It’s currently Hayao Miyazaki season in the U.S. as the latest film of the Japanese animation pioneer, THE BOY AND THE HERON, opens wide and becomes a bonafide boxoffice hit, attracting the most audiences since SPIRITED AWAY opened in 2003 and became the director’s breakout hit for American audiences. Numerous pieces about Miyazaki have popped up in newspapers and magazines, including “A Beginner’s Guide to Miyazaki” in the current issue of Den of Geek, a free magazine available in comic book shops.
THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023)
I had hoped to write a piece about my discovery of Miyazaki and his work in the late 1980s and ’90s and the change in direction his films took in the 21st century, culminating in his latest film, but in researching it I found an article I wrote documenting Miyazaki’s trip to New York in September 1999 in conjunction with the showing of PRINCESS MONONOKE at the New York Film Festival and it includes quotes from the interview with Miyazaki I conducted at the time (with two other journalists). As far as I can tell, this piece was never published anywhere nor do I have any record of whom exactly I did it for. (I was writing at the time for Animerica Magazine and Family Wonder.com, a website that reviewed children’s videos. The latter site published my full transcript of the interview.)
PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997, released in U.S. 1999)
It should be noted that PRINCESS MONONOKE was given an arthouse release by Miramax Films in October 1999, a month after the New York Film Festival showing, but shortly before POKÉMON THE FIRST MOVIE – MEWTWO STRIKES BACK became the first Japanese animated feature to be given a wide release in the U.S. by a major studio, Warner Bros. (In subsequent years, this pattern would be significantly reversed as Miyazaki movies got ever wider releases and POKÉMON movies went straight to TV or disc.)
For the record, if I recall correctly, the two journalists who joined me in interviewing Miyazaki on September 23, 1999, were Liza Bear, writing for an independent film publication, and Sharon Tom, writing for an Asian pop culture website. For clarity of presentation, I have bolded all of Miyazaki’s quotes from the interview. I enjoyed rediscovering this piece for the first time in over two decades and I hope you will, too. I’m quite proud of it.
Hayao Miyazaki at Lincoln Center, New York/photo (c) 1999, Film Society of Lincoln Center
Hayao Miyazaki Comes to New York
by Brian Camp
Hayao Miyazaki made his first trip to New York in late September for the opening of his most recent film PRINCESS MONONOKE at the New York Film Festival (which coincided with a retrospective of Studio Ghibli films at the Museum of Modern Art). As one of a trio of American journalists privileged to be the first to meet with the director of NAUSICAA IN THE VALLEY OF WIND, LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, and PORCO ROSSO, I sat for half an hour with a noticeably jet-lagged Miyazaki in a suite at the Trump Hotel provided by Miramax Films to ask about MONONOKE, his past work, and the state of Japanese and American animation in general. Linda Hoaglund, who has worked on the subtitles for Ghibli films, acted as interpreter.
For me, one of the key issues of the forthcoming release of MONONOKE was how the film would be marketed in the U.S. and how to overcome potential resistance to allowing children at least nine years old and up to see what is probably the first mass-released animated feature to take its young audience seriously. At a time when Pokemon and other Japanese animated TV series have an unprecedented hold on American children, now seems the right time for a serious Japanese animated feature like MONONOKE to reach such an audience. Miyazaki has stated in the past that he wants children to see the film. In response to my question about it, however, he declared he had no involvement in the marketing of the film here or in any of the business decisions related to the 1996 purchase of Studio Ghibli films for worldwide distribution by the Disney Company. He sees himself simply as an animator who ideally would be back in Japan working on his next film. “My head’s a mess. In a perfect world I would be back in Japan working on it. I have to be with my animators. I have to be working with them.”
PRINCESS MONONOKE
On the question of Pokemon and other Japanese animation, Miyazaki purports to have little knowledge of any other work but his own. “I know almost nothing about other animation that’s coming out of Japan because it doesn’t interest me,” he insisted. “It’s true that a good friend of mine designed Pokemon and I know many of the people who worked on it but I’ve certainly never seen it.” He went so far as to criticize anime’s hold on children. “Speaking strictly within Japan and not specifically at all about Pokemon, I think in general what animation does is, speaking from a market, it gobbles children for breakfast and robs them of their time and their freedom far too much. I realize that I belong to part of that contradiction but I think that one great animated film per year is perfectly plenty for a child.” As long as that one animated film comes from Studio Ghibli, few would disagree with him.
Miyazaki was more animated, so to speak, when asked what interested him about the historical setting of MONONOKE. “That is the age during which the Japan as we know it now was formed and came into being. Speaking in broad strokes, during the 14th and 15th centuries there was a power shift. Up until then the gods had more power. After the 15th century, humans had more power. They may have maintained some awe toward the gods, but the balance shifted during those centuries”
PRINCESS MONONOKE
He took aim at another famous Japanese director’s popular depictions of Japanese history. “One of the major themes I had to confront once I decided to make a film based in historic Japan was how to free myself from the grip of restrictions that [Akira] Kurosawa made for us. The more I’ve learned about Japanese history the more I’ve grown to believe that it is not just about the samurai that populate the period films by other directors. Although most of the people who appear in PRINCESS MONONOKE have not been what you would call the main actors in Japanese history, they are the people who have supported and carried its history forward on their backs. Through my research I’ve learned that although they were of a lower class, indeed they had far more freedom. They were armed and they had much more power than we have been led to believe.”
PRINCESS MONONOKE
Asked about the strong women characters in MONONOKE, he commented, “We’ve learned that women of that period in the 14th and 15th centuries had far more freedom and autonomy than we had imagined….It’s only in the modern age that women began to fall under the thumb of Japanese men.”
PRINCESS MONONOKE
Following up on this train of thought, a question was put to him on whether Japanese society was changing, loosening up. He replied, “Yes, it’s turning into a very boring country.” But he went on to offer an intriguing theory of why MONONOKE struck such a deep chord in Japan. “Deep inside people’s hearts and in their subconscious, traditional elements still reside. And I’m actually quite interested in portraying in my films that long-held Japan that’s been with us for centuries. I don’t really know the reason why it was such a monster hit in Japan but I imagine that it awakened something that was long slumbering inside people’s hearts.”
PRINCESS MONONOKE
He was asked about the technique developed for the film in which the design was so much more detailed than usual and so much more evocative. “To be as full as possible in drawing the world that the characters inhabit, not just drawing the characters but the world that they inhabit is just as important. To be as sensitive to the seasons, the light, the rain, the history of the world that they inhabit and portray that fully. I think a lot about the world that the character inhabits. Even when the character is offscreen, what is he or she doing when they’re offscreen? How do they live?”
PRINCESS MONONOKE
On the question of computer animation, which is used sparingly in the film, he declared, “I think as long as you don’t misuse it it’s a very effective tool. The biggest problem is that people who don’t have talent believe that the computer can make up for their lack of talent. It’s that illusion that causes problems.”
Asked about his educational background, he recalled that, “In theory I was an economics student. I studied just enough to keep from flunking out. The rest of the time I drew.” So what led him into animation? “Right before an exam when I was 18 years old I saw the first Japanese feature-length animated film called THE TALE OF THE WHITE SERPENT [HAKUJADEN, 1958, released in the United States in 1961 as PANDA AND THE MAGIC SERPENT]. I think that film saved me. Calmed down and looking at it later, it’s actually a very simple and straightforward romantic love story. But as a college student it appeared to me as salvation. And so the goal that I always set for myself whenever I make a film is to try to pack that much powerful impact into one of my films so that young people can take that away from my movies the way that I took it away from THE TALE OF THE WHITE SERPENT.” His advice to aspiring young animators was quite simple: “Draw.”
HAKUJADEN (aka TALE OF THE WHITE SERPENT, 1958)
Miyazaki is sometimes labeled in this country the Walt Disney of Japan. He’d rather avoid such comparisons. “Walt Disney was a great producer. I’m just an animator. You can’t compare us. It’s apples and oranges. I have no interest in becoming an owner-manager. I have my hands full being an artist.” I reminded him that he has acted as producer on other Studio Ghibli productions (ONLY YESTERDAY, POM POKO, WHISPER OF THE HEART). “I do but actually I don’t do anything. I choose the director. I help approve of the concept and then I bow down to my investors.” (This seems to me to be the best kind of producer.)
ONLY YESTERDAY (1991), directed by Isao Takahata
Asked what he thinks of recent Disney animated features, he denied seeing any. “I don’t see anything. They all send me videotapes.” Asked specifically about MULAN (1998), he pointed out an earlier encounter with that story. “Actually the story of MULAN is quite well known in Japan and once it was proposed that our studio do the story a long time ago. As a result we had a meeting about whether or not it would make a good animated film and we turned it down.”
Having seen most of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films at the Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective during the previous week, many for the first time on the big screen, I asked him how he developed the spunky and aggressive young women characters who make his films so exciting for audiences, particularly young girls. “I find the models for my characters in the people who are around me. I think many of the people don’t even know they’re models for my characters, but what I’m doing is taking a little bit of what the people around me have in them innately and working with that and turning it into a character.”
WHISPER OF THE HEART (1995)
I asked him to elaborate and he revealed a contrast between the women he knows and the ones depicted in his films. “If I knew how I develop my characters, I wouldn’t be sitting here with a rock over my head called my next movie. But I do populate my films with the kind of people I wish and hope existed. I think many of the females that I base my characters on in real life are beset with much more mundane problems, unable to spread their wings as fully as they might.”
I asked about the older characters in his films, the wise men and women who act as a support network for the young leads. “I’d like to become that kind of old person. I actually believe that grandparents and older people can speak more directly and persuasively to young children than their parents and their immediate next generation. And if you lose that grandparently advice and wisdom you turn into a country like Japan.”
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988)
With that, the interview was ended and Miyazaki went on to speak to a Japanese documentary crew that was covering his New York visit. Two days later, I was present when Miyazaki made a surprise appearance at the Museum of Modern Art to introduce a showing of MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO to a packed house of Miyazaki fans. When he was introduced by Museum film curator, Larry Kardish, the stunned crowd leapt to their feet in a chorus of cheers and applause. As he strode down the aisle, a smile broke out across Miyazaki’s face. He was pleased.
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988)
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