Trevor Hogg profiles the career of Japanese animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki in the third of a five part feature… read part one and part two.
“At Studio Ghibli we currently conduct what we call “product study meetings,” where we select a scenario and all read it,” stated Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki in reference to the animation company he formed in 1985 with colleague Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki. “Anyone in the studio, regardless of job title, can participate, but they absolutely must read the scenario. Everyone can voice opinions on it at the meeting, taking into account three issues: if the scenario was made into the film, would the film be interesting, worth making, and possibly profitable?”
For the debut production of the fledgling animation studio, Hayao Miyazaki wrote in the original story proposal dated December 7, 1984 that, “If Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [1984] is a film for older audiences then Pazu is targeted mainly at elementary school-aged children. If Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was designed to be cool, clear, and vivid, then Pazu will aim to be a fun, intensely thrilling classic action film.” The project was rechristened, Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (Laputa: Castle in the Sky, 1986) in honour of the “floating island in the sky, depicted in the third part of Gulliver’s Travels.” Summarizing the story which takes place around the time of steam engines, the animator stated, “A man [Muska] schemes to get hold of the levitation crystal, becomes the head of an empire in the sky, and thus lords it over the world. A girl [Sheeta], a descendent of ancient Laputa royalty, finds herself pursued by the man. And a boy [Pazu], an apprentice mechanic who dreams of becoming an inventor, becomes entangled in the struggle over the mysterious levitation crystal.”
To research the setting of the tale, an international scouting expedition was deemed necessary. “Isao Takahata said that if we were going to set the film in the days of the Industrial Revolution, we probably should go to England. We got all exited about the idea of going to see the coal mines in Wales and the apple blossoms in Sussex along the coast south of London, and we decided to actually go.” The trip occurred while Britain was engaged in an infamous mining strike under the reign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “In the film there is a somewhat forced scene showing Pazu’s boss and Charles getting into a fight and involving the whole town, and I don’t think we would have included a scene like that if we hadn’t visited the area. I felt a real sense of solidarity with the mine workers!”
“I personally find airplanes cool and I love flying scenes. But despite Castle in the Sky being set in the sky, it really has few real flying scenes,” acknowledged Hayao Miyazaki who has himself a major supporter in John Lasseter, the Chief Creative Officer for Disney and Pixar. “In all of his films he gives us an incredible sense of scale,” admired Lasseter. “Castle in the Sky, especially, is a masterpiece in this way. Take another look at those flying ships. There is no question that they’re huge. And you can just tell that they weigh an enormous amount too. I mean, look at them, you can feel their weight. It’s not just perspective. It’s movement, it’s size, it’s weight.”
“I wanted to show the military as large-as-life as possible, because no matter what Pazu tried, there was no way he could ever have won against them,” said Hayao Miyazaki. “We had to draw them as solidly as possible. Even Dola and her gang could never have beaten the military head-on. Pirates don’t argue with the military, and besides, in this case our pirates only had flaptors. I don’t like the military, so I drew their nastier side.” As for the portrayal of robots in the picture, the animator observed, “Humans make machines the extension of their own hands, but at the same time we make something that will give us unlimited devotion. It’s too simplistic to consider them living beings, but I feel that we are making things that could be prototypes for living creatures.” Miyazaki added, “I think that honour and bravery are very important in the relations of people. But I’m sure that these qualities are not exclusive to human beings.”
The anime artist wanted to break movie genre conventions when depicting the levitation crystal. “In science fiction stories, the core section of an object like this would often be depicted as something like a nuclear reactor,” explained Miyazaki. “We agreed that wouldn’t be very interesting, though, and eventually wound up with the design seen in the film. Then we began discussing the idea of having a levitation crystal with tubes running out of it, but that seemed weird too. So we wound up with tree roots wrapping themselves around the crystal.” Another major story element had to be addressed. “Right around the time we were trying to come up with a good ending, and we were afraid that if Laputa flew off into the sky that children watching the film would be afraid that the little animals like the foxes and squirrels would all die. So that settled how we decided to end the story the way we did. We told ourselves it was okay because the story is set in an age before people went into space in the Apollo program, so nobody really knew what the view would be like from what is in effect an artificial satellite.”
Laputa: Castle in the Sky served as significant influence on the 1998 sophomore effort by Pixar Animation Studios. “In A Bug’s Life,” began John Lasseter, “the character Flick assembles all the bugs together in an attempt to save a little ant named Dot. For reference, we sat down and studied the rescue sequence in Castle in the Sky very carefully. We didn’t copy it, but we tried to pick the scene apart to identify why it worked so well. I know what’s going to happen. Of course, she [Sheeta] gets rescued. I know that. But every time I see it, I get the chills. It inspired us.” Admired by film critics the movie established Studio Ghibli’s international reputation though the modest box office returns meant that the company had yet to achieve financial independence when developing future projects.
Having trouble to secure financing for the movie deemed to be childish and lacking in conflict, a compromise was reached when Studio Ghibli agreed to also adapt the semi-autobiographical Naoki Prize-winning Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies,1988) by Japanese novelist Akiyuki Nosaka. In the project plan dated December 1, 1986, Hayao Miyazaki wrote, “My Neighbour Totoro aims to be a happy and heartwarming film, a film that lets the audience go home with pleasant, glad feelings. Lovers will feel each other to be more precious, parents will fondly recall their childhoods, and children will start exploring the thickets behind shrines and climbing trees to find a totoro.”
Explaining the storyline, the animator stated, “Satsuki, a third grader, and Mei, five years old, move to the outskirts of town. They are awaiting their mother’s release from the hospital in a house where the air is clean. Kanta, a boy from the neigbouring farmer’s house, tries to frighten Satsuki by claiming that the house is haunted. And he is right. While playing in the yard, Mei is surprised to find a pair of strange creatures about her height, walking in front of her. Goblins… Mei follows them.” Nicknamed by Mei, totoros are mysterious beings that can live for a thousand years and grow over two meters tall; the creatures as described by Miyazaki are “covered in fluffy fur, they look like giant owls or badgers or bears. You can say they are goblins, but they don’t frighten people as they live an easygoing, carefree manner. They inhabit caves and hollows of old trees in the forest and cannot be seen by humans. But for some reason they are spied by the young sisters Satsuki and Mei.”
“I didn’t have a close relationship with my mother like Satsuki,” revealed Hayo Mizayaki. “I was overly self-conscious, and my mother was that way too. When I went to see her in the hospital, I couldn’t rush to hug her. It’s natural for Satsuki to feel a bit shy and not go directly to her mother’s side. Then what would Satsuki’s mother do? She might brush Satsuki’s hair or something. That’s one way she could show physical affection. That is what gives Satsuki support.” Regarding the scene in which Mei disappears and her older sister goes looking for her, the moment was derived from an actual event. “Once we went to a festival and my little brother didn’t make it home with the rest of us; fearing that he had been taken by someone, we all split up to search for him…I still recall how I felt when I thought we might not find him…It’s episodes like this that make up this film. There’s no need for a plot. I wish I could have made a ninety-minute film. If I could have, I would have expanded the section on Satasuki and Mei’s everyday lives.”
In a 1987 director’s memo outlining the characters in the picture, Satsuki Kusakabe is described as being “a girl bursting with vitality” and “in a family whose mother is absent, she is filling the role of homemaker.” The document goes on to add, “In contrast with Satsuki, who is reliable and quick-witted, Mei is a single-minded, persevering child…Mei is a bold happy girl, without any dark shadows in her personality.” John Lasseter observed, “One of the basic elements in defining the personality of an animated character is to show the same action performed by two separate characters.” For Lasseter, the film executes the fundamental principle brilliantly. “There’s one scene in Totoro when Mei and her older sister Satsuki are exploring their new house. Satsuki is running around and opening random doors. Then Mei comes in and does the same thing, but does it like a young child. This scene tells the audience that Mei is the younger of the two girls.”
John Lasseter uses the 1988 picture as an instructional tool when lecturing animators. “One of the greatest scenes in all of Miyazaki-san’s films is the one when the cat bus first appears in Totoro,” said Lasseter. “It’s just pure cinematic magic. To me, what makes it so special is the pacing of it. It’s something you don’t normally see in a film. The bus arrives at the bus stop, but the father is not on it. The kids then have to wait in the rain. You feel the waiting and it’s not tedious. It’s beautiful. Mei is getting sleepy, and believe me, being a father, I know how kids get bored and sleepy. So Satsuki puts her on her back under the umbrella and the waiting continues. And then Totoro arrives and it’s just so special. By the time the cat bus arrives…I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.”
“The only time I saw the film at a movie theatre was for the test screening,” confessed Hayao Miyazaki. “There were a few young children there, and when they were happy the adults near them became happy. That kind of emotion is contagious.” The anime artist proudly stated, “I was delighted to hear that when the film was shown at a kindergarten, the children hid under their chairs when they saw Mei go into Totoro’s cave. For children, what is scary and eerie is mixed with what is cute and fun.” Often compared to E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982), My Neighbour Totoro became a merchandising phenomenon in Japan, making the title character the de facto mascot for Studio Ghibli.
Questioned on why camphor trees frequently appear in his movies, the Tokyo-native answered, “When I’m making a film starring a young boy, I think of many things that I have felt or imagined,” explained Miyazaki. “But I actually remember very few things from my own childhood, so instead I tend to remember scenes of children I have seen as an adult. I think of my own children, the neighbours’ children, my relatives’ children. As a result, my films often depict what I would have felt if I had been a boy at that time. Giant camphor trees, for example, are something that I began fantasizing about when I was more than thirty years old and developing a strong interest in the natural world.”
Initially, Hayao Miyazaki was only going to produce a cinematic adaptation of an acclaimed book but he came to realize that the most appropriate director was himself. “Eiko Kakuno’s Majo no takkyûbin [Witch’s Special Express Delivery or Kiki’s Delivery Service, 1989], published by Fukuinkan Shoten, is a wonderful work of children’s literature,” said Miyazaki, “one that sensitively depicts the spirit and hopes of contemporary girls, especially those straddling the line between dependence and independence.” The moviemaker added, “The starting point was wanting to film the story of a girl in adolescence. Moreover, she would be one of the ordinary girls who come to Tokyo from the countryside. I wanted to depict the situations faced by such girls in our current society.”
“Kiki, the thirteen-year old protagonist of this story, is a witch with only one particular strength: her ability to fly through the air,” remarked Hayao Miyazaki. “ In her world, witches are not unusual at all. The real challenge Kiki faces is that, as part of her training, she must live for a year in an unfamiliar town and get its inhabitants to recognize her as a full-fledge witch.” The main character is not left entirely alone as she attempts to successfully complete her assignment. “Kiki is protected by her mother’s cherished broom, cheered by the transistor radio her father bought her, and always accompanied by her faithful black cat, but she is nonetheless seized by loneliness and homesickness. There is a similarity here with young women who dream of the bright lights of the big city and hope to make it there on their own, while still depending on the emotional [and often economic] support of their loving parents. Kiki’s naïve resolve and lack of awareness thus reflects the state of our world today.”
Unlike the book where “Kiki overcame obstacles through the strength of her own goodness”, the film sought a more realistic approach by having her experience “even more loneliness and frustration.” Hayao Miyazaki believes that, “What’s most important for Kiki is not that her business succeed – though of course that is no doubt important – it is how she herself can become acquainted with many different people. While she rides on her broom accompanied by her cat and flies around the sky, she is free. That’s because she’s at a distance from people. But to live in town, in other words, to train for a profession, requires her to confront herself in an honest way.” To make the persona of Kiki three-dimensional, Miyazaki followed a simple human truth that no one treats everyone in the same way. “The hallmark of this film is the expression of the many faces of a person. In the presence of her parents, Kiki is childish, but on her own she thinks things over with a serious expression. She may speak roughly and bluntly to a boy her own age, but to her seniors, especially to people important to her, she acts politely.” One thing the animator wanted to avoid was a tidy conclusion to the picture. “I didn’t want it to have a happy ending with her business becoming a success or her becoming the town’s sweetheart. I wanted to give her the sense that she will repeatedly become dejected and then regain her cheery vitality…I was careful from the start to avoid making it a career success story.”
“For us, the continuity sketches are the screenplay,” admitted Hayao Miyazaki. “With continuity sketches, you have the drawings in the frames and next to each frame a description of the content in the frame, with stage directions on the left side and dialogue on the right. When you look at the page, therefore, you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on, so it’s what the animators use to base their drawings on. For Whisper of the Heart [Mimi wo sumaseba, 1995], we had planned on a ninety-minute film, so we wound up with nearly 450 pages of continuity sketches. With Kiki’s Delivery Service, it was about 550 pages. For Castle in the Sky, it was around 650 pages. This is frankly a huge amount of work. There’s no way in the world that I could possibly have the time to write the original story, turn it into a script, and then draw all the continuity sketches. So we find ourselves in the ridiculous situation of trying to simultaneously create the story, the scenario and the continuity sketches, and then, when the film is actually finished, we actually do have a story and a screenplay.”
What was originally intended to be a forty-five minute in-flight program for Japan Airlines grew into a ninety minutes feature film. In an April 18, 1991 directorial memo, Miyazaki wrote, “Kurenai no buta [The Crimson Pig or Porco Rosso, 1992] is designed to be a work that businessmen, exhausted from international flights, can enjoy even if their minds are dulled by the lack of oxygen. It must also be a work that boys and girls, as well as aunties can enjoy.” Captain Marco Pagot, otherwise known as Porco Rosso, is an adventure seeking-aviator who lives on an island retreat; with the aid of his bright red plane he attempts to clear the air of pirates. Addressing how the cast of the picture should be portrayed, the anime artist stated in the memo, “All the main characters – including Porco, Fio, Donald Curtis, Piccolo, the hotel madam, the members of the Mamma Aiuto gang, and the various other air pirates – must have a seasoned realism about them. They engage in foolish antics because they also must endure hardships, and the simplemindedness they exhibit is the result of their lifestyles. We must treat every character respectfully.”
“The staff members who worked on Porco Rosso had to burn the midnight oil all the time, and some didn’t even get to rest on Sunday,” said Hayao Miyazaki. “There are a lot of reasons for this, of course, and it’s an area where I need to make improvements, but I personally enjoy it when I become so absorbed in something that I completely forget about myself.” Acknowledging the strenuous conditions that he and his employees endure, the animator declared, “Working hard for a corporation and working hard for the sake of one’s own profession are totally different things in my view.” The work place attitude found at Studio Ghibli is mirrored in the picture. “I think that the whole film really reflected the fact that to me, passion and effort are what working is all about. In the film, there’s a scene where Grandpa Piccolo says, ‘Please forgive us, oh lord, for we are guilty of employing women’s hands to build this fighter plane,’ and then he laughs out loud, adding with joyful expression, ‘Well, then, let’s load up on the grub so we can work like bees!’ That’s it to me. I think there’s a universal excitement that people experience when working.” Thinking about his comment, Miyazaki confided, “I never want to lose the excitement I experience when I’m working. When I do, I think it’ll be all over for me.”
Venturing into the realm of music videos, Hayao Miyazaki created a seven-minute science fiction-fantasy for the Japanese pop duo Chage and Aska called On Your Mark (1995). “The title is from the phrase ‘on your mark, get set, go!’ but I have purposely distorted the meaning of the phrase in making this movie,” revealed the anime artist. “I made it a story set after the end of the century. It’s set in a world where radiation proliferates and sickness spreads. I think this time will actually come. I made this film when I was wondering what it would mean to live in a place like that.”
Featuring gunfights, chase sequences, cruel experiments, and moments of quiet reflection, the story centres around two renegade policeman who risk their lives as they attempt to save a winged girl in a futuristic city. Asked about the strange countryside building which appears in the opening, Miyazaki responded, “You can interpret it anyway you want. I just hope people will have some general recognition when they see the truck with the nuclear hazard sign that comes up just after that scene. Radiation has permeated the ground, making it impossible for humans to live there. But it is surrounded by greenery, like the area around Chernobyl. It has transformed into a nature sanctuary. The human beings have built a city underground where they live. In reality, I don’t think we could live that way, so we’d probably be living above ground and getting sick.” Not one to succumb to a nihilistic view, the animator stated, “Even in a chaotic, ruined world there will always be good and exciting things. As in Nausicaä, ‘We are like birds, forever going beyond that morning, spitting out blood as we fly.’”
An indication of his growing international reputation, Hayao Miyazaki published in 1996 a collection of essays, interviews, and conversations titled Shuppatsuten 1979 to 1996 (Starting Point: 1979 to 1996). In the same year, a merger with its parent company Tokuma Shoten resulted in a new chapter commencing for Studio Ghibli; a distribution deal was signed with Disney to dub and release the animation company’s films in the U.S.. The first picture to benefit from the landmark agreement was a retelling of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.
Continue to part four.
Starting Point 1979 to 1996 – a collection of essays and sketches by Hayao Miyazaki.
For more, visit Studio Ghibli fansites Online Ghibli, StudioGhibli.net and GhibliWorld.com, along with the GhibliWiki.
Short Film Showcase – On Your Mark (1995)
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
