When Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement from Japan’s greatest animation studio in 2013, his young protege Hiromasa Yonebayashi wasn’t worried. The master had already retired five times before. “He was always saying, ‘Oh this could be the last film.’” Yonebayashi shrugs. “He’s still in the office.”
You get the feeling that’s not entirely a comfort. Miyazaki is not the only director at Studio Ghibli, the animation company he co-founded in 1985, but he is behind the three most successful Japanese anime of all time. Princess Mononoke was Japan’s highest grossing film until Titanic – bested four years later by Spirited Away, the first non-western film to win the animation Oscar. Miyazaki’s career has been built on drawing the mutual awe between humankind and nature: no wonder he inspires David Attenborough levels of devotion in Japan.
Ostensibly, his mantle has now been passed to the man perched on a London hotel sofa before me, a slightly awkward 42-year-old in a flat cap with two directorial credits to his name. Even the studio seem faintly concerned that Yonebayashi, despite having landed an Oscar nomination for When Marnie Was There, doesn’t stand quite as tall as Miyazaki: he is accompanied by producer Yoshiaki Nishimura, to flex a bit of corporate Ghibli muscle.
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Will Ghibli ever employ a female director? Nishimura fields this question. “It depends on what kind of a film it would be. Unlike live action, with animation we have to simplify the real world. Women tend to be more realistic and manage day-to-day lives very well. Men on the other hand tend to be more idealistic – and fantasy films need that idealistic approach. I don’t think it’s a coincidence men are picked.”
