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Hayao Miyazaki [1941 - ] Date of Birth: 5 January 1941 BIOGRAPHY Hayao Miyazaki was born in 1941 in the affluent suburb of Akebono-cho in Tokyo's Bunkyo-ku district. Devotees of his work, familiar with his recurring motifs of powered flight and eccentric flying machines, won’t be surprised to learn that his father Katsuji Miyazaki was a director of Miyazaki Airplane, a company run by Miyazaki's uncle which spent the war years making parts for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter. A fascination with aircraft was clearly instilled in the young Miyazaki, one which find many creative outlets in his later work. As a child of the Second World War, Miyazaki's young years were unsettled. As the war drew to its conclusion and Japan faced imminent defeat, the Miyazaki family were evacuated to the safer Utsunomiya City and Kanuma City in Tochigi Prefecture, the latter being the home base of Miyazaki Airplane. Miyazaki was still a refugee when he started school in 1947 at the age of six. That same year, Miyazaki's mother was struck down with with spinal tuberculosis and was admitted to hospital where she spent the next few years bed-ridden, before being allowed home to recuperate. It would take until 1955 for Mrs Miyazaki to be free of the illness and the trauma of being separated from his mother was later relived in Miyazaki's Tonari no Totoro / My Neighbour Totoro [1988]. The young Miyazaki sought solace in his burgeouning love of comics and soon started drawing. His technical skills were somewhat limited and he spent much time sketching aircraft and military equipment as, by his own admission, his figure work wasn't terribly good. His love of animation developed in 1958, while studying at Toyotama High. There, he saw the first Japanese feature-length color animated film, Taiji Yabushita and Kazuhiko Okabe's Hakuja den, which fired his imagination. Like many anime and manga artists of his generation, Miyazaki was heavily influenced bythe legendary Osamu Tezuka. He passionately devouted Tezuka's work during the 1950s and 60s, as well as drawing inspiration from the likes of Sanpei Shirato and Tetsuji Fukushima. Surprisingly, on graduating from Toyotama High, Miyazaki didn't enter the film or manga industries, choosing instead to enrol at Gakushuin University where he studied economics. His love of comics and literature didn't fade, however, and he was an active member of the university's "children's literature research club." That love developed to such an extent that when he graduated with degrees in Political Science and Economics in 1963, Miyazaki landed a job at at Toei Douga, Toei's animation unit, where he trained for three months to become an in-betweener, the animator who draws the interim stages of an animated sequence after the key animator has drawn the starting and finishing points. Within months of joining the company, he was in-betweening on the feature film Wan wan chushingura [1963] before landing regular paid work on Toei's first television anime, Okami shônen Ken [1963 - 1965]. The regular work enabled Miyazaki to rent an apartment in Nerima-ku, Tokyo, and he was an enthusiastic and active supporter of workers' rights - he hadn't been at the company long before he was leading his fellow animators in an industrial dispute. Miyazaki soon became Chief Secretary of Toei Douga's union where he was assisted by Isao Takahata as Vice-Chairman. The friendship that developed between Miyazaki and Takahata was to be a strong and lasting one. About this same time, Miyazaki met and started dating another member of the animation team, Akemi Ota. Miyazaki was getting plenty of work on TV, but really wanted to make the move back into features. In 1965, he offered to help Takahata with the production of Taiyo no oji: Horusu no daiboken [1968], making a pact with Takahata and animation director Yasuo Otsuka to complete the film no matter how long it took, hoping that it would act as a calling card for all of them. As work progressed, Miyazaki found time to marry Akemi Ota and fathered a son, born in 1967 with a second boy following in 1968. The television work kept coming and Miyakazi found himself in demand as a key animator on a number of projects, including some big screen work. But it was never quite enough for Miyazaki and in 1971, he left Toei Douga to follow Takahata and Otabe who had already decamped to Tokyo Movie's anime production unit at A-Pro. He also entered into negotiations, alongside Yutaka Fujioka, president of Tokyo Movie, to try to get the rights to the Pippi Longstockings books, even travelling to Sweden to help smooth the way, though sadly the project fell through. His stay at A-Pro was short-lived as again the seemingly inseperable trio of Miyazaki, Takahata and Otabe upped sticks and headed for Zuiyo Pictures where Miyazaki did scene designing and organising on Alps no shojo Heidi [1974], managing to work a research trip to Switzerland out of the deal! He did the same thing again while working on Haha wo tazunete sanzen-ri [1976], this time taking a research trip to Italy and Argentina. The trip to Italy made quite an impact on Miyazaki and he fell madly in love with the country. He was soon working with Italian animator Marco Pagott and other Italian film-makers on the TV series Meitantei Holmes which had a troubled production history and which wasn't finished until 1984. At the turn of the 80s, Miyazaki had made it to the director's chair and was passing on his skills to a new generation of animators when he became chief instructor at the company Telecom. He also helped them out with a couple of episodes of Rupan sansei Part II [1977], the follow up to the 1971 show that he had also worked on/ For these episodes, he assumed the pseudonym Teruki Tsutomu. During 1982, Miyazaki occupied himself with his most ambitious project to date, the massive manga Kaze no tani no Naushika, the epic tale of the young princess Nausicaa finding a way to reconcile humanity and nature in a ruined post-apocalyptic future. The strip was serialised in the popular magazine Animage and was so huge that it didn't finally get finished until 1994. Initially, Miyazaki was reluctant to adapt the manga to film, especially as the strip was so far away from being completed in the early 1980s. But the popularity of the comic was so great that Miyazaki found it impossible to resist for too long. Miyazaki and Takahata took the project to production house Topcraft and, despite the death of Miyazaki's mother just a month before production began, the film version of Kaze no tani no Naushika / Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind / Warriors of the Wind was soon under way. The finished film was a huge hit among animation fans and marked the first real example of the Miyazaki style that was to become so beloved in years to come. Eager to protect his future projects, Miyazaki quit his post at Tokyo Movie Shinsha while Kaze no tani no Naushika was in production and set up his own office which he dubbed Nibariki, which would exist solely to manage his copyrights. But even bigger plans were being hatched. Takahata, musing on where their respective careers would take them next, proposed the creation of a new production studio. Moving into offices in Kichijoji, Tokyo, Miyazaki and Takahata founded Studio Ghibli, soon to become one of the most respected production houses in Japan. The duo recruited Toshio Suzuki, from the Tokuma publishing company that put out Animage, and former Topcraft president Toru Hara. This meeting of minds and talents created a company that has created some of the best animation ever produced anywhere. Initially acting as the production company for films by Miyazaki and Takahata, Ghibli later gave newer animators and directors their first breaks. Miyazaki's first three productions for Ghibli remain among his very best, the steampunk classic Tenku no shiro Rapyuta / Castle in the Sky [1986], the semi-autobiographical Tonari no Totoro / My Neighbour Totoro [1988] and the almost impossibly charming Majo no takkyûbin / Kiki's Delivery Service [1989], while Takahata contributed the heart-breaking Hotaru no haka / Grave of the Fireflies [1988]. Miyazaki's love of both aviation and Italy found its ultimate voice in the wonderful Kurenai no buta / Porco Rosso [1992], but the astonishing pace of work that Miyazaki imposed on himself was beginning to take its toll. Unlike many animators, Miyazaki the director also continues to draw many of the cells in his films himself, a massive undertaking, especially when one considers that between 1984 and 1992, he had overseen six films as director, as well as executive producing Takahata's Omohide poro poro / Only Yesterday [1991]. It would be five years before Miyazaki would make another film and it was announced several times that he would retire after it was made. But Mononoke Hime / Princess Mononoke [1997] proved to be an immense hit, even breaking the Western markets that heretofore had only fitfully recognised Miyazaki's talents. Until James Cameron's Titanic [1997] sailed into Tokyo later that year, Mononoke was the biggest grossing film in Japanese cinema history. With Disney now on board to distribute Miyazaki's films in the States, it seemed an inopportune time for Miyazaki to call it a day. So the retirement was put on hold for a while and he, having aimed Mononoke at young adults, he decided to go back to making a film aimed at younger children. The result, released in 2001, was the extraordinary Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi / Spirited Away, Miyazaki's masterpiece and the richly deserved winner of the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Miyazaki's latest film, Hauru
no ugoku shiro / Howl's Moving Castle [2004] is again being
touted as his last before retirement again beckons. If it is, and if
it's even a tenth the film Sen
to Chihiro no kamikakushi is, it'll be a fitting end to
one of the most extraordinary and fruitful careers in animation. * = television 1963 1963 - 1965 1964 - 1965 1965 1965 - 1966 1967 Reinbou
Sentai Robin: episodes 34 and 38 [key animator] 1968 1969 Nagagutsu
wo haita neko [key animator] Soratobu
yureisen [key animator] 1969 - 1970 1971 Dobutsu
takarajima [script, story consultant, key animator] Rupan sansei
[director] * Sarutobi
ecchan [key animator] * 1972 Yuki no taiyou
[key animation] * 1972 - 1973 1973 1973 - 1974 Samurai
jaiantsu: episode 1 [key animator] * 1974 1975 1976 1977 Rupan
sansei Part II: episodes 145 and 155 [director (as Tsutomu
Teruki)] * Sougen
no ko tenguri [layouts] 1978 1979 Rupan
sansei: Kariosutoro no shiro [script, director] 1980 - 1981 1982 1984 Kaze
no tani no Naushika [script, director] Mirai shônen Conan tokubetsu hen-kyodaiki gigant no fukkatsu [director] 1984 - 1985 1986 1988 Tonari no
Totoro [script, director, lyrics] 1989 Majo no
takkyûbin [producer, script, director] 1991 1992 Nandarou [director, key animator] * Sora iro
no tane [director] * 1994 1995 On Your Mark [script, director] 1997 2001 Sen
to Chihiro no kamikakushi [script, director] 2002 Neko no
ongaeshi [project concept] 2003 2004 1987
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