Hayao Miyazaki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Portrait of animator Hayao Miyazaki |
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| Born: | January 5, 1941 Tokyo, Japan |
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| Occupation: | Film director, screenwriter |
| Spouse: | Akemi Ôta |
| Children: | Goro Miyazaki Keisuke Miyazaki |
Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao), born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, is a director of Japanese animated films. He is a co-founder of Studio Ghibli.
Miyazaki is the creator of many popular anime feature films, as well as manga. Although largely unknown in the West outside of animation circles until Miramax released his film Princess Mononoke in 1999, his films have enjoyed commercial and critical success in Japan and East Asia. Miyazaki's Spirited Away is the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan; Princess Mononoke held the same title for a short period until the release of Titanic later in the same year.
Miyazaki's films are distinguished by recurring themes such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his movies are often strong, independent girls or young women; the "villains" are often ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.
Miyazaki's films have generally been financial successes. His success has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney. However, Miyazaki does not see himself as a person building an animation empire, but as an animator lucky enough to have been allowed to make films with his own personal touch.
[edit] Biography
Miyazaki, the second of four brothers, was born in the town of Akebono-cho, part of Tokyo's Bunkyō-ku. During World War II, Miyazaki's father Katsuji Miyazaki was director of Miyazaki Airplane, owned by the elder Miyazaki's brother, which made rudders for the Zero fighter plane. During this time, Miyazaki drew airplanes and other aspects of flight, and developed a lifelong fascination with aviation which became a recurring theme in his artistic works.
Miyazaki's mother was a voracious reader and an intelligent woman, who often questioned socially accepted norms. Miyazaki later said that he inherited his questioning and skeptical mind from her.
Miyazaki moved frequently throughout his childhood, in part because his mother was undergoing treatment for spinal tuberculosis from 1947 until 1955. Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro features a family whose mother is similarly afflicted.
Around 1956 – the date is apparently uncertain – Miyazaki entered Toyotama High School. In his third year there, he saw the film Hakuja Den, described as "the first-ever Japanese feature-length color anime", [1] and began to take an interest in animation. In order to become an animator, he had to learn to draw people, because his artwork up until that point had been limited to drawing airplanes and battleships.[2]
After high school, Miyazaki attended Gakushuin University, graduating in 1963 with degrees in political science and economics. He was a member of the "children's literature research club," said to be "the closest thing to a comics club in those days". [3]
In April 1963, Miyazaki got a job at Toei Animation, working as an in-between artist on the anime Wanwan Chushingura (Watchdog Bow Wow). He was a leader in a labor dispute soon after his arrival, and he became chief secretary of Toei's labor union in 1964.
In October 1965, he married fellow animator Akemi Ota, who later left work to raise their two sons, Gorō and Keisuke. Goro is now an anime filmmaker himself, directing Tales from Earthsea at Studio Ghibli. Keisuke is a wood artist who has done work for the Ghibli Museum and who made the wood engraving shown in Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart.
[edit] Films
Miyazaki first gained recognition while working as an in-between artist on the Toei production of Garibā no Uchuu Ryokou (1965) (U.S. title: Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon). He thought the original ending in the script was lacking, and pitched his own idea, which became the ending used in the final film.
A few years later Miyazaki played an important role as chief animator, concept artist, and scene designer on Hols: Prince of the Sun (1968), a landmark animated film directed by Isao Takahata, with whom he would continue to collaborate for the next three decades. In Kimio Yabuki's Puss in Boots (1969), Miyazaki again provided key animation, storyboards, designs, story ideas, and image boards for key scenes in the film, including the final chase in Lucifer's castle. Shortly thereafter, Miyazaki proposed scenes in the screenplay for The Flying Ghost Ship, in which military tanks would march into downtown Tokyo and cause massive havoc, and was hired to storyboard and animate those scenes. Later in 1971, Miyazaki played a decisive role developing structure, characters, and designs for Animal Treasure Island and Alibaba and the 40 Thieves, earning credit for Idea Construction and Organization for the two films respectively, as well as storyboarding and animating pivotal scenes in both.
Miyazaki left Toei in 1971 for A Pro, where he co-directed episodes #7-8, #10-11, and #13-23 of the first Lupin III series with Isao Takahata. He and Takahata then began pre-production on a Pippi Longstockings series and drew extensive image boards. However, while on a trip to Sweden the original author, Astrid Lindgren, did not give them permission to continue the project, and it was cancelled. Instead of Pippi, Miyazaki conceived, wrote, designed, and animated the two Panda Go Panda! shorts which were directed by Isao Takahata. Miyazaki's first film as a director was The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), a light-hearted adventure film based on Lupin III, an extensive Japanese television series and film franchise.
The director's next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) (Kaze no Tani no Naushika), was an epic adventure featuring many distinctive themes that reappear in later films: a concern with ecological issues, a fascination with aircraft, and the absence of a traditional villain. He adapted it from the manga of the same name, which he had himself created two years earlier (this was the first film which he had both written and directed). Following the success of Nausicaä, Miyazaki co-founded the animation production company Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata, and has produced nearly all of his subsequent work through it.
Miyazaki continued to gain recognition with his first three films made through Studio Ghibli. Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) recounts the adventure of two orphans seeking a magical floating island. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) (Tonari no Totoro) tells of the adventure of two girls and a magical creature called a "totoro." Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) is the story of a small-town teenage witch who strikes out on her own in a big city.
Porco Rosso (1992) was something of a departure for Miyazaki, in that the main character was an adult male, an anti-fascist aviator transformed into an anthropomorphic pig. The film is a light-hearted adventure set in a fictional world based on 1920s Italy where bounty hunters, aviators, and air pirates battle in the skies. The movie explores the tension between selfishness and duty. Many also see the film as being an abstract self-portrait of the director himself, something of a fictionalized autobiography.
Miyazaki's next film, Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime), released in 1997, returns to the ecological and political themes of Nausicaä. The main plot is an epic struggle between the animal gods who rule the forest and the humans who are trying to exploit it for industry. The film was a huge commercial success in Japan, where it became the highest grossing film of all time, until the later success of Titanic, and it ultimately won Best Picture at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki retired after making Princess Mononoke, intending it to be his last film as a director.
After an extended vacation of spending time with the daughters of a friend, one of whom became the inspiration for Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, "Sen & Chihiro's spiriting away"), the story of a girl who is forced to survive in a bizarre spirit world, enlisted to work in a bathhouse for spirits and gods after her parents are turned into pigs. The film, released in Japan in July 2001, broke the attendance and box office records previously set by Titanic with ¥30.4 billion (almost $300,000,000) in total gross earnings from over 23 million viewings. It has received numerous film awards, including Best Picture at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Golden Bear (First Prize) at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, and the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the first Oscar awarded to an anime production. In 2005, Miyazaki was awarded for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival.
In July 2004, Miyazaki finished production on Howl's Moving Castle, a film adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' fantasy novel of the same name, for which he came out of retirement again, following the sudden departure of original director Mamoru Hosoda. The film premiered at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival and won the Golden Osella award for animation technology. On November 20, 2004, Howl's Moving Castle opened to general audiences in Japan and earned ¥1.4 billion in its first two days, continuing the record-setting trend of Miyazaki films at the box office. The English dubbed version was released in the U.S. through Walt Disney on June 11, 2005.
Also in 2005, news was spread that Miyazaki's next (and, reportedly, last) project would be I Lost My Little Boy, based on a Chinese children's book. As of 2006, nothing more has been heard of the project.
Miyazaki's son, Goro Miyazaki, recently completed his first film, Tales from Earthsea, based on several stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. Throughout the film's production, he and his father were not on speaking terms because of a dispute over whether or not Goro was ready to direct. On June 28, 2006, Hayao previewed his son's completed film and apparently reversed his opinion of Goro's abilities. [4]
Nausicaa.net has recently reported that the elder Miyazaki has plans to direct his next film, having made up his mind about its "mood." It will apparently take place in Kobe. Among areas that Miyazaki's team visited as part of pre-production were the view of a city from high in the mountains and a mysterious old café run by an elderly couple. The exact location of these places was censored from Studio Ghibli's production diaries. They have also recently announced that Hayao Miyazaki has begun work on the film's storyboards, which are being produced as watercolors because of the film's "unusual visual style". It will apparently take about 20 months to produce with a planned release date of summer 2008. The film's title among other information will be released in a press release this December.
[edit] Themes and devices
[edit] Distinctive themes
One of the most distinctive traits of Miyazaki's later films that sets them apart from certain Western animation is the lack of stereotypically "good" or "bad" characters. His characters have complex motivations, and while some can be better or worse than others, they are often capable of growth and change. For example, Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke stands in opposition to the other main characters, and her ironworks blatantly exploit the nearby forests for raw materials. However, her character doesn't fit into the standard role of villain: the viewer sees how she provides a productive home for lepers and former prostitutes in her city. Lady Eboshi and Princess Mononoke also exemplify the environmental ethic apparent in much of Miyazaki's work, although even this commitment is never presented in "black and white": Mononoke is resolved when Lady Eboshi's industrial city reconciles itself with its "primitive" neighbors.
Some of Miyazaki's early films, however, featured undeniably evil villains (Count Cagliostro in Castle of Cagliostro or Muska in Laputa: Castle in the Sky), while others are remarkable for having no villain at all (Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro).
Many of Miyazaki's work are styled as bildungsroman, i.e. they depict the path of personal growth and change of the main character. In the beginning, the protagonist (almost always a girl) is described as naive, dependent on others, or selfish. As the story precipitates into a crisis, the character is confronted with challenges, failure and hardships, which she learns to overcome by relying on her own will and inner strength. In the end she's able to make her own decision and strike out of her own. This change is also achieved through exposure to life's major realities, love (life), and old age (death). Most of Miyazaki's movies feature a boy co-protagonist, who will later become the first romantic relationship of the character, and an old woman, who starts out as an antagonist, but later reveals her good side and motherly nature, providing essential help. The "grandmother figure" may mean that, as a person achieves maturity, their attitude toward old age changes from opposition to acceptance.
For example, in Laputa, at the start, Sheeta is so naive that she literally "falls from the clouds". By learning to trust the brash Pazu, and with the help of the not-so-ferocious pirate Dola, she finally saves her own world from destruction. In Spirited Away, the initially selfish Chihiro risks her life to save her beloved Haku and her parents.
The influence of Miyazaki's early interest in Marxism are apparent in some of his films, such as Porco Rosso, while his pro-feminist views are exemplified by the strong-willed female protagonists in nearly all his films. [5]
[edit] Visual devices
Specific visual elements recur in many of Miyazaki's films. Particularly in his later work, he occasionally dedicates a few seconds of film to explore a quiet moment in the animated environment. The image of wind moving in long waves across a field of grass or grain has been used in many of his films, as is a closeup shot of a stone or boulder darkening with raindrops. These brief sequences, usually no longer than five or six seconds, are often instrumental in establishing the larger "reality" of his animated world.
Another visual element common to Miyazaki's films is the use of character designs that, at the most basic level, are quite similar. This is often humorously considered an artistic perception that such characters are actors and actresses, reappearing in different films of his.
Flight by the characters is a very common occurrence in Miyazaki's films, lauded for their ability to often look very natural and not "forced". Examples include Nausicaä piloting Mehve, Kiki riding her broomstick, Totoro carrying Satsuki and Mei across the night sky, Howl and Sophie floating majestically above the town of Market Chipping, or Chihiro being borne by Haku in dragon-form back towards the bathhouse of the spirits to find her parents.
Many of Miyazaki's films also feature a train or airship of some kind.
[edit] Influences
A number of Western authors have influenced Miyazaki's artwork, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lewis Carroll, Moebius, Diana Wynne Jones, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea has been a great influence on all his works, and that he has kept her books on his bedside.[6]
Miyazaki has also been deeply influenced by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; he illustrated the Japanese covers of Saint-Exupéry's Night Flight (Vol de nuit) and Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), and wrote an afterword for Wind, Sand and Stars.[7][8]
As in Miyazaki's films, these authors have created self-contained worlds where allegory is avoided, characters have complex or ambiguous motivations, and the audience is not explicitly lectured to.
In a 1994 BBC interview, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Philippa Pearce as influences. He has also cited TV work based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. The filmmaker is also fond of Roald Dahl's stories about planes and pilots: for example, the image from Porco Rosso of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl's "They Shall Not Grow Old". Other Miyazaki works—such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away—specifically incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.
Miyazaki was also influenced by his political background in the ANPO Hantai (opponents of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty) and labor movements of the 1960s. These political roots had an impact on the themes of his films.
[edit] TV series
Miyazaki's work in TV series is less well known than his films. In the 1970s he worked as an animator on the World Masterpiece Theater TV animation series under Isao Takahata. His first directorial credit is for the TV version of Lupin III in 1971; he was a co-director (with Takahata) of the second half of the first TV series, and director of two episodes of the second. He later based his first feature film, Castle of Cagliostro, on the same character.
Perhaps his most famous TV work was directing Future Boy Conan, a 1978 adaptation of the children's novel The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key. The main antagonist is the leader of the city-state of Industria who is attempting to revive some lost technology. The series also elaborates on the characters and events in the book, but nonetheless is an early example of certain character types which would recur throughout Miyazaki's later work: for example, a girl who is in touch with nature, a warrior woman who is not her antagonist, and a boy who seems destined for the girl. The series also featured lots of unusual aircraft.
He also directed six episodes of Sherlock Hound, a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes tales using anthropomorphic animals that was released in 1984-85.
[edit] Manga
Miyazaki has drawn several manga, starting in 1969 with Nagakutsu wo Haita Neko (Puss in Boots). His major work in this printed format is the manga version of the epic tale Nausicaä, on which he worked from 1982 to 1994 and which has sold more than 10 million copies in Japan. He originally didn't want to do Nausicaä as a manga but was forced to after Toshio Suzuki couldn't get funding for a film not based on a manga. Other works include Sabaku no Tami (砂漠の民 People of the Desert), Shuna no Tabi (シュナの旅 The Journey of Shuna), Zassou nōto (雑想ノート The Notebook of Various Images), and Hikoutei Jidai (飛行艇時代 The Age of the Flying Boat, the basis of his animated film Porco Rosso).
[edit] Legacy
Miyazaki does not see himself as a person building an animation empire, but as an animator lucky enough to have been allowed to make films with his own personal touch. With that statement, one might compare him to Yuriy Norshteyn, Frédéric Back, or Chuck Jones as an animator's animator.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Director, Screenplay, and Storyboards
- Future Boy Conan - (未来少年コナン Mirai Shounen Conan), 1978
- The Castle of Cagliostro (Lupin III) - (ルパン三世カリオストロの城 Rupan Sansei: Kariosutoro no Shiro), 1979
- Sherlock Hound - (名探偵ホームズ Meitantei Holmes), 1982
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - (風の谷のナウシカ Kaze no Tani no Naushika), 1984
- Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta), 1986
- My Neighbor Totoro - (となりのトトロ Tonari no Totoro), 1988
- Kiki's Delivery Service - (魔女の宅急便 Majo no Takkyuubin), 1989
- Porco Rosso - (紅の豚 Kurenai no Buta), 1992
- On Your Mark, 1995 (Short animated music video featuring music by Chage and Aska)
- Princess Mononoke - (もののけ姫 Mononoke Hime), 1997
- Spirited Away - (千と千尋の神隠し Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), 2001 (Best Animated Feature, winner 2002)
- Howl's Moving Castle - (ハウルの動く城 Hauru no Ugoku Shiro), 2004 (Best Animated Feature, nominee 2005)
[edit] Co-director
- Lupin III: Part I Episodes #7-8, #10-11, #13-23 - (ルパン三世 Rupan Sansei), 1971 (with Isao Takahata)
[edit] Concept, Screenplay, Storyboards, Scene Design and Key Animation
- Panda! Go, Panda! - (パンダコパンダ Panda Kopanda), 1972
[edit] Screenplay, Storyboards, Scene Design, Art Design and Key Animation
- Panda! Go, Panda! & the Rainy-Day Circus - (パンダコパンダ 雨降りサーカスの巻 Panda Kopanda: Amefuri Saakasu no Maki), 1973
[edit] Screenwriter, Storyboards, Executive Producer, Sequence Director
- Whisper of the Heart - (耳をすませば Mimi o Sumaseba), 1995
[edit] Story Consultant, Key Animation, Storyboards, Scene Design
- Animal Treasure Island - (どうぶつ宝島 Doubutsu Takarajima), 1971
[edit] Key Animation, Storyboards, Scene Design
- Hols: Prince of the Sun - (太陽の王子 ホルスの大冒険 Taiyo no Oji, Horusu no Daiboken), 1968
[edit] Organizer, Key Animation, Storyboards
- Alibaba and the Forty Thieves - (アリババと４０匹の盗賊 Alibaba to Yonjubiki no Tozuku), 1971
[edit] Key Animation, Storyboards, Design
- Puss in Boots - (長靴をはいた猫 Nagagutsu wo Haita Neko), 1969
- Flying Ghost Ship - (空飛ぶゆうれい船 Sora Tobu Yureisen), 1969
[edit] Further reading
- Cavallaro, Dani (2006), The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki, Mcfarland. (ISBN 0-7864-2369-2)
- McCarthy, Helen (1999), Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation: Films, Themes, Artistry, Stone Bridge. (ISBN 1-880656-41-8)
[edit] External links
- Miyazaki Information at Nausicaa.net
- The Official Studio Ghibli Site (Japanese)
- GhibliWorld.com: The Ultimate Ghibli Collection Site (English Ghibli source with news updates straight from Japan and info about Studio Ghibli goods)
- Profile at Japan Zone
- Profile at IMDB
- Discussion about Miyazaki in The New Yorker
- Interview in The Guardian
- Criticism of Miyazaki by Mamoru Oshii
- Profile at Anime.com
- [9]
- Hayao Miyazaki at the Notable Names Database
| World Masterpiece Theater | |
| Calpis Manga Theater: | Dororo - Moomin - Andersen Stories - New Moomin - Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat - Heidi, Girl of the Alps |
| Calpis Kodomo Theater: | A Dog of Flanders - 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother - Rascal the Raccoon |
| Calpis Family Theater: | The Story of Perrine |
| World Masterpiece Theater: | Anne of Green Gables - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - The Swiss Family Robinson - Lucy of the Southern Rainbow - Story of the Alps: My Annette - Katri, Girl of the Meadows |
| House World Masterpiece Theater: | Princess Sarah - Polyanna Story - Little Women - Little Lord Fauntleroy - Adventures of Peter Pan - Daddy Long-Legs - The Sound of Music - The Bush Baby - Tale of Young Grass: Nan and Miss Jo |
| World Masterpiece Theater: | Tico of the Seven Seas - Romeo and the Black Brothers- Lassie - Remi, Nobody's Girl |
| World Masterpiece Theater(BS-Fuji): | Les Misérables: Little Girl Cosette |
| Other related articles: | Hayao Miyazaki - Nippon Animation - Isao Takahata |
