Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki, born on January 5, 1941, in Tokyo, became one of Japan’s most influential animation filmmakers through work that joined hand-drawn spectacle with antiwar, ecological, and humanist concerns. His father worked for Miyazaki Airplane, a company producing parts for military aircraft during World War II, and aviation later became a recurring subject in his films. As a child, Miyazaki experienced the wartime evacuation of his family from Tokyo. He studied political science and economics at Gakushuin University, graduating in 1963, before entering Toei Animation as an in-between artist.

At Toei, he met fellow animator Isao Takahata and worked on projects including The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968), directed by Takahata. Miyazaki later contributed to television series such as Lupin the Third and Future Boy Conan, the 1978 series he directed. His first feature as director, The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), reimagined Lupin III in a European adventure involving a counterfeiters’ fortress and the captive Clarisse. He then adapted his manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind into the 1984 film, in which Princess Nausicaä seeks coexistence between human survivors and the toxic Jungle.

The success of Nausicaä helped lead to Studio Ghibli’s founding in 1985 by Miyazaki, Takahata, and producer Toshio Suzuki. Under its banner Miyazaki made Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), and Porco Rosso (1992). Princess Mononoke (1997) set its conflict between an expanding ironworks town and gods defending a forest, while Spirited Away (2001) follows Chihiro Ogino after her parents are transformed into pigs in a supernatural bathhouse. Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, becoming the first hand-drawn and first non-English-language winner in that category.

Later films included Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), adapted from Diana Wynne Jones’s novel; Ponyo (2008), inspired partly by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”; and The Wind Rises (2013), a fictionalized account of aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi. Miyazaki announced retirement after The Wind Rises but returned to direct The Boy and the Heron (2023). The film, whose Japanese title invokes Kenzaburō Ōe’s novel How Do You Live?, centers on Mahito Maki, a boy confronting bereavement during the Pacific War. It received the 2024 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Miyazaki accepted the Oscar after years of international recognition, including the Academy’s honorary award presented to him in 2014. He remains Studio Ghibli’s central creative figure.