60 Fun Facts About Hayao Miyazaki

Which film was Studio Ghibli's first release?

Castle in the Sky reached cinemas in 1986 and disappointed at the box office; only re-releases and home video later turned the new studio's debut into a success.

In which city was Hayao Miyazaki born in January 1941?

Tokyo was home only briefly: the family evacuated north to Utsunomiya during the war, and Miyazaki was nine before they moved back to the capital.

Miyazaki's father ran a family firm that manufactured what during World War II?

Rudders for fighter planes were the trade of Miyazaki Airplane, his uncle's firm, which his father directed; the war work kept the family well off, and aircraft fill his films.

The teenage Miyazaki sneaked out to see Japan's first colour animated feature instead of doing what?

Studying for exams lost out to The White Snake Enchantress (1958), which moved him so deeply that he gave up clever, fashionable manga for more sincere stories.

Which subject did Miyazaki, later a trade-union leader at his first studio, study at Gakushuin University?

Political science and economics were his degree subjects, but he spent his student years in a children's literature research club, reading and discussing fantasy fiction.

Which studio hired the young Miyazaki in 1963, launching his career in animation?

Toei Animation soon found its rookie leading a labour dispute: he became chief secretary of the studio's union and pressed for better treatment of animators.

In Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service, what is the name of the young witch's talking black cat?

Jiji talks only through Kiki's magic, so when her powers falter she can no longer understand him, and he takes up with Lily, the white cat next door.

Miyazaki's wife, Akemi Ōta, held which job at the studio where the two met in 1964?

Inbetween animator Akemi Ōta married him on the understanding that both would keep working, but in 1972 she gave up her career to raise their two sons.

Miyazaki's directorial debut came co-directing which 1971-72 television series with Takahata?

Lupin the Third Part I was losing viewers with its adult tone, so its first director was replaced and the pair were told to play up the humour; it was still cancelled, then prized in reruns.

Miyazaki flew to Sweden in 1971 hoping to win the rights to animate which children's books?

Pippi Longstocking's author, Astrid Lindgren, never gave her permission, so the team poured its ideas into the Panda! Go, Panda! shorts, whose pigtailed heroine was modelled on Pippi.

Miyazaki made a 1973 research trip abroad for which television series based on a classic children's novel?

Heidi, Girl of the Alps sent him and Takahata to Switzerland to sketch real villages and pastures, because the team wanted the series to set a new standard for television animation.

Which 1978 series, set after a war that has wrecked the world, was the first Miyazaki directed on his own?

Future Boy Conan came from Alexander Key's novel The Incredible Tide, but Miyazaki took the job only on condition that he could rewrite its pessimistic story into a hopeful one for children.

What was Miyazaki's first feature film, released in December 1979?

The Castle of Cagliostro was no hit in 1979, but its reputation grew until readers of Animage magazine voted it the best anime ever made.

In Spirited Away, what does the witch Yubaba take from Chihiro to bind her to the bathhouse?

Her name is cut down to Sen when she signs Yubaba's contract, and Haku warns that if she forgets the real one, as he forgot his, she will never leave the spirit world.

Legal trouble with which author's estate halted Miyazaki's early-1980s series about a canine detective after six episodes?

Arthur Conan Doyle's estate kept the show on hold so long that Miyazaki had moved on by the time the dispute was settled; another director finished the series, his last work for television.

In Howl's Moving Castle, the Witch of the Waste's curse turns the young hatmaker Sophie into what?

An old woman of ninety, and the curse stops her telling anyone, so she walks out of the hat shop to find a cure and talks her way into the wizard's castle as its cleaner.

The heroine Nausicaä was partly inspired by a character from which ancient work?

Homer's Odyssey has a princess Nausicaa who helps Odysseus; Miyazaki met her in a handbook of Greek myths and liked that retelling better than Homer's own.

Which real environmental disaster inspired the toxic world of Miyazaki's Nausicaä film?

Mercury poisoning of Minamata Bay caught his imagination less for the damage than for what followed: nature adapting and thriving in a poisoned place, the idea behind the film's toxic jungle.

Which composer, hired for Nausicaä in 1984, has scored every one of Miyazaki's feature films since?

Joe Hisaishi was an experimental minimalist when he was asked for an 'image album' of music inspired by the manga; it won him the film, and every Miyazaki feature since.

Miyazaki named his copyright company Nibariki after the nickname of which little French car that he drove?

Citroën 2CV: its French nickname, deux chevaux, means 'two horses', and Nibariki is Japanese for 'two-horse power'. It was his first car, and he put one in his first feature's car chase.

Miyazaki took the name Ghibli, a word for a hot desert wind, from the Italian nickname of what?

A Caproni aircraft, the Ca.309 desert scout, carried the nickname Ghibli; the plane-loving Miyazaki chose it in the hope that his studio would blow a new wind through Japanese animation.

After the US release Warriors of the Wind mangled Nausicaä, Studio Ghibli imposed which rule on foreign versions of its films?

No cuts has been the studio's condition for foreign releases ever since: the American edit had removed scenes that carried the heroine's character and the film's environmental message.

Miyazaki sketched the mining villages of which country while researching Castle in the Sky?

Wales: he arrived during the 1984 miners' strike and admired how the men battled to save their way of life, a fight he poured into the film's mining town.

The floating island in Castle in the Sky is borrowed from which classic novel?

Gulliver's Travels gave the film its flying island of Laputa, but Disney's English release dropped the name from the title because 'la puta' is a vulgar phrase in Spanish.

My Neighbor Totoro was released in 1988 as a double bill with which Takahata film?

Grave of the Fireflies, a wartime tragedy, shared the bill with Totoro from April 16, 1988; both films won great reviews, yet neither did well at the box office.

What eventually turned My Neighbor Totoro into a money-spinner that sustained Studio Ghibli for years?

Merchandising rights approved in 1990 put plush Totoros in the shops two years after the film's modest run in cinemas, and their sales covered the studio's production deficits.

Which relative of Miyazaki inspired the character Mei in My Neighbor Totoro?

His niece, Mei Okuyama, was the model; years later she married Pixar art director Dice Tsutsumi after they met again through his charity auction to protect the forest behind the film.

The bedridden mother in My Neighbor Totoro echoes Miyazaki's own mother, who suffered from what?

Spinal tuberculosis kept her in bed for most of his school years, first in hospital and then at home, where he and his brothers took over the housework.

Which Swedish city, along with the island town of Visby, inspired the seaside town in Kiki's Delivery Service?

Stockholm and Visby were photographed for reference and blended into Koriko, a port that exists only in the film, where the 13-year-old witch arrives alone to start her courier service.

Which Miyazaki film began as a 45-minute in-flight movie for Japan Airlines before growing into a feature?

Porco Rosso kept the airline as a major investor, so it was shown to passengers in the air before it reached cinemas in July 1992.

The outbreak of which conflict in 1991 gave Porco Rosso a more sombre tone than Miyazaki had planned?

The Yugoslav Wars broke out along the very Adriatic coast where the story is set, and the fighting cast a shadow over production that pushed a breezy adventure towards something more serious.

Which Miyazaki film is set in Japan's Muromachi period?

Princess Mononoke's forests were drawn from life: Miyazaki took his art directors to the ancient woods of Yakushima island to sketch before animation began.

Princess Mononoke was the first animated feature named best picture at which awards?

The Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year had never gone to animation before 1998; the film had also broken E.T.'s Japanese box-office record, only to lose it to Titanic months later.

Which author wrote the English-language script for Princess Mononoke's North American release?

Neil Gaiman's script could not sell the film to American audiences: the dub flopped in cinemas, yet it is remembered as Studio Ghibli's introduction to the West.

Yoshifumi Kondō, groomed as Miyazaki's successor before his sudden death in 1998, directed which Studio Ghibli film?

Whisper of the Heart, written and storyboarded by Miyazaki, was the only feature Kondō directed: he died in January 1998, aged 47, and the studio's succession plan died with him.

Miyazaki conceived Spirited Away after realising he had never made a film for which audience?

10-year-old girls, daughters of friends, stayed at his mountain cabin each summer; finding their magazines full of crushes and romance, he set out to give them a heroine of their own.

Which 2020 anime film ended Spirited Away's 19-year run as Japan's highest-grossing film?

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train opened in October 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and still passed Spirited Away's total within months.

Spirited Away shared which top festival prize with the drama Bloody Sunday in 2002?

The Golden Bear at Berlin is often called a first for animation, but Disney's Cinderella won one back in 1951, when the festival handed out its bears by category.

Why did Miyazaki stay away from the 2003 Oscars, where Spirited Away won?

In protest at the US war in Iraq, he stayed home, and his anger at the invasion went into the film he was then making, whose young wizard refuses to fight in his king's war.

Which Pixar director, a friend of Miyazaki, championed Spirited Away's release in North America?

John Lasseter went on to oversee the English dub as executive producer; he has said that when Pixar's animators get stuck on a story, they screen a Miyazaki film.

Howl's Moving Castle is based on a novel by which British author?

Diana Wynne Jones's novel was first handed to another director, Mamoru Hosoda; when he left after the studio rejected his ideas, Miyazaki took the film on himself.

Miyazaki studied Colmar and Riquewihr, towns in which European region, for the setting of Howl's Moving Castle?

Alsace won him over on the spot: he was so struck by Colmar's half-timbered streets that they became the model for the heroine's home town.

Which fire demon, bound to the wizard by a secret bargain, powers the castle in Howl's Moving Castle?

Calcifer strikes a deal of his own with Sophie: he will lift her curse if she can break the contract that ties him to Howl and to the castle's hearth.

Miyazaki publicly opposed his son Goro's appointment as director of which Studio Ghibli film?

Tales from Earthsea went ahead over his objection that Goro 'can't possibly handle directing'; after a screening he relented in a note to his son: 'It was made honestly, so it was good.'

Ponyo was initially inspired by which Hans Christian Andersen tale?

The Little Mermaid gives up her voice and loses her prince; Miyazaki's fish-girl instead breaks free with magic, raising a tsunami as she races back to the boy who rescued her.

The Wind Rises tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of which aircraft?

Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters made Horikoshi's name, but Miyazaki was drawn to him by a single remark: 'All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.'

Which fellow anime director, once a young animator on Nausicaä, voiced Jiro Horikoshi in The Wind Rises?

Hideaki Anno, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, first made his name animating for Miyazaki in 1984; three decades later his old boss gave him the lead role.

Miyazaki said which of his own films was the first to make him cry?

The Wind Rises made him cry, he admitted, which none of his own films had done before; weeks after its release he announced his retirement from features.

Miyazaki announced his retirement from features in September 2013 but returned with which 2023 film?

The Boy and the Heron is called How Do You Live? in Japan, after a 1937 novel that turns up in one scene, though the story is Miyazaki's own and not an adaptation.

What was the only publicity for Miyazaki's 2023 comeback film, which opened in Japan with no trailers or adverts?

A single poster was all audiences saw: producer Toshio Suzuki felt modern campaigns give the whole film away, so there were no trailers, no adverts and not even a synopsis before opening day.

In Miyazaki's 2023 fantasy film, which birds have built a man-eating kingdom ruled by their own king?

Parakeets, man-sized and man-eating, have overrun the tower's world, and it is their impatient king who brings it crashing down by trying to stack the wizard's magic blocks himself.

Which Japanese director won an honorary Oscar before Miyazaki?

Akira Kurosawa received his in 1990; Miyazaki collected his own at the Governors Awards a year after announcing his retirement, then went back to work on another feature.

Which character in Spirited Away hands out gold to the bathhouse workers and then swallows some of them?

No-Face is let into the bathhouse by Chihiro, who takes him for a customer; when she alone turns down his gold he swallows workers in a rage, until she feeds him an emetic dumpling.

Shown an AI-generated animation of a crawling zombie in 2016, what did Miyazaki call it?

'An insult to life itself', he said, thinking of a disabled friend for whom even a high five is a struggle; the clip went viral again in 2025 as ChatGPT users mass-produced Ghibli-style images.

In Kiki's Delivery Service, the young witch finds a home at which kind of shop?

A bakery: its pregnant owner, Osono, gives Kiki a spare room, and the girl starts delivering by broomstick, until a bout of gloom costs her the power to fly and puts the business on hold.

What did Miyazaki name his private office, a short walk from Studio Ghibli?

Buta-ya (pig house) was meant as his retirement office when he left Studio Ghibli in 1998; a year later he was back running the studio, and the retreat became his working atelier.

In My Neighbor Totoro, where are the sisters waiting for their father in the rain when Totoro appears beside them?

A bus stop is the reason there are two sisters: Miyazaki said one small girl could not be out meeting her father there alone, so his single heroine became Satsuki and Mei.

Miyazaki's 1983 graphic novel The Journey of Shuna was inspired by a folk tale from which region?

Tibet's tale of a prince who steals barley to save his people, and is turned into a dog for it, was one Miyazaki longed to animate; when nobody would back so simple a story, he drew it as a book.

In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, what are the giant armoured insects that guard the toxic jungle called?

Ohmu (Ohm in the English dub) once stampeded in rage and flattened whole cities, yet Nausicaä has a gift for calming them, and in the end the herd itself brings her back to life.

In 1982 Miyazaki and Takahata quit an adaptation of which comic strip after clashing with producer Fujioka?

Little Nemo lost both men within months, and only after a long development under a string of other writers did the film reach cinemas in 1989, as Adventures in Slumberland.