Hayao Miyazaki: A Biography and Analysis of His Work

Since the 1980s, he has been one of the leading figures in Japanese animation. At the turn of the millennium, thanks to the films Princess Mononoke or Journey to Fantasy, he also broke through in Europe and the USA. But who exactly is Hayao Miyazaki, whose hand-drawn fantasy worlds have become a haven for children and adults from all over the world?

The American professor of East Asian studies Susan Napier is looking for an answer in a book called Miyazaki and his world, which was recently published by the Paseka publishing house in a Czech translation by Jana Hejná. Over the course of eight years of research and writing, the author capitalized on knowledge from her own seminars on the Japanese genres of anime and manga, as well as on the animator himself. The text from 2018 skilfully balances between an academic and a popular science style, supplemented only by a few photos from the films discussed. Those who prefer large picture publications on glossy paper will be more satisfied with the Ghiblioteka published in Czech last year.

Susan Napier reveals in the introduction that when she gives a lecture on Miyazaki at Tufts University in the USA, she tries to explain to the students how the characteristic features of the director’s personality are reflected in his pictures. At the same time, the author foreshadows what approach to the life and work of the Japanese master she will apply in the next 350 pages. Movies Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso or Castle in the clouds he does not perceive it primarily from a story or stylistic point of view. For her, they are primarily news about Miyazaki’s worldview.

In order to support her psychoanalytic reading of 11 full-length works, she begins with a trip to childhood and adolescence. It describes how the director, born in 1941 into a privileged family, perceived the Second World War.

A grandfather, father and uncle ran a factory manufacturing parts for Japanese Zero fighters, profiting directly from the wartime frenzy. This is where the filmmaker’s ambivalent attitude towards technology, which he admires but is also aware of its destructive potential, allegedly stems from.

Miyazaki grew up in a luxurious house in the suburbs of Tokyo, far from the horrors that his future colleague Isao Takahata, the author of the gripping anime, experienced firsthand Grave of the Fireflies from 1988. Nevertheless, Miyazaki experienced feelings of helplessness and guilt, which, according to the academic, became the pillars of his fictional worlds. He is said to have had a similarly formative influence on his mother’s tuberculosis, in other words, the fear of her death. Although the animator himself rejects such an interpretation, Susan Napier is convinced that childhood trauma became the catalyst for his artistic activity.

From the many meanings in Hayao Miyazaki’s films, the book selects those that can be related to his life. | Photo: ČTK / AP

Miyazaki’s pacifism was later joined by a resistance to authority. This became even stronger when he watched with displeasure the pro-Western orientation and uncontrolled economic growth of his homeland, which is said to have given rise to post-apocalyptic visions in films and manga, for example Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Like many Japanese students, Miyazaki also leaned to the left in the 1960s. When he started working for Tóei Animation in 1963, at the age of 22, he was an active union member.

Susan Napier simultaneously characterizes him as a textbook workaholic. He involved his employees at Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985, with an extreme amount of work. The assumption that everyone would be as dedicated to animation as he was, later led to conflicts and the departure of some collaborators. The academic sometimes lightly touches on similar contradictions and the darker sides of Miyazaki’s personality, but does not examine them more closely.

Plastic portrait of childhood

The book mainly maintains an admirable perspective, as evidenced by the abundance of superlatives in the presentation of individual films, befitting a fan review rather than an academic essay. The author shows her passion for Miyazaki at the very beginning. She enthusiastically describes how she visited the city of Nagoya, where a replica of the country house from the film was created My neighbor Totoro.

However, it would not be fair to label her writing as one-sided and uncritical. Many secondary sources help her maintain a slightly skeptical distance. In addition to Miyazaki, with whom she conducted several interviews, experts and colleagues get to speak.

1997’s Princess Mononoke is one of Miyazaki’s most famous films. | Photo: Studio Ghibli

As a result, the trio of initial biographical chapters offer one of the most plastic portraits of Miyazaki’s childhood. It came in handy for the author here that she was not burdened by Japanese cultural customs. Compared to the West, society there takes a relatively reserved approach to revealing the privacy of important personalities. However, a more significant obstacle was the secrecy of Miyazaki himself, who appears in public more and more rarely as the years go by.

The remaining chapters are chronologically devoted to all his feature films except for this year’s Boy and the Heron. The book almost completely ignores his short films and serials. As well as participation in the works of many other creators. From the artist’s no less varied comic activity, the publication highlights only the manga Nausicaa z Větrné údolí, which was preceded by the film of the same name. Susan Napier always briefly outlines the inspirations and social circumstances of the creation. But the largest space is occupied by the commented retelling of the content.

Sometimes he describes the movies almost scene by scene, as a result of which the reading becomes slightly predictable and exhausting. In doing so, the writer focuses primarily on themes interwoven throughout Miyazaki’s work, from nostalgic returns to childhood as a realm of lost innocence through strong female protagonists to dark visions of environmental destruction. The leitmotif of the book is the search for parallels between personal life and work. With this psychologizing approach, male figures become father figures, and female figures become mother figures.

The chosen point of view is well described by the sentence “even this scene reflects the inner confusion of a fifty-one-year-old man”, the variation of which occurs several times in each chapter. Of the many meanings hidden in Studio Ghibli’s films, the American focuses mainly on those that can be somehow related to Miyazaki’s life. For her, the films become the key to understanding one of the many people who worked on them. She is not interested in how they are told, let alone how animation techniques have changed over time.

For Journey into Fantasy from 2001, Hayao Miyazaki won his first Oscar. | Video: ACFK

The bubble burst

The author focuses so much on the content, or the message of the films, that she loses sight of the equally important form. Vague or nonsensical statements like “in classic flashback style, the screen goes dark and soaring music plays” reveal that formal analysis is not her forte. So it makes sense that he doesn’t get into it much. However, when she chooses only a few motifs each time, it sometimes looks as if she wants to fit the work into a pre-made box.

For example My Neighbor Totoro and Witch Kiki’s Delivery Service from the late 1980s, for the academic, there are two different views on the then Japanese economic bubble. According to her, Totoro shows how people tired of capitalism resorted to the agrarian past and celebrated rural community or life in harmony with nature. In the Delivery Service, she sees a connection with the independence of young Japanese women and their more active involvement in the work process. At the Oscars Journey to fantasy from 2001, according to the author, Miyazaki demonstrated what happened when the bubble burst.

Similar interpretations are undoubtedly stimulating, we learn a lot about the politics and society there. But it is somewhat lost that Miyazaki’s films enchant the audience not only because they express the enlightened thoughts of their creator, but also because of the way they are made.

Hajao Miyazaki explicitly rejected such a reduction in an interview, when he stated that he does not make films because he would like to use them to convey his view of the world, but to make the audience happy. Moreover, some of his views, such as that young Japanese should marry and raise large families, do not even fit the image of the progressive feminist that Susan Napier is trying to create.

A handful of historical facts, a glimpse behind the scenes of Studio Ghibli and a lot of psychoanalysis. When it comes to movies, biographical elements play a role, not internal mechanisms and workflow. It illuminates the documents better The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness 2013 or newer miniseries 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki.

Susan Napier offers a bit of each in her insightful text, but paradoxically does not penetrate deeper, despite the Freudian interpretation. Her book is best suited as a guide for readers who are just beginning to explore Miyazaki’s world of vivid colors and mythical creatures. It won’t lead them to hidden corners, but will highlight basic landmarks. Considering the minimum of domestic literature on the given topic, it is not so little after all.

Susan Napier: Miyazaki and his world
(Translated by Jana Hejná)
Publishing house Paseka 2023, 324 pages, 499 crowns.

2023-12-20 11:01:00


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