Point College

Title: Japanese Director (Hayao Miyazaki)

Assignment No.: 3

Date: 23/02/2015

Name: Lee Sweet Wan

Course: Introduction to World Cinema

23/02/2015

Monday

Lee Sweet Wan

HAYAO MIYAZAKI

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, author and manga artist. He was born in Bunkyo, Japan on January 5, 1941. He is the second of four son. His father who named Katsuji Miyazaki was director of Miyazaki Airplane, which made rudders for A6M Zero fighter plane during World War II. He got a lot of talent in art and he got the interest in airplane also. This is why most of his works have something to do with flying and airplane.

Miyazaki aspired to become a manga author from early aged. In 1958, his interest in animation was sparked by a movie called The Tale of The White Serpent from Toei Animation which the company he joined on April 1963. The movie left a strong impression. His interest really began when the time he attend to high school. His interests were mainly in manga and anime. He graduated from high school then attended Gakushuin University. In 1963, he graduated from Gakushuin with degrees of political science and economics.

After that he joined the Toei Animation. From there, he worked as an in between artist for Gulliver’s Travel Beyond the Moon. He continued to work in various roles in animation industry until he directed his first film, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which released in 1979. He co-founded Studio Ghibli after the success

of his next film, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind which released in 1984. He is only famous or known in Japan but Western country until Marimax Films released Princess Mononoke (1997). It is the first animated film which won Picture of The Year at the Japanese Academy Awards.

He is not only work on his own film. He co-wrote films The Secret World of Arriety released in July 2010 in Japan and February 2012 in United States; and From Up on Poppy Hill released in July 2011 in Japan and March 2013 in United States. Both of the films are directed by one of his two sons who named Goro Miyazaki.

Miyazaki’s film often contain recurrent themes, like humanity’s relationship with nature and technology, feminism, and so many. The protagonist are often strong, independent girls or young women. Some of his best known movies included The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Deliver Service (1989), Only Yesterday (1991), Spirited Away (2001), The Cat Returns (2002), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), The Wind Rises (2013). The Wind Rises would be his final featured length film as he is officially retired now.

For me, I like him so much mainly because of the way he delivers a message in each and every of his works. He often use a positive ways to show the “ugliness” of the world. You can feel hope, future, strength, in his works and it will inspired you a lot. At least it do inspired me. I can still remember that when my mother bought me the DVD of Spirited Away as a birthday present when I was a kid. In the first sight I feel like it’s nothing special about a “cartoon” movie yet I was totally “fell in love” with it. It is a story about a girl who was going on a vacation with her parents accidentally went to a place which full of spirits. She forced to live and worked in a bathhouse for spirits after her parents are turned into pigs by the sorceress who owned it. I believed that it’s not only the storyline itself that attracted me but also the visual. Besides, I can’t really described how it feels when I first watched the movie Spirited Away but it gave me a strong impression and that’s why I can still remember the movie until now.