“How is someone like him even possible?” is the question Toshio Suzuki, producer of nearly all of famed Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli asked in reference to his lifelong friend Hayao Miyazaki. “Miyazaki was born in 1941, so he’s lived through the war. He’s a man who’s lived with this contradiction. He’s torn by what he loves. He’s drawn to warplanes, yet he’s anti-war.”
It’s 2013, and production is nearly complete on Miyazaki’s latest film, The Wind Rises. Hotly anticipated, the film is pinned to be the magnum opus in Miyazaki’s lifetime of work. It’s also rumoured to be his final film.
Some background. Miyazaki’s father owned Miyazaki Airplane, which manufactured rudders for WWII fighter planes, and so his family was comparatively well-off during the final years of World War II. Though Hayao would spend the first years of his life under the cloud of war. This left a lasting impression on him which can be seen throughout all aspects of his work.
Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki are impossible to disassociate from one another. Miyazaki directed the Studio’s most successful features, and though Ghibli has released great films from other directors, Ghibli is undoubtedly Miyazaki’s studio. His films, likewise, are impossible to disassociate with the man himself. His fingerprints mark every scene, more-so than most directors of animation or live action. Filmmakers and script writers when starting off are often taught to follow the most basic premise: “write about what you know.” Animation, by its very nature, is a medium by which you are encouraged to stretch, mould or even break that premise. Miyazaki chooses to stretch it to its very edge, by taking what he knows and moulding it with what he predicts and what he imagines.
Miyazaki is staunchly anti-war. He famously refused to attend the 2003 Academy Awards, when Spirited Away was nominated and won for Best Animated Feature, because of America’s involvement in the Iraq War.
Pacifism is a constant message throughout all of Miyazaki’s films. Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke wishes for peace, despite living in a warmongering country. Sheeta and Pazu in Castle in the Sky attempt to avert the control of the titular castle for use as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Porco Rosso’s only sombre moment is above the clouds, underneath all the planes and pilots that have perished. Daisuke Akimoto quotes Koji Okuda and describes Porco Rosso as “anti-war propaganda”. Miyazaki himself seemed to struggle with a change of tack for the direction of Ghibli, saying: “Porco Rosso was a foolish film” and “wasn’t for kids.”
Though he seems to be ignoring his own legacy: since before Studio Ghibli was even formed, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was evidently an anti-war film. Nausicaä herself attempts to diffuse the warring factions. The hellish Giant Warriors which are the catalyst for war in the film, serve as living embodiments of the devastation caused by nuclear war.
Though his characters often have to engage in violence or fight, peace is always portrayed as the preferable option. As Dan Sanchez says: “[for Miyazaki] true victory comes, not from the conquest of one war belligerent by another, but by both simply choosing to cease to fight, having seen the futility of the war, thanks to the exploits of the heroes.”
This through-line is no accident. In The Wind Rises, perhaps Miyazaki’s most anti-war film, this moral conundrum comes to a head. Jiro Horikoshi, the film’s protagonist, like Miyazaki, is captivated by the beauty of aerospace engineering yet, by nature of the time he is living in, must design planes for war. Jiro wishes for a world where planes were made for their simple beauty rather than becoming part of the industrial war machine. Miyazaki calls them cursed dreams.
In The Wind Rises, Jiro’s imagined mentor, Caproni, poses the question: would you rather live in a world with pyramids or without? In other words, is the suffering endured worth their creation? Miyazaki and Jiro both, ultimately, choose the pyramids.
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