We look at legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki's rise to success.
When Hayao Miyazaki stepped into a Tokyo conference room and announced his retirement from feature filmmaking on September 6th, 2013, it marked the end of a career which stretched back to the early 1960s. Through such films as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki entertained and beguiled a global audience with his lighter-than-air storytelling and captivating characters. Somehow, his films managed to be both universal and deeply personal. But how did Miyazaki, born to a well-to-do family on January 5th, 1941, become one of the most respected animators in Japan?
Miyazaki grew up in the post-war comics boom led by the father of manga, Osamu Tezuka, and dreamed of becoming a comic artist himself. When he went to university, however, Miyazaki studied political science and economics rather than the arts. But he remained dedicated to pursuing a career in the manga; even as he read and wrote about the Japanese industry, and started up a manga club at his university (Gakushuin Daigaku in Tokyo), and began approaching publishers with some of his early work.
As for animation, there was one cinematic experience that, more than any other, seemed to trigger Miyazaki’s filmmaking ambitions – it was one of the first steps on his path to becoming one of the most celebrated animators of all time.
While it’s sad to think that we’ll never see a new Hayao Miyazaki feature film, it’s now possible to look back and admire his now completed body of work. His apprenticeship, served at Toei Animation in the 1960s and early 70s, developed alongside the rise of anime in post-war Japan. When he took the helm of his first feature in 1979, Miyazaki began an 11-picture journey in which he’d constantly push the possibilities of animation into uncharted territory. A perfectionist who worked tirelessly on every aspect of his films, Miyazaki leaves behind an astonishing body of work that will be watched for decades to come.
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