For a man who looks like every kid's favorite uncle – mischievous and cuddly at the same time – Hayao Miyazaki pulled no punches about the world of grown-ups when he spoke at the Club on Nov. 20.

The director of titles such as Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki questioned the government’s economic policies, expressed concern at the state of the environment and how children are being raised in modern-day Japan and reserved a brief but biting comment for Prime Minister Taro Aso.
Asked about the Japanese leader’s much-publicized affection for comic books and his promotion of “soft power” to enhance the country’s image, as well as boosting its earnings from exports, Miyazaki’s reply was to the point: “It’s embarrassing.

“That is something that should be done in private,” said the 67-year-old joint founder of Studio Ghibli, which has had another box-office success story this year with the release of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.

As well as being a hobby that the leader of the world’s second-largest economy should perhaps be carrying out behind closed doors, Miyazaki seemed to question the value of the entire industry that he has helped to create.

“This environment surrounding our children is full of virtual reality,” he said. “Television, video games, e-mail, mobile phones and manga.

“I think this saps children of their strength,” Miyazaki added.

Instead of living in this virtual world, he said children should be encouraged to run barefoot and taught practical skills by their parents, such as how to light fires and use knives, before they have to sit down to learn to read or do math problems.

“Instead of thinking about how we can stimulate demand by building new bridges or roads, we should make sure we have the proper environment in place for future generations,” Miyazaki said, indicating his belief that the economic policies followed during decades of conservative rule are to blame for the plight of the nation as a whole.
“In this modern society, we all feel uncertainty about our children’s futures,” said Miyazaki, who has a reputation of being a deeply private man and has expressed concern over the state of the environment in his movies.

Key characters in both My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke are deities whose forest homes are threatened, while the monster in Spirited Away is the soul of a river polluted through overdevelopment.

“I’m tremendously pessimistic,” Miyazaki admitted when asked about the environmental themes to his films and how they relate to Japan today. “People will not learn until things have become truly terrible. This country consumes more than it produces and we can only support the lives of 32 million people; the others earn their livelihoods by making cars or animated movies.

“This structure, of no food self-sufficiency and our underwear all being made in China, is at the core of our uncertainty,” he said.

Miyazaki refused to comment on the outsourcing of the Japanese animation industry to other countries, where films can often be made far more cheaply, but insisted that he wants to improve working conditions for anime artists here in Japan. Studio Ghibli has recently hired 22
young animators who will start work in April in a training studio outside of Tokyo, where life is “less stressful,” he said.

And for a man behind the three largest-grossing films in Japanese movie history, Miyazaki expressed a surprising lack of belief in his studio’s early works.

“Up until a certain time, I had no confidence that our works would be economically successful,” he said. “But I thought to myself that was the way things were, and I made no effort to change the direction in which we were going.”

Miyazaki had received artistic recognition for his works, but the box-office breakthrough came with Totoro, which he says he should never have made if he had taken into account the feelings of the cinema-going public when it was released in 1988.

After each of his latest films has been released, Miyazaki has been quoted as saying that he has had enough and was retiring. But each time he has changed his mind. This time, he’s not even thinking about it.

“I feel as if I have already retired,” he said with a broad smile. “Whenever I complete a film, I feel exhausted and that I will never be able to go through it all again.”

This time, he is enjoying the feeling of goodwill that has been fostered within his group of creators.

“I will refrain from saying that ‘I will never make a film again,’” he said. ❶