(born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, Japan) is the prominent director of many popular animated feature films. He is also the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company.

He remained largely unknown to the West, outside of animation communities, until Miramax released his 1997 Princess Mononoke. By that time, his films had already enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan and East Asia. Miyazaki's 2001 Spirited Away is the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan; Princess Mononoke had also briefly retained that distinction.

Miyazaki's films often incorporate common themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women; the villains, when present, are often morally ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.

Miyazaki's films have generally been financially successful, and this success has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney. However, Miyazaki does not see himself as a person building an animation empire, but as an animator fortunate enough to have been able to make films with complete creative control. In 2006, Time Magazine voted Miyazaki one of the most influential Asians of the past 60 years.

Anime directed by Miyazaki that have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award have been Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, Castle in the Sky in 1986, My Neighbor Totoro in 1988, and Kiki's Delivery Service in 1989.

Miyazaki, the second of four brothers, was born in the town of Akebono-cho, part of Tokyo's Bunkyō-ku. During World War II, Miyazaki's father Katsuji was director of Miyazaki Airplane, owned by his brother (Hayao Miyazaki's uncle), which made rudders for A6M Zero fighter planes. During this time, Miyazaki drew airplanes and developed a lifelong fascination with aviation, a penchant that later manifested as a recurring theme in his films.

Miyazaki's mother was a voracious reader who often questioned socially accepted norms. Miyazaki later said that he inherited his questioning and skeptical mind from her. His mother underwent treatment for spinal tuberculosis from 1947 until 1955, and so the family moved frequently. Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro features a family whose mother is similarly afflicted.

Miyazaki attended Toyotama High School. In his third year there, he saw the film Hakujaden, which has been described as "the first-ever Japanese feature length color anime",; his interest in animation began in this period. In order to become an animator, he had to learn to draw the human figure, his work as of then having been limited to airplanes and battleships.

After high school, Miyazaki attended Gakushuin University, from which he would graduate in 1963 with degrees in political science and economics. He was a member of the "Children's Literature research club," the "closest thing to a comics club in those days".

In April 1963, Miyazaki got a job at Toei Animation, working as an in-between artist on the anime Watchdog Bow Wow (Wanwan Chushingura). He was a leader in a labor dispute soon after his arrival, becoming chief secretary of Toei's labor union in 1964.

In October 1965, he married fellow animator Akemi Ota, who later left work to raise their two sons, Gorō and Keisuke. Goro is now an animator and filmmaker, and has directed Tales from Earthsea at Studio Ghibli. Keisuke is a wood artist who has created pieces for the Ghibli Museum and who made the wood engraving shown in the Studio Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart.

Miyazaki first gained recognition while working as an in-between artist on the Toei production Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon (Garibā no Uchuu Ryokou, 1965). He found the original ending to the script unsatisfactory, and pitched his own idea, which became the ending used in the final film.

He later played an important role as chief animator, concept artist, and scene designer on Hols: Prince of the Sun in 1968, a landmark animated film directed by Isao Takahata, with whom he continued to collaborate for the next three decades. In Kimio Yabuki's Puss in Boots (1969), Miyazaki again provided key animation as well as designs, storyboards, and story ideas for key scenes in the film, including the climactic chase scene. Shortly thereafter, Miyazaki proposed scenes in the screenplay for Flying Phantom Ship, in which military tanks would roll into downtown Tokyo and cause mass hysteria, and was hired to storyboard and animate those scenes. In 1971, Miyazaki played a decisive role in developing structure, characters, and designs for Animal Treasure Island and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, as well as storyboarding and key animating of pivotal scenes in both.

Miyazaki left Toei in 1971 for A Pro, where he co-directed six episodes of the first Lupin III series with Isao Takahata. He and Takahata then began pre-production on a Pippi Longstockings series and drew extensive story boards for it. However, after traveling to Sweden to conduct research for the film and meet the original author, Astrid Lindgren, they were denied permission to complete the project, and it was canceled.

Instead of Pippi Longstockings, Miyazaki conceived, wrote, designed, and animated two Panda! Go, Panda! shorts which were directed by Takahata. Miyazaki's first film as a director was The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), a Lupin III adventure film.

Miyazaki's next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika, 1984), was an adventure film that introduced many of the themes which recur in later films: a concern with ecology, a fascination with aircraft, and morally ambiguous characterizations, especially among villains. This was the first film both written and directed by Miyazaki. He adapted it from his manga series of the same title, which he began writing and illustrating two years earlier, but which remained incomplete until after the film's release.

Following the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki co-founded the animation production company Studio Ghibli with Takahata in 1985, and has produced nearly all of his subsequent work through it.

Miyazaki continued to gain recognition with his next three films. Castle in the Sky (1986) recounts the adventure of two orphans seeking a magical floating island; My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) tells of the adventure of two girls and their interaction with forest spirits; and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), adapted from a novel by Eiko Kadono, tells the story of a small-town girl who leaves home to begin life as a witch in a big city. Miyazaki's fascination with flight is evident throughout these films, ranging from the ornithopters flown by pirates in Castle in the Sky, to the Totoro and the Cat Bus soaring through the air, and Kiki flying her broom.



Porco Rosso (1992) was a notable departure for Miyazaki, in that the main character was an adult male, an anti-fascist aviator transformed into an anthropomorphic pig. The film is set in 1920s Italy and the title character is a bounty hunter who fights air pirates and an American soldier of fortune. The film explores the tension between selfishness and duty. The film can also be viewed as an abstract self-portrait of the director; its subtext can be read as a fictionalized autobiography.

1997's Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime) returns to the ecological and political themes of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The plot centers on the struggle between the animal spirits who inhabit the forest and the humans who exploit the forest for industry. It is also noted as one of his most violent pictures. The film was a huge commercial success in Japan, where it became the highest grossing film of all time, until the later success of Titanic, and it ultimately won Best Picture at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki retired after directing Princess Mononoke.

However, while on an extended vacation, Miyazaki spent time with the daughters of a friend, one of whom became his inspiration for Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001). Spirited Away is the story of a girl, forced to survive in a bizarre spirit world, who works in a bathhouse for spirits after her parents are turned into pigs by the sorceress who owns it. Released in Japan in July 2001, the film broke attendance and box office records with ¥30.4 billion (approximately $300 million) in total gross earnings from more than 23 million viewings. It has received many awards, including Best Picture at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Golden Bear (First Prize) at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, and the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.



In July 2004, Miyazaki completed production on Howl's Moving Castle, a film adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' fantasy novel. Miyazaki came out of retirement following the sudden departure of original director Mamoru Hosoda. The film premiered at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival and won the Golden Osella award for animation technology. On November 20, 2004, Howl's Moving Castle opened to general audiences in Japan where it earned ¥1.4 billion in its first two days. The English language version was later released in the US by Walt Disney.

In 2005, Miyazaki was awarded for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. Later that year, it was reported that Miyazaki's next and final film project would be I Lost My Little Boy, based on a Chinese children's book.

In 2006, Miyazaki's son Goro Miyazaki completed his first film, Tales from Earthsea, based on several stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. Throughout the film's production, he and his father were not speaking to each other, because of a dispute over whether or not Goro was ready to direct. At first, the production of this movie was requested for not the son but the father. But Miyazaki tried to refuse this request because He had already been producing Howl's Moving Castle. However, Ghibli disregarded opposite of Hayao Miyazaki, and decided to make his son who was the green hand of an anime film produce this movie instead of his father.

Since Miyazaki aspired to make this work an anime all along, he asked for the permission from original author Ursula K. Le Guin repeatedly. But, he has been refused by her side at every time. Therefore, Miyazaki produced "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind" and "Journey of Shuna" as the substitute (actually, some of the idea of "Journey of Shuna" were diverted to this movie). For those reasons, when she actually requested this work to him, he had already lost the desire to it.

In 2006, Nausicaa.net reported Hayao Miyazaki's plans to direct another film, rumored to be set in Kobe. Among areas Miyazaki's team visited during pre-production were an old café run by an elderly couple, and the view of a city from high in the mountains. The exact location of these places is censored from Studio Ghibli's production diaries. The studio has also announced that Miyazaki has begun creating storyboards for the film and that they are being produced in watercolor because the film will have an "unusual visual style." Studio Ghibli anticipates a production time of 20 months, with release slated for Summer 2008.

In 2007, the film's title was announced as Gake no ue no Ponyo, literally "Ponyo on a Cliff." The story is said to revolve around a five-year old boy, Sosuke, and the Princess goldfish, Ponyo, who wants to become human. Studio Ghibli President Toshio Suzuki noted that "70 to 80% of the film takes stage on sea. It will be a director’s challenge on how they will express the sea and its waves with freehand drawing." The film will probably not contain any computer generated imagery, or CGI, in direct contrast to Miyazaki's recent work.

Miyazaki's work in television is less known than his films. In the 1970s he worked as an animator on the World Masterpiece Theater television animation series under Isao Takahata. His first directorial credit is for the television version of Lupin III in 1971; he was co-director (with Takahata) of the second half of the first television series, and director of two episodes of the second series. His first feature film was a Lupin III adventure titled Castle of Cagliostro.

Miyazaki's most famous television work was his direction of Future Boy Conan (1978), an adaptation of the children's novel The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key. The main antagonist is the leader of the city-state of Industria who attempts to revive lost technology. The series also elaborates on the characters and events in the book, and is an early example of characterizations which recur throughout Miyazaki's later work: a girl who is in touch with nature, a warrior woman who appears menacing but is not an antagonist, and a boy who seems destined for the girl. The series also featured imaginative aircraft designs. Future Boy Conan was the TV animation series that Hayao Miyazaki had directed for the first time completely. This work was a big bet for Hayao Miyazaki who was worried whether to keep drawing a layout under Takahata untouched or to stop the work of anime. And, he won the bet and worked as a director after that. In making this work, Miyazaki invited Yasuo Otsuka who was a superior in the Toei Animation age and an elder friend as a partner on the drawing side. In those days, Miyazaki who had been drawing a layout and a storyboard, a picture, etc. in Takahata's work (“Heidi, Girl of the Alps”, “3000 Leagues in Search of Mother”) was the frustrations. Since the direction of Takahata who pursues realism compels the controlled play to the character, he as animator was dissatisfied. To make the frustration emanated, Miyazaki made Future Boy Conan full of the action scene.

Miyazaki directed six episodes of Sherlock Hound, an Italian-Japanese co-production which retold Sherlock Holmes tales using anthropomorphic animals. These episodes were first broadcast in 1984-85.

Miyazaki has illustrated several manga, beginning in 1969 with Puss in Boots (Nagakutsu wo Haita Neko). His major work in this format is the seven-volume manga version of his tale Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which he created from 1982 to 1994 and which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Other works include , , , and The Age of the Flying Boat, which was the basis of his film Porco Rosso).

In October 2006, A Trip to Tynemouth was published in Japan. Miyazaki based it on the young adult short stories of Robert Westall, who grew up in World War II England. The most famous story, first published in a collection called Break of Dark, is titled Blackham's Wimpy. The rival Royal Air Force crews in the story fly Vickers Wellington Bombers, the nickname comes from the character J. Wellington Wimpy from Popeye comics and cartoons.

Miyazaki takes a leading role when creating his films, frequently serving as both writer and director. He personally reviewed every frame used in his early films, though due to health concerns over the high workload he now delegates some of the workload to other Ghibli members. In a 1999 interview, Miyazaki said, "at this age, I cannot do the work I used to. If my staff can relieve me and I can concentrate on directing, there are still a number of movies I'd like to make."

In contrast to American animation, the script and storyboards are created together, and animation begins before the story is finished and storyboards are developing. Stories are sometimes based on his manga.

Miyazaki has used traditional animation throughout the animation process, though computer-generated imagery has been employed since Princess Mononoke to give "a little boost of elegance". In an interview with the Financial Times, Miyazaki said "it's very important for me to retain the right ratio between working by hand and computer. I have learnt that balance now, how to use both and still be able to call my films 2D." Digital paint was also used for the first time in parts of Princess Mononoke in order to meet release deadlines. It has been used as standard for subsequent films.

Miyazaki often alludes to environmentalism, a theme explored in a number of his films. In an interview with The New Yorker, Miyazaki claimed that much of modern culture is "thin and shallow and fake", and "not entirely jokingly" looked forward to an apocalyptic age in which "wild green grasses" take over. Nonetheless, he suggests that adults should not "impose their vision of the world on children."

Hayao Miyazaki's dedication to his work has often been reported to have impacted negatively his relationship with his son Gorō.

Most of Miyazaki's characters are dynamic, capable of change, and not easily caricatured into traditional good-evil dichotomies. Many menacing characters have redeeming features, and are not firmly defined as antagonists. Lady Eboshi of Princess Mononoke knowingly exploits the forests for raw materials at the expense of animal life, while simultaneously sheltering lepers and former prostitutes in her city. The film culminates in reconciliation, rather than the vanquishing of some irredeemable evil.

Some of Miyazaki's early films featured distinctly evil villains, as in Castle of Cagliostro or Castle in the Sky; other films are remarkable for having no villains at all, as in Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro. Some of these have a strong flavor of traditional Japanese culture and ancient animistic spiritual beliefs.

The influence of Miyazaki's early interest in Marxism is apparent in some of his films, such as Porco Rosso. In Castle in the Sky, the working class is portrayed in idealized terms. Miyazaki claims to have abandoned Marxism while creating his manga Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. He states he "stopped seeing things by class, as it's a lie that one is right just because he/she is a laborer".

According to Toshio Suzuki, Miyazaki holds the view that "to be successful, companies have to make it possible for their female employees to succeed." This is mirrored in his films, as women are often seen working, such as at the bellows in Princess Mononoke, or in building the plane in Porco Rosso.

Also, both Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke feature strong environmental and anti-war themes. Miyazaki's care for the environment can for example be witnessed in Spirited Away, when the disgusting Stink god actually turns out to be a River god, whose river has been polluted to the point where he was no longer recognizable.

Miyazaki deliberately paces his films to allow brief excursions into the animated environment. The image of wind blowing gently across fields of grass or grain has been used in several of his films, as has a close shot of a stone darkening with raindrops. Although subtle, these brief shots often help establish a larger reality of his animated worlds.

His films often emphasize environmentalism and the Earth's fragility. In My Neighbor Totoro, the great tree tops a hillside on which magical creatures reside, and the family worships this tree. This ecological consciousness is echoed in Princess Mononoke with the giant primordial forest, complete with gigantic dragonflies, trees, flowers and wolves. In Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the ecological paradise is threatened by military men and violent state-controlled armies. In each film, the conflict between the natural way of life and the military destruction of culture, land and resources is central to the plight of the protagonist(s). When battle scenes are shown in each, the militaristic music and ecological destruction is paramount to the endangerment of the inhabitants of the villages.

Flight, especially by characters, is a recurring theme in Miyazaki's films. In addition to the many aerial devices and drawings of Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which is a flying city, this theme is found in Nausicaä piloting her Mehve in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; Kiki riding her broomstick and watching dirigibles fly over her city in Kiki’s Delivery Service; the large Totoro carrying Satsuki and Mei across the night sky in My Neighbor Totoro; Chihiro being borne by Haku in his dragon form in Spirited Away; and Howl and Sophie soaring above their town in Howl's Moving Castle. In Porco Rosso, the protagonist, a man/pig, flies to a remote island to escape his duties, yet when the military is shown, it is with dark, foreboding flying machines, as compared to the protagonists' lighter, happier music and flyers. Miyazaki's self-professed passion for flight allows him to create very naturalistic depictions of flight in his films.

A number of Western authors have influenced Miyazaki's work, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lewis Carroll, and Diana Wynne Jones. Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea has been a great influence on all his works, and that he has kept her books on his bedside.

Miyazaki and French writer and illustrator Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) have influenced each other and have become friends as a result of their mutual admiration. Monnaie de Paris held an exhibition of their work titled Miyazaki et Moebius: Deux Artistes Dont Les Dessins Prennent Vie (Two Artists’s Drawings Taking on a Life of Their Own) from December 2004 to April 2005. Both artists attended the opening of the exhibition. Also Moebius has named his daughter Nausicaa after Miyazaki's heroine.

Miyazaki has been deeply influenced by another French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He illustrated the Japanese covers of Saint-Exupéry's Night Flight (Vol de nuit) and Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), and wrote an afterword for Wind, Sand and Stars.

In an interview broadcast on BBC Choice on 2002-06-10, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Philippa Pearce as influences. The filmmaker has also publicly expressed fondness of Roald Dahl's stories about pilots and airplanes; the image in Porco Rosso of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl's They Shall Not Grow Old.

As in Miyazaki's films, these authors create self-contained worlds in which allegory is seldom used, and characters have complex, and often ambiguous, motivations. Other Miyazaki works, such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.

Miyazaki attributed his inspiration to go into the animation field to the release of The Tale of the White Serpent, considered the first modern anime, in 1958.

Since Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata were entirely in agreement on what they want to do when Miyazaki began to make a work with Takahata, all had gone very well. Whenever they were working together, the common image was formed among two people while discussing eagerly from the outline to the details of a work. And then, Miyazaki drew the image on the image board. It was their way. However, Miyazaki had filled the hand only with drawing the layout of a scene setting in the days of "Heidi, Girl of the Alps", and he had already come to deposit all with Takahata at the time of "3000 Leagues in Search of Mother". Miyazaki increased dissatisfaction as it became so. And that raised his independent spirit.

Originally Miyazaki was a fan of Moebius (Jean Giraud). "Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind" which is the first serialized manga he drew was indicated the influence of how to draw a picture of Moebius. Moebius answered to the indication, "I am honored to understand that I am sharing the same feeling with him beyond the culture". Both of their names are on the list of the staff of "Little Nemo. But they didn’t meet then because they participated in the different time (when Mebius participated, Miyazaki had already resigned). After that, when Moebius who appreciated "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind" visited Japan, he went to see Studio Ghibli, and they met for the first time.

Moebius has named the daughter "Nausicaa".

;Director, Screenplay, and Storyboards * Lupin III: Part 1 Episodes 7, 8, 10, 11, 13-23, 1971 (with Isao Takahata), anime series * Yuki's Sun Pilot Film 1972 (Pilot film for a never-realized anime series) * Future Boy Conan, 1978 anime series * The Castle of Cagliostro (Lupin III), 1979 film * Lupin III: Part II, Episodes 145 & 155, 1980 (under pseudonym Teruki Tsutomu), anime series * Sherlock Hound, 1982 anime series * Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, 1984 film * Laputa: Castle in the Sky, 1986 film * My Neighbor Totoro, 1988 film * Kiki's Delivery Service, 1989 film * Porco Rosso, 1992 film * On Your Mark, 1995 music video for Chage and Aska * Princess Mononoke, 1997 film * Spirited Away, 2001 film (winner, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, 2002) * The Whale Hunt, 2001 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Koro's Big Day Out, 2001 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Mei and the Kittenbus, 2002 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Imaginary Flying Machines, 2002 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Ornithopter Story: Fly! Hiyodori Tengu Go!, 2002 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Howl's Moving Castle, 2004 (nominee, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, 2005) * Monmon the Water Spider, 2006 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * House-hunting, 2006 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * The Day I Harvested A Star, 2006 (Short film exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Ponyo on a Cliff, film due 2008 * Film Guruguru, ? (Ongoing short film project exclusive to the Studio Ghibli Museum) * Unnamed Hayao Miyazaki-directed Documentary (TBA)

;Scene Design, Layout * Heidi, Girl of the Alps, 1974 anime series * 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, 1976 anime series * Anne of Green Gables, Episodes 1-15, 1979 anime series

;Concept, Screenplay, Storyboards, Scene Design, Key Animation * Panda! Go, Panda!, 1972 short film

;Screenplay, Storyboards, Scene Design, Art Design, Key Animation * , 1973 short film

;Screenwriter, Storyboards, Executive Producer, Sequence Director * Whisper of the Heart, 1995 film

;Story Consultant, Key Animation, Storyboards, Scene Design * , 1971

;Key Animation, Storyboards, Scene Design * Hols: Prince of the Sun, 1968 film

;Organizer, Key Animation, Storyboards * , 1971

;Key Animation, Storyboards, Design * Puss in Boots, 1969 film * Flying Phantom Ship, 1969 film

* Cavallaro, Dani (2006), The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki, Mcfarland. (ISBN 0-7864-2369-2) * McCarthy, Helen (1999), Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation: Films, Themes, Artistry, Stone Bridge. (ISBN 1-880656-41-8)

*Yuriy Norshteyn, a friend and animator praised by Miyazaki as "a great artist". http://www.theblackmoon.com/Deadmoon/spiritedaway2.html

* The Official Studio Ghibli Site (Japanese) * Miyazaki Information at Nausicaa.net * GhibliWorld.com: The Ultimate Ghibli Collection Site * Profile at Japan Zone * Discussion about Miyazaki in The New Yorker * Interview in The Guardian * Criticism of Miyazaki by Mamoru Oshii * * * Anime News Network (Note: You'll see how he looks in real life!) * An article on Miyazaki in Turkish Daily News