Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿 or 宮﨑 駿, Miyazaki Hayao; [mijaꜜzaki hajao]; born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, and manga artist. He co-founded Studio Ghibli and serves as its honorary chairman. Throughout his career, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation.

Born in Tokyo City, Miyazaki expressed interest in manga and animation from an early age. He joined Toei Animation in 1963, working as an inbetween artist and key animator on films like Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon (1965), Puss in Boots (1969), and Animal Treasure Island (1971), before moving to A-Pro in 1971, where he co-directed Lupin the Third Part I (1971–1972) alongside Isao Takahata. After moving to Zuiyō Eizō (later Nippon Animation) in 1973, Miyazaki worked as an animator on World Masterpiece Theater and directed the television series Future Boy Conan (1978). He joined Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1979 to direct his first feature film The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) and the television series Sherlock Hound (1984–1985). He wrote and illustrated the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1982–1994) and directed the 1984 film adaptation produced by Topcraft.

Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, writing and directing films such as Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), and Porco Rosso (1992), which were met with critical and commercial success in Japan. Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997) was the first animated film to win the Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year and briefly became the highest-grossing film in Japan; its Western distribution increased Ghibli's worldwide popularity and influence. Spirited Away (2001) became Japan's highest-grossing film and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature; it is frequently ranked among the greatest films of the 21st century. Miyazaki's later films—Howl's Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), and The Wind Rises (2013)—also enjoyed critical and commercial success. He retired from feature films in 2013 but later returned to make The Boy and the Heron (2023), which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Miyazaki's works are frequently subject to scholarly analysis and have been characterized by the recurrence of themes such as humanity's relationship with nature and technology, the importance of art and craftsmanship, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic in a violent world. His protagonists are often strong girls or young women, and several of his films present morally ambiguous antagonists with redeeming qualities. Miyazaki's works have been highly praised and awarded; he was named a Person of Cultural Merit for outstanding cultural contributions in 2012, received the Academy Honorary Award for his impact on animation and cinema in 2014, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2024. Miyazaki has frequently been cited as an inspiration for numerous animators, directors, and writers.

Hayao Miyazaki was born on January 5, 1941, in the town Akebono-cho in Hongō, Tokyo City, Empire of Japan, the second of four sons. His father, Katsuji Miyazaki (born 1915), was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, his brother's company, which manufactured rudders for fighter planes during World War II. The business allowed his family to remain affluent during Miyazaki's early life. Miyazaki's father enjoyed purchasing paintings and demonstrating them to guests, but otherwise had little known artistic understanding. He was in the Imperial Japanese Army around 1940, discharged and lectured about disloyalty after declaring to his commanding officer that he wished not to fight because of his wife and young child. According to Miyazaki, his father often told him about his exploits, claiming he continued to attend nightclubs after turning 70. Katsuji Miyazaki died on March 18, 1993. After his death, Miyazaki felt he had often looked at his father negatively and that he had never said anything "lofty or inspiring". He regretted not having a serious discussion with his father, and felt he had inherited his "anarchistic feelings and his lack of concern about embracing contradictions".

Some of Miyazaki's earliest memories are of "bombed-out cities". In 1944, when he was three years old, Miyazaki's family evacuated to Utsunomiya. After the city was bombed in July 1945, they evacuated to Kanuma. The bombing left a lasting impression on Miyazaki, then aged four. As a child, he suffered from digestive problems, and was told he would not live beyond 20, making him feel like an outcast; he considered himself "clumsy and weak", protected at school by his older brother. From 1947 to 1955, Miyazaki's mother Yoshiko suffered from spinal tuberculosis; she spent the first few years in hospital before being nursed from home, forcing Miyazaki and his siblings to take over domestic duties. Yoshiko was frugal, and described as a strict, intellectual woman who regularly questioned "socially accepted norms". She was closest with Miyazaki, and had a strong influence on him and his later work, inspiring several of his characters. Yoshiko Miyazaki died in July 1983 at the age of 72.

Miyazaki began school as an evacuee in 1947, at an elementary school in Utsunomiya, completing the first through third grades. After his family moved back to Suginami-ku in 1950, Miyazaki completed the fourth grade at Ōmiya Elementary School, and fifth grade at Eifuku Elementary School, which was newly established after splitting off from Ōmiya Elementary. After graduating from Eifuku as part of the first graduating class, he attended Ōmiya Junior High School. He aspired to become a manga artist, but discovered he could not draw people; instead, he drew planes, tanks, and battleships for several years. Miyazaki was influenced by several manga artists, such as Tetsuji Fukushima, Soji Yamakawa and Osamu Tezuka. Miyazaki destroyed much of his early work, believing it was "bad form" to copy Tezuka's style as it was hindering his own development as an artist. He preferred to see artists like Tezuka as fellow artists rather than idols to worship. Around this time, Miyazaki often saw movies with his father, who was an avid moviegoer; memorable films for Miyazaki include Meshi (1951) and Tasogare Sakaba (1955).

After graduating from Ōmiya Junior High, Miyazaki attended Toyotama High School. During his third and final year, Miyazaki's interest in animation was sparked by Panda and the Magic Serpent (1958), Japan's first feature-length animated film in color; he had sneaked out to watch the film instead of studying for his entrance exams. Miyazaki later recounted that, falling in love with its heroine, the film moved him to tears and left a profound impression, prompting him to create work true to his own feelings instead of imitating popular trends; he wrote the film's "pure, earnest world" promoted a side of him that "yearned desperately to affirm the world rather than negate it". After graduating from Toyotama, Miyazaki attended Gakushuin University in the department of political economy, majoring in Japanese Industrial Theory; he considered himself a poor student as he instead focused on art. He joined the "Children's Literature Research Club", the "closest thing back then to a comics club"; he was sometimes the sole member of the club. In his free time, Miyazaki would visit his art teacher from middle school and sketch in his studio, where the two would drink and "talk about politics, life, all sorts of things". Around this time, he also drew manga; he never completed any stories, but accumulated thousands of pages of the beginnings of stories. He also frequently approached manga publishers to license their stories. In 1960, Miyazaki was a bystander during the Anpo protests, having developed an interest after seeing photographs in Asahi Graph; by that point, he was too late to participate in the demonstrations. Miyazaki graduated from Gakushuin in 1963 with degrees in political science and economics.