Hayao Miyazaki

We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.

Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.

Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿, Miyazaki Hayao, born January 5, 1941) is one of the most famous and respected creators of anime, or Japanese animated films.

Quotes

• 命は闇の中のまたたく光だ。
  • Translation: Nausicaä: Life is a winking light in the darkness.
  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Manga: 1982-1994, Anime: 1984), Manga, vol. 8

• We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.
  • Proposal for Princess Mononoke[1]

• Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.
  • At the New York Film Festival[2]

• I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy.
  • (2005) The Guardian article

• It's difficult. [My female protagonists] immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex males). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict [such protagonists] as if they just want [such girls] as pets, and things are escalating more and more.
  • 1988 interview with Animage, Animage, vol. 125, November 1988. Retrieved June 8, 2007.

• You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, 'Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.' If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!
  • 2014 interview with Japanese news website Golden Times, 27 January 2014. Translated by RocketNews24 on January 30, 2014.

On Ponyo

• Most people depend on the internet and cellphones to survive, but what happens when they stop working? I wanted to create a mother and child who wouldn't be defeated by life without them.
  • (2009) Independent News article 2009

On Animation

• If it is a dying craft we can't do anything about it. Civilisation moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era.
  • on the topic of hand-drawn animation (2005) The Guardian article

• Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.
  • on the topic of CGI animation (2005) The Guardian article

See also

• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
• Howl's Moving Castle
• Kiki's Delivery Service
• Porco Rosso
• Spirited Away
• Princess Mononoke