Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao, born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park and Robert Zemeckis; he has also been named one of the most influential people by Time magazine.
[>>]Source: WikipediaHayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao, born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park and Robert Zemeckis; he has also been named one of the most influential people by Time magazine.
Born in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Miyazaki began his animation career in 1961, when he joined Toei Animation. From there, Miyazaki worked as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon where he pitched his own ideas that eventually became the movie's ending. He continued to work in various roles in the animation industry over the decade until he was able to direct his first feature film Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which was released in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, he co-founded Studio Ghibli where he continued to produce many feature films until his temporary retirement in 1997 following Princess Mononoke.
While Miyazaki's films have long enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan, he remained largely unknown to the West until Miramax Films released Princess Mononoke. Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan—until it was eclipsed by another 1997 film, Titanic—and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki returned to animation with Spirited Away. The film topped Titanic's sales at the Japanese box office, also won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award.
Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes like humanity's relationship with nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women. While two of his films, The Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky, involve traditional villains, his other films like Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke present morally ambiguous antagonists with redeeming qualities. He recently co-wrote the film The Secret World of Arrietty, which was released in July 2010 in Japan and February 2012 in the United States.
Early life and education
Miyazaki, the second of four sons, was born in the town of Akebono-cho, part of Tokyo's Bunkyō. 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. From 1947 until 1955 his mother underwent treatment for Pott disease. She spent the first few years mostly in the hospital, but was eventually able to be nursed from home.
During his childhood, Miyazaki was forced to switch schools several times. These would all impact elements of his films. First, when he was three, Miyazaki's family was forced to evacuate Bunkyō. He began school as an evacuee in 1947. At age nine his family returned home, but the following year he switched to another American-influenced elementary school. Miyazaki attended Toyotama High School. In his third year there, he saw the film Hakujaden (The Tale of the White Serpent), which has been described as "the first-ever Japanese feature length color anime." 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."
Manga and anime interest
Like many children in postwar Japan, Miyazaki decided he wanted to become a manga artist during high school. However, his talents were limited to things like planes, tanks and battleships; he had an especially hard time drawing people. Famous manga artists like Osamu Tezuka, Tetsuji Fukushima and Sanpei Shirato influenced his early works. In order to distance himself from the criticism he expected from following Tezuka's form, he consciously developed his own style, but was unable to fully shake Tezuka's influence off until he began studying animation.
His interest in animation began during high school after watching Japan's first full-length feature animation The Tale of the White Serpent by Taiji Yabushita. Miyazaki "fell in love" with the movie's heroine and it left a strong impression on him. It was after this Miyazaki decided to stop his pursuit of being a manga artist and pursue animation. However, in order to become an animator, he had to learn to draw the human figure, since his prior work had been limited to airplanes and battleships.
[<<]This text is based on a article from the open encyclopedia Wikipedia and stands under GNU license for free documentation. On Wikipedia there is List of the authors Available.
