How Hayao Miyazaki’s Career Almost Ended Before It Began

Seeing “The Snow Queen” restored Miyazaki’s faith in the animation medium and in his calling to be an animator. He said:

“I was thankful for the fact that I was an animator. Someday, we might have an opportunity. I decided to settle down and continue this job.”

This essay from Miyazaki is revealing in other ways. It makes it clear he was no big fan of Disney or the “anime” abbreviation, at least at the time. He furthermore tries to unpack the idea of anime as “excessive expressionism” and likens the state of it to “an in-flight meal served on a jumbo jet.” He also envisions, in an offhand manner, future developments in moviemaking, things like the 1 Second Everyday video diary or Richard Linklater’s Oscar-winning film “Boyhood,” where a person might make a movie by shooting it one bit at a time over a longer period of time.

According to a 2020 Statista survey, “My Neighbor Totoro” remains the most-watched Ghibli movie in Japan. The BBC has also voted “Spirited Away” the fourth-best film of the 21st century. To think that Miyazaki wrote the above words before either of those films came out just goes to show how imperative it is to stick with some things and not give up on them before they even have the chance to achieve full liftoff.

In “The Screwtape Letters,” British author C.S. Lewis wrote of “the disappointment or anticlimax” that comes “on the threshold of every human endeavour” as a person “marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.” Miyazaki’s story illustrates the insightfulness of this. It highlights how hard work and perseverance, coupled with natural talent, can pay off in wondrous ways.

Miyazaki and Ghibli’s other creators have been responsible for some of the greatest hand-drawn animated films of all time, something only made possible through their tenacity. For fans around the world, Miyazaki’s filmography remains a beacon of inspiration, one that is set to continue yielding new works as he comes out of retirement for his 12th film, “How Do You Live?”