Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan’S Greatest Animator
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Greenberg, Raz. "Bringing It All Together: Studio Ghibli." Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan’s Greatest Animator. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 107– 126. Animation: Key Films/Filmmakers. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501335976.ch-005>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 09:34 UTC. Copyright © Raz Greenberg 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. C h a p t e r 5 B RINGING IT A LL T OGETHER : S TUDIO G HIBLI Several months aft er the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga started its run in 1982, Miyazaki was hired, along with his colleagues Isao Takahata, Yasuo Ō tsuka, and Yoshifumi Kond ō , to take part in the production of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland . Th e ambitious American/Japanese coproduction adapted the classic comic strip by cartoonist and animation pioneer Winsor McCay about a boy who, each night, goes on a strange adventure in his dreams. McCay’s work had many fans on both sides of the Pacifi c: in fact, the project was initiated by Japanese producer Yutaka Fujioka, the president of Tokyo Movie Shinsha, the studio that previously employed Miyazaki and Takahata on Moomins , the Panda! Go Panda! fi lms, and the Lupin productions. Many other notable fi gures have been involved with diff erent stages of the production including Jean Giraud, renowned science fi ction author Ray Bradbury, and screenwriter Chris Columbus (future director of the early Harry Potter fi lms). Unfortunately, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland proved to be a highly problematic production, stretching across almost a decade before the fi lm’s eventual release in 1989 to a box offi ce failure. Miyazaki and Takahata left the production only a few months aft er being invited to work on the fi lm due to creative diff erences (Miyazaki did not like the idea of a fantasy world that exists purely as a dream; Takahata’s proposal for a story that tells how the protagonist grows up was rejected). 1 Yoshifumi Kond ō remained with the production until 1985, and directed a short pilot- fi lm meant to demonstrate the project’s concept. Th is pilot shows the huge infl uence that Miyazaki had on Kond ō —it is essentially a breathtaking six- minute fl ight sequence in which the protagonist rides his fl ying bed, accompanied by another boy who fl ies an ancient plane drawn in loving detail—and it set up the general mood and style for the fi lm as it was eventually released four years later (despite its troubled 107 108 Hayao Miyazaki production, it should be noted that Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland is actually a well- animated and highly entertaining fi lm, if not a very deep one). Kond ō himself, however, also left the production shortly aft er completing the pilot. 2 Even though Miyazaki’s involvement with Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland was short, his time in the United States was well spent. He attended a lecture by legendary Disney animators Frank Th omas and Ollie Johnston (both also involved with the production of the fi lm) and it was probably during this period that he was exposed to another important artistic infl uence on his feature fi lms—the work of Canadian animator Frederic Back (1924–2013).3 A French immigrant to Canada, Back was a gift ed painter who turned to fi lm and television production in the 1950s, working on everything from fi lm opening titles to animation. In 1980, he received his fi rst Academy Award nomination for his animated short All Nothing , an amusing and environmentally aware version of the biblical creation story. Back’s next three fi lms made prior to his retirement had similar emphasis on environmental issues: Crac! , which won him an Academy Award in 1982, followed the industrial development of Canada through the story of a rocking chair and a rural community; Th e Man Who Planted Trees , which won him his second Academy Award, adapted the classic story by French writer Jean Giono about a shepherd who heals the wounds of a ravaged French county through the simple act of planting a forest; and fi nally Th e Mighty River , nominated for an Academy Award in 1994, a cautionary tale about the history of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Miyazaki was highly impressed upon seeing Crac! for the fi rst time. He was captivated by the lively way in which Back drew and animated natural scenery and plants; indeed, the fi lm features beautifully drawn painterly backgrounds of the Quebec forests and rivers, whose beauty does not come from their wild, untamed nature—it comes from the harmonious way of life adopted by the people who live among them, people who have learned to co- exist with nature. Crac! opens with a tree being cut and used to build a chair by a local farmer, who later sows and harvests fi elds of hay. Th is kind of ideal living off the land involves just the right amount of interference with nature while allowing it to thrive. But when such interference goes beyond the necessary needs of man— when the natural forests and even the fi elds sowed by man must make way for railroads, roads, and power- plants, as seen in the fi lm—mankind loses something. Human imagination is hurt as well: while the children Bringing It All Together: Studio Ghibli 109 of the fi lm’s protagonist are seen throughout it playing with their father’s rocking chair, turning it in their imagination into a vessel that takes them on grand adventures, in the modern era this chair fi nds itself in a museum surrounded by soulless modern paintings. In the fi lm’s fi nal amusing twist, children who come to the museum fi nd the chair far more interesting than the paintings that surround it. Th e Man Who Planted Trees also shows how interference with nature can have positive consequences. Th e fi lm portrays a man- made forest as something that improves the quality of life—not just environmentally but also politically, a strong symbol of peace that even the horrors of war cannot defy (the fi lm tells of how minor wood chopping took place in the forest during the war, but its relative distance made such actions non- profi table and they were quickly abandoned). Th e fact that this forest is man- made is lost on pretty much everyone—including the authorities, who place the forest under protection, believing it to be a natural phenomenon—besides the fi lm’s narrator who knows the truth. Th e importance of such man- made initiatives is made very clear in the fi lm, and Miyazaki wrote of it enthusiastically in his review of it. Miyazaki was not the only person captivated by the shepherd’s character in the fi lm: long before Back directed his adaptation, readers who fell in love with the character wondered whether it was a true story and if they could visit the beautiful forest described in the book. Giono must have been heartbroken to disappoint his readers and tell them that the story was entirely fi ctional. Th e fi rst signs of the infl uence that Back’s fi lms had on Miyazaki are evident in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind : as noted in the previous chapter, the portrayal of the Valley of the Wind as a community that lives off the land and respects nature is highly positive, not unlike the community portrayed at Crac! . Th e manga’s concluding chapters also reveal how man- made forests can change human life in a manner that echoes Th e Man Who Planted Trees (although the manga is far more ambivalent on whether this change is positive or negative). Th e infl uence of Back’s fi lms, however, is much stronger on Miyazaki’s later works directed in his own studio. Old and New Th e animated adaptation of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind performed adequately at the Japanese box- offi ce, and found even greater success on 110 Hayao Miyazaki the newly introduced home- viewing platforms of the early 1980s, VHS and Laserdisc. Th is led to a decision by Tokuma Shoten (publisher of the Animage magazine) to invest in the foundation of an animation studio headed by Miyazaki and Takahata. Th e name Ghibli (pronounced ji- bu- ri) was chosen for the new studio by Miyazaki himself, aft er a famous aircraft model designed by the legendary Italian engineer Giovanni Caproni, showcasing Miyazaki’s love for aircraft and fl ying. Recruiting its initial workforce from both old colleagues as well as Topcraft animators who participated in the production of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind , the studio began working on its fi rst project—Miyazaki’s third feature- length fi lm, Castle in the Sky ( Tenk ū no Shiro Rapyuta ). Taking place in a fi ctional rural country that strongly resembles late nineteenth- century England, the fi lm follows two orphaned children— Pazu, a young miner from a small town, and Sheeta, a mysterious girl who literally fell from the sky, and their quest to discover the legendary fl ying island Laputa. Th e island plays an important role in the heritage of both protagonists; Pazu’s father was obsessed with its discovery, something that made him an object of mockery, while Sheeta is a descendant of the royal family that ruled the island before coming to live among the people of the Earth.