was not devoted to looking at its creation and operations.

CREATING A STUDIO

In 1983, Tokuma Shoten, the publishing company of the animation magazine Animage, suggested Hayao Miyazaki adapt Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind for the big screen. The adventures of the eponymous princess were already being published in a manga in the magazine since the previous year, garnering a sufficiently enthusiastic welcome from readers to envision its adaptation. To design the animation film, the young director called on all the resources of Topcraft, an animation studio founded eleven years earlier by Toru Hara. He had been a former animator at Tœi who worked with Miyazaki on The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun and would be a future executive producer of six films at Studio Ghibli (until Only Yesterday in 1991). Nausicaä would be Topcraft’s second and last animated feature film, the first being The Last Unicorn, an American movie that had the bulk of the animation carried out in Japan by Topcraft.

The theatrical success of Nausicaä encouraged Tokuma Shoten to order the team to work on a second film. At the same time, Topcraft was in financial difficulty; it was decided to lay off a large number of its workers to create Studio Ghibli on June 15, 1985. The new studio would be a subsidiary of Tokuma Shoten and remain under the overall management of Yasuyoshi Tokuma. Topcraft was then declared bankrupt and wound up. Essentially, Studio Ghibli emerged from the ashes of Topcraft and could feed on the public success of Miyazaki’s Nausicaä. An entire floor measuring 3,200 ft2 was rented in a building at Kichijoji, in a suburb west of Tokyo. Sixteen years later, the Ghibli Museum would open its doors a stone’s throw away from there.

Contrary to popular belief,