Introduction
5/19/2024
Before we begin, I want you to picture yourself in your childhood home. It's 1988, and your family has just returned from a shopping trip. Your mom decided to buy you a new DVD, something you both had never seen before. The cover shows what looks to be a large, rotund cat, though it's much taller than a cat should be. It is standing next to a girl with an umbrella, both of the two standing at a bus stop. It piques your interest, for obvious reasons, and so you decide to put the disc into your DVD player, and... You experience a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Beautiful visuals, a heartwarming story, and it feels as though something in your heart has been filled.
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most brilliant filmmakers of the modern age. He has written countless stories that are loved worldwide, by all ages, and by many other filmmakers. It's no surprise that he continues to make movies, and continues to surpass expectations over and over again. He directs and writes every movie he makes, with help from his studio, Studio Ghibli. The film that I mentioned in the previous paragraph is called My Neighbor Totoro, and it has become synonamous with Miyazaki's name in internet circles. This movie was released only three years after Studio Ghibli was founded, and was the second Ghibli film ever, cementing itself in history.
Early Life
5/19/2024
Hayao Miyazaki was born on January 5, 1941 to his parents Katsuji Miyazaki and Yoshiko Myazaki, and was the second of four brothers. He was born in the Tokyo Prefecture of Tokyo City, Japan. His father, Katsuji, was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, a company he shared with his brother. From an early age, Miyazaki had a fondness for airplanes and flying because of this closeness with them. During World War II, Miyazaki Airplane began creating rudders for the military airplanes to use. Not long after, Miyazaki and his famly evacuated to Utsunomiya, the capital of the Tochigi Prefecture. Miyazaki stayed in Utsunomiya until he was in third grade, when his family moved to Eifuku, Suginami, and he finished his fourth grade year.
Miyazaki described himself as weak as a child, and thus turned to art instead. He read many mangakas (westernized as "manga"), including stories like Astro Boy by Osama Tezuka and Rampage Godzilla by the late Shigeru Sugiura. When he was in his third year of High School at Toyotama High School, he began to become influenced by the work of Toei Animation, particularly Panda and the Magic Serpent. He began to study art through high school, and enrolled in university after he graduate high school.
Beginning the Animation Journey with Toei
5/20/2024
Once Miyazaki graduated from High School, he was enrolled in the Gakushion University, a private university in Mejiro, Toshima, Tokyo. During his enrollment, he joined the Children's Literature Circle and planned puppet shows for the group. Even so, he was drawing still drawing manga, and ended up moving into animation instead. He graduated from the university in 1963 with a degree in Political Science and Economics.
After he earned his diploma, Miyazaki joined Toei Animation as an animator. Still present, however, was his desire to be a cartoonist. He disliked working in a "workman-like atmosphere", but was inspired by the works of Lev Atamanov (a Soviet director) just enough to continue animating.
He was eventually granted the honor of being the NineArts (now renamed to the Toei Animation Labor Union) general secretary, pushing for the animators of Toei to be treated better for the work that they were putting out. In the fall of 1965, he met his future wife, Akemi Ota, whilst working for Toei. He eventually had two sons with Akemi, named Goro and Keisuke Miyazaki. During the same year, Miyazaki joined forced with Isao Takahata (co-founder of Studio Ghibli), Yasuo Otsuka, and Kouji Mori to create The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun. It took the group three years to create, and was released in 1968.
A Quick Detour
5/20/2024
To take a quick detour from the last paragraph, I promise this is still relevant. Toei Animation was a very hard-working animation company. Before Miyazaki joined the team, there had been a lot of problems within the company regarding its workers. In 1958, most workers were underpaid, and had no overtime pay, making under $500 a month. As mentioned by a former Toei employee in 2021, "This may sound like a very luxurious story to young animators who are struggling with low wages today, but the monthly salary was 5,000 yen [...] In today's money, it would be about 50,000 yen." This worker ended up joining 8 other coworkers, and with the help of their leader, Masahauru Eto, created the "NineArt" union.
In the book Anime, A History, Jonathan Clements mentions the gruelling work that had taken a toll on the workers at Toei. He states, "[...] there was eventually a predictable price for such unremitting late nights, irregular diets of junk food and cramped, repetitive labour, which led to occasional but notable lapses of health among the staff." They began striking in December of 1961, which eventually led them to give in to the union.
After the strikes began to die down, workers began getting the money they wished to be compensated for. World-renowned anime legend Rintaro had allegedly made 8,000 yen (around $1,321 today). Following this, Miyazaki began working at Toei in 1963. My weird union-rant is over now, I just thought it was interesting.
Outside of Toei
5/22/2024
In 1971, Miyazaki decided to take himself away from Toei with Takahata and Yoichi Kotabe (the artist for the Super Mario series) to join A Production. (That's the name of the company, not weird capitalization.) They began production on Pippi Longstocking, but were not granted permission from the original owner to release it. Afterwards, Miyazaki and Takahata were invited by Otsuka to direct Monkey Punch's Lupin the Third, Part I. Unfortunately, when the show first aired, it suffered serverely from low viewership, and ended half a year later.
With their collective knowledge of their past experiences, Kiyazaki, Takahata, Otsuka, and Kotabe produced Panda! Go, Panda! in 1972 and its sequel in 1973. Miyazaki transfered later to Zuito Eizo (now Nippon Animation) with Takahata and Kotabe. They produced Heidi, Girl of the Alps in 1974. It was his first mainstream success, audience rating average being around 26.9 for the show in its entirety.
In 1978, Miyazaki directed Future Boy Conan for the Nippon Hoso Kyokai, also known as the NHK or Japanese Broadcast Association. He is not credited as a director, but was given the job as such, being given jobs like directing, storyboarding, layouts, character design, and scripting. The series wasn't a big hit, but is considered a classic now.
After Future Boy Conan was released, Otsuka asked Miyazaki if he'd like to direct a new Lupin III movie, titled The Castle of Cagliostro. He ended up spending only four and a half months completing it, releasing it in 1979. Unfortunately, however, it wasn't a sucess in the box office, though it became much more popular when it was rebroadcast on television.
A Studio Is Born
5/22/2024
After Miyazaki finished The Castle of Cagliostro, he began creating concepts for movies, including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Toshio Suzuki, a fan of Miyazaki's work and a member of Animage, brought Miyazaki's image boards of Nausicaä to Tokuma Shoten, the published of Animage. However, Yasuyoshi Tokuma, the president of Animage, had rejected it due to it seeming unappealing if it didn't have an accompanying manga. The editor in chief of Animage, Hideo Ogata, then used the magazine to help publish Nausicaä into a manga, and in 1982 was serialized and gained traction and support from readers.
Ogata and Suzuki proposed a special short film to promote Nausicaä, and the projects scope began to expand. They ended up producing Nausicaä as an animated film in 1984, becoming a huge hit and helped spur up the ecology boom of the time. In 1985, Tokuma Shoten funded the establishment of Studio Ghibli.
The Acomplishments of Mr. Miyazaki
5/22/2024
Miyazaki and his team comprised of Miyazaki, Suzuki, Takahata, and Tokuma, began creating movies as they pleased. They released Castle in the Sky in 1986 and My Neighbor Totoro in 1988. They both returned poor box office profits, but home video releases and merchandise sales helped it get back on its feet. In 1986, when Mamoru Oshii's Lupin III movie didn't get produced, he was appointed as director of Studio Ghibli.
In the following years, Studio Ghibli released four more movies before the turn of the century; Kiki's Delivery Service in 1989, Porco Rosso in 1992, Whisper of the Heart in 1995, and Princess Mononoke in 1997. Mononoke was a record-beraking box office hit in Japan, and it was also one of Ghibli's most expensive movies. Miyazaki was pushed into retirement due to the stress. ...He went back to work shortly after.
Since 2000, Studio Ghibli has released six more movies; Spirited Away in 2001, Howl's Moving Castle in 2004, Tales from the Earthsea in 2006, Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea in 2008, The Wind Rises in 2013, and just recently The Boy and the Heron in 2023. Spirited Away set a record of 23.5 million viewers and 30.8 billion yen at the box office, recieving the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival and Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003. Howl's Moving Castle made 1.48 billion yen and had 1.1 million viewers on its first day, and it won the Osella Award at the Venice International Film Festival and the Best Animation Award from the New York Flim Critics Association in the same year. It also earned the Golden Lion for Lifetime Award at the Venice International Film Festival in 2005.
When Ponyo was released, it earned a Japanese box office record exceeding 10 billion yen. Miyazaki stated that it would be the last film he would work on... and then promptly started working on films again. Have you noticed the pattern yet? He was invited to the Correspondents' Association of Japan in 2008, arguing on behalf of the animation industry. He was selected as a person of Cultural Merit. In 2013, after The Wind Rises was released, Studio Ghibli president Koji Hoshino announced that Miyazaki was retiring. ...And in 2023, he came out of retiring, for a third time, to work on The Boy and The Heron.
Why do I even like this guy so much?
5/22/2024
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most creative people I've ever witnessed. His stories and worlds he creates are awe-inspiring, beautiful, and just incredible in terms of storytelling. He's an amazing director and an even more wonderful artist. I'm being so serious when I tell you his movies have changed my life, and how I see visual storytelling. His motto for making movies has always been "I'm not going to make movies that tell children, 'You should despair and run away'", and it personally speaks to me. In the current internet landscape, there are many shows and movies being directed towards children that make the world seem scary and dark, but Studio Ghibli films have always been about reconnecting with your roots, nature, and just being free.
If I could recommend one single person to watch the works of, it would be Hayao Miyazaki. I first watched Ponyo when it released, and it has since become my all-time favorite animated film. It's a simple story based off of The Little Mermaid, about a goldfish named Brunhilde becoming tired of living with her father, Fujimoto, who doesn't let her leave his ship. She escapes and ends up falling in love with a little boy named Sasuke, and wishes to become a human girl to be with him forever... and the story has a good ending. She becomes a human, she changes her name to Ponyo, she gets to stay with Sasuke, and Fujimoto begins to appreciate humanity. I could go on for ages about how beautiful it is, how the story makes a kid feel important.
In summary, Hayao Miyazaki and the works he's created have become treasures to all those who watch them. He creates stories that are meant to be cherished and remembered, and never leave you feeling like you should have picked up a different film. He's still kicking, and will continue to touch the hearts of children and adults for as long as he lives. Unless he decides to come back to life after he passes away, like he does with retirement.
Sources
5/19/2024
All sources can be found here, including which blog post they're directed from.
Early Life
Career
A Quick Detour