• Film Director and Animator Hayao Miyazaki, 1941

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. Reflecting Miyazaki's feminism, 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 co-wrote the film The Secret World of Arrietty, which was released in July 2010 in Japan and February 2012 in the United States.

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."

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.

In April 1963, Miyazaki got a job at Toei Animation, working as an in-between artist on the anime Watchdog Bow Wow (Wanwan Chushingura) Also known as Ken the wolf boy. He was a leader in a labor dispute soon after his arrival, becoming chief secretary of Toei's labor union in 1964. He first gained recognition while working as an in-between artist on the Toei production Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon (Garibā no Uchuu Ryokō) in 1965. He found the original ending to the script unsatisfactory and pitched his own idea, which became the ending used in the final film. In October 1965, he married fellow animator Akemi Ota, who later left work to raise their two sons, Gorō and Keisuke.

In 1968 Miyazaki played an important role as chief animator, concept artist and scene designer on Hols: Prince of the Sun, a landmark animated film directed by Isao Takahata, with whom he continued to collaborate for the next three decades. In Kimio Yabuki's Puss in Boots (1969), Miyazaki again provided key animation as well as designs, storyboards and story ideas for key scenes in the film, including the climactic chase scene. Shortly thereafter, Miyazaki proposed scenes in the screenplay for Flying Phantom Ship, in which military tanks would roll into downtown Tokyo and cause mass hysteria, and was hired to storyboard and animate those scenes. In 1971, Miyazaki played a decisive role in developing structure, characters and designs for Animal Treasure Island and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (アリババと40匹の盗賊 Aribaba to Yonjūbiki no Tozuku). He also helped in the storyboarding and key animating of pivotal scenes in both films.

Miyazaki left Toei in 1971 for Mushi Production, A Pro, Nippon Animation, and TMS Entertainment where he co-directed six episodes of the first Lupin III series with Isao Takahata. He and Takahata then began pre-production on a Pippi Longstocking series and drew extensive story boards for it. However, after traveling to Sweden to conduct research for the film and meet the original author, Astrid Lindgren, they were denied permission to complete the project, and it was canceled.

Instead of Pippi Longstocking, Miyazaki conceived, wrote, designed and animated two Panda! Go, Panda! shorts which were directed by Takahata. Miyazaki then left Nippon Animation in 1979 in the middle of the production of Anne of Green Gables to direct his first feature anime The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), a Lupin III adventure film.

Miyazaki's next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika, 1984), was an adventure film that introduced many of the themes which recur in later films: a concern with ecology and the human impact on the environment; a fascination with aircraft and flight; pacifism, including an anti - military streak; feminism; and morally ambiguous characterizations, especially among villains. This was the first film both written and directed by Miyazaki. He adapted it from his manga series of the same title, which he began writing and illustrating two years earlier, but which remained incomplete until after the film's release.

Studio Ghibli was originally established in 1985, as a subsidiary of Tokuma Shoten. In 2005, Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takahata established a new Studio Ghibli in Koganei, Japan and acquired all the copyrights of Miyazaki's works and business rights from Tokuma Shoten.

Following the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki co-founded the animation production company Studio Ghibli with Takahata in 1985, and has produced nearly all of his subsequent work through it. Miyazaki continued to gain recognition with his next three films. Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) recounts the adventure of two orphans seeking a magical castle island that floats in the sky; My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) tells of the adventure of two girls and their interaction with forest spirits; and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), adapted from a novel by Eiko Kadono, tells the story of a small town girl who leaves home to begin life as a witch in a big city. Miyazaki's fascination with flight is evident throughout these films, ranging from the ornithopters flown by pirates in Castle in the Sky, to the Totoro and the Cat Bus soaring through the air, and Kiki flying her broom.

Porco Rosso (1992) was a notable departure for Miyazaki, in that the main character was an adult male, an anti - fascist aviator transformed into an anthropomorphic pig. The film is set in 1920s Italy and the title character is a bounty hunter who fights air pirates and an American soldier of fortune. The film explores the tension between selfishness and duty. The film can also be viewed as an abstract self portrait of the director; its subtext can be read as a fictionalized autobiography. Like many of his movies, it is richly allusive and generates a lot of its humor and charm out of its references to American film of the 1930s and 1940s. Porco Rosso, for instance, owes much to the various screen personae of Humphrey Bogart.

1997's Princess Mononoke (Mononoke - Hime) returns to the ecological and political themes of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The plot centers on the struggle between the animal spirits who inhabit the forest and the humans who exploit the forest for industry. Both movies implicitly criticize the adverse impact of humans on nature, and portray the military in a negative light. Princess Mononoke is also noted as one of his most violent pictures. The film was a huge commercial success in Japan, where it became the highest grossing film of all time, until the later success of Titanic, and it ultimately won Best Picture at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki went into what would prove to be temporary retirement after directing Princess Mononoke.

During this period of semi - retirement, Miyazaki spent time with the daughters of a friend, one of whom became his inspiration for Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001). Spirited Away is the story of a girl, forced to survive in a bizarre spirit world, who works in a bathhouse for spirits after her parents are turned into pigs by the sorceress who owns it. Released in Japan in July 2001, the film broke attendance and box office records with ¥30.4 billion (approximately $300 million) in total gross earnings from more than 23 million viewings. It has received many awards, including Best Picture at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Golden Bear (First Prize) at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, and the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In July 2004, Miyazaki completed production on Howl's Moving Castle, a film adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' fantasy novel. Miyazaki came out of retirement following the sudden departure of original director Mamoru Hosoda. The film premiered at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival and won the Golden Osella award for animation technology. On November 20, 2004, Howl's Moving Castle opened to general audiences in Japan where it earned ¥1.4 billion in its first two days. An English language version was later released in the U.S. by Walt Disney.

In 2005, Miyazaki received a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival. Later that year, Chinese media reported that Miyazaki's final film project would be I Lost My Little Boy, based on a Chinese children's book. This later proved to be faked news.

In 2006, Miyazaki's son Gorō Miyazaki completed his first film, Tales from Earthsea, based on several stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. Hayao Miyazaki had long aspired to make an anime of this work and had repeatedly asked for permission from the author, Ursula K. Le Guin. However, he had been refused every time. Instead, Miyazaki produced Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Shuna no tabi, (The Journey of Shuna) as substitutes (some of the ideas from Shuna no tabi were diverted to this movie). When Le Guin finally requested that Miyazaki produce an anime adaptation of her work, he refused, because he had lost the desire to do so. The author, Ursula K. Le Guin, remembers this differently: "In August 2005, Mr Toshio Suzuki of Studio Ghibli came with Mr Hayao Miyazaki to talk with me and my son (who controls the trust which owns the Earthsea copyrights). We had a pleasant visit in my house. It was explained to us that Mr Hayao wished to retire from film making, and that the family and the studio wanted Mr Hayao's son Goro, who had never made a film at all, to make this one. We were very disappointed, and also anxious, but we were given the impression, indeed assured, that the project would be always subject to Mr Hayao's approval. With this understanding, we made the agreement." Among fans of the nearly forty year old books, this film was mostly disappointing.

Throughout the film's production, Gorō and his father were not speaking to each other, due to a dispute over whether or not Gorō was ready to direct. This movie was originally to be produced by Hayao Miyazaki, but he declined as he was already in the middle of producing Howl's Moving Castle. Ghibli decided to make Gorō, who had yet to head any animated films, the producer instead.

In 2006, Nausicaa.net reported Hayao Miyazaki's plans to direct another film, rumored to be set in Kobe. Among areas Miyazaki's team visited during pre-production were an old café run by an elderly couple, and the view of a city from high in the mountains. The exact location of these places was censored from Studio Ghibli's production diaries. The studio also announced that Miyazaki had begun creating storyboards for the film and that they were being produced in watercolor because the film would have an "unusual visual style." Studio Ghibli said the production time would be about 20 months, with release slated for Summer 2008.

In 2007, the film's title was publicly announced as Gake no ue no Ponyo, literally "Ponyo on a Cliff." The story revolves around a five year old boy, Sousuke, and the Princess goldfish, Ponyo, who wants to become human. Studio Ghibli President Toshio Suzuki noted that "70 to 80% of the film takes place at sea. It will be a director's challenge on how they will express the sea and its waves with freehand drawing." The film does not contain any computer generated imagery (CGI) in contrast to Miyazaki's other recent work. Ponyo was released in July 2008 in Japan, then in North America and the UK in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

Hayao Miyazaki has recently worked on a new film, titled Kokurikozaka kara (From up on Poppy Hill). The film is based on the 1980 two volume manga of the same name written by Tetsurō Sayama and drawn by Chizuru Takahashi. The film is a collaboration between Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the screenplay, and his son Gorō, who directed the film. The story takes place in Yokohama and revolves around Umi Komatsuzaki, a high school student who is forced to fend for herself when her sailor father goes missing from the seaside town.

Miyazaki's work in television is less known than his films. In the 1970s he worked as an animator on the World Masterpiece Theater television animation series under Isao Takahata. His first directorial credit is for the television version of Lupin III in 1971; he was co-director (with Takahata) of the second half of the first television series, and director of two episodes of the second series.

Miyazaki's most famous television work was his direction of Future Boy Conan (1978), an adaptation of the children's novel The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key. The main antagonist is the leader of the city - state of Industria who attempts to revive lost technology. The series also elaborates on the characters and events in the book, and is an early example of characterizations which recur throughout Miyazaki's later work: a girl who is in touch with nature, a warrior woman who appears menacing but is not an antagonist, and a boy who seems destined for the girl. The series also featured imaginative aircraft designs.

Miyazaki also directed six episodes of Sherlock Hound, an Italian - Japanese co-production which retold Sherlock Holmes tales using anthropomorphic animals. These episodes were first broadcast in 1984 – 85.

Miyazaki has illustrated several manga, beginning in 1969 with Puss in Boots (Nagagutsu wo Haita Neko). His major work in this format is the seven - volume manga version of his tale Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which he created from 1982 to 1994 and which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Other works include Sabaku no Tami (砂漠の民 People of the Desert), Shuna no Tabi (シュナの旅 The Journey of Shuna), The Notebook of Various Images (雑想ノート Zassō Nōto), which was the basis of his film Porco Rosso.

In October 2006, A Trip to Tynemouth was published in Japan. Miyazaki based it on the young adult short stories of Robert Westall, who grew up in World War II England. The most famous story, first published in a collection called Break of Dark, is titled Blackham's Wimpy, the name of a Vickers Wellington Bomber featured in the story, whose nickname comes from the character J. Wellington Wimpy from the Popeye comics and cartoons (the Wellington was named for Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, victor over Napoleon).

In early 2009, Miyazaki returned with a new manga called Kaze Tachinu (風立ちぬ The Wind Rises), telling the story of Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter designer Jiro Horikoshi. The manga was published in two issues of the Model Graphix magazine, published on February 25 and March 25, 2009.

Miyazaki takes a leading role when creating his films, frequently serving as both writer and director. He personally reviewed every frame used in his early films, though due to health concerns over the high workload he now delegates some of the workload to other Ghibli members. In a 1999 interview, Miyazaki said, "at this age, I cannot do the work I used to. If my staff can relieve me and I can concentrate on directing, there are still a number of movies I'd like to make."

Miyazaki uses very human like movements in his animation. In addition, much of the art is done using water colors.

In contrast to American animation, the script and storyboards are created together, and animation begins before the story is finished and storyboards are developing.

Miyazaki's works are characterized by the recurrence of progressive themes, such as environmentalism, pacifism, feminism and the absence of villains. His films are also frequently concerned with childhood transition and a marked preoccupation with flight.

Miyazaki's narratives are notable for not pitting a hero against an unsympathetic antagonist. In Spirited Away, Miyazaki states "the heroine [is] thrown into a place where the good and bad dwell together. [...] She manages not because she has destroyed the 'evil', but because she has acquired the ability to survive." Even though Miyazaki sometimes feels pessimistic about the world, he prefers to show children a positive world view instead, and rejects simplistic stereotypes of good and evil.

Miyazaki's films often emphasize environmentalism and the Earth's fragility. In an interview with The New Yorker, Miyazaki claimed that much of modern culture is "thin and shallow and fake", and "not entirely jokingly" looked forward to an apocalyptic age in which "wild green grasses" take over. Growing up in the Shōwa period was an unhappy time for him because "nature — the mountains and rivers — was being destroyed in the name of economic progress." Miyazaki is critical of capitalism, globalization and their impacts on modern life. Commenting on the 1954 Animal Farm animated film, he has said that "exploitation is not only found in communism, capitalism is a system just like that. I believe a company is common property of the people that work there. But that is a socialistic idea." Nonetheless, he suggests that adults should not "impose their vision of the world on children."

Nausicaä, Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle feature anti - war themes. In 2003, when Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Miyazaki did not attend the awards show personally. He later explained that it was because he "didn’t want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq".

Miyazaki has been called a feminist by Studio Ghibli President Toshio Suzuki, in reference to his attitude to female workers. This is evident in the all female factories of Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke, as well as the matriachal bath house of Spirited Away. Many of Miyazaki's films are populated by strong female protagonists that go against gender roles common in Japanese animation and fiction.

A number of Western authors have influenced Miyazaki's work, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lewis Carroll and Diana Wynne Jones. Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea had been a great influence on all his works, and that he kept her books at his bedside. Miyazaki and French writer and illustrator Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) have influenced each other and have become friends as a result of their mutual admiration. Monnaie de Paris held an exhibition of their work titled Miyazaki et Moebius: Deux Artistes Dont Les Dessins Prennent Vie (Two Artists’s Drawings Taking on a Life of Their Own) from December 2004 to April 2005. Both artists attended the opening of the exhibition. Moebius named his daughter Nausicaa after Miyazaki's heroine. Miyazaki has been deeply influenced by another French writer, Antoine de Saint - Exupéry. He illustrated the Japanese covers of Saint - Exupéry's Night Flight (Vol de nuit) and Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), and wrote an afterword for Wind, Sand and Stars.

In an interview broadcast on BBC Choice on 2002 - 06 - 10, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff and Philippa Pearce as influences. The filmmaker has also publicly expressed fondness for Roald Dahl's stories about pilots and airplanes; the image in Porco Rosso of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl's They Shall Not Grow Old. As in Miyazaki's films, these authors create self contained worlds in which allegory is often used, and characters have complex, and often ambiguous, motivations. Other Miyazaki works, such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.

Miyazaki has said he was inspired to become an animator by The Tale of the White Serpent, considered the first modern anime, in 1958. He has also said that The Snow Queen, a Soviet animated film, was one of his earliest inspirations, and that it motivated him to stay in animation production. Yuriy Norshteyn, a Russian animator, is Miyazaki's friend and praised by him as "a great artist." Norshteyn's Hedgehog in the Fog is cited as one of Miyazaki's favorite animated films. Miyazaki has long been a fan of the Aardman Studios animation. In May 2006, David Sproxton and Peter Lord, founders of Aardman Studios, visited the Ghibli Museum exhibit dedicated to their works, where they also met Miyazaki.

Pete Docter, director of the popular films Up and Monsters, Inc. as well as a co-creator of other Pixar works, has praised Miyazaki and described him as an influence. Glen Keane, the animator for successful Disney films such as The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Tangled, has also credited Miyazaki as a "huge influence" on his work and on Disney in general during the past two decades.

Miyazaki has also been cited as an influence on various role playing video games. The creator of Square's Final Fantasy series, Hironobu Sakaguchi, cited Miyazaki as inspiration for elements such as the airships and chocobos featured in the series. The post - apocalyptic setting of SNK's Crystalis was inspired by Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Crystalis in turn influenced Square's Secret of Mana.

Miyazaki's dedication to his work has often been reported to have impacted negatively on his relationship with his son Gorō. He has expressed he does not wish to create a dynasty of animators and his son has to create a name for himself. Nonetheless he has shown support of his son's career in animation in recent times, co-writing the screenplay for Gorō's feature From up on Poppy Hill and was in the process of developing the story for his son's third film.