Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki: Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.

Hayao Miyazaki: Well, yes. I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy.

Hayao Miyazaki: I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It's too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily.

Discussing the future of hand-drawn animation Hayao Miyazaki: I'm actually not that worried. I wouldn't give up on it completely. Once in a while there are strange, rich people who like to invest in odd things. You're going to have people in the corners of garages making cartoons to please themselves. And I'm more interested in those people than I am in big business.

Hayao Miyazaki: When I think about the way the computer has taken over and eliminated a certain experience of life, that makes me sad. When we were animating fire some staff said they had never seen wood burning. I said, 'Go watch!' It has disappeared from their daily lives. Japanese baths used to be made by burning firewood. Now you press a button. I don't think you can become an animator if you don't have any experience.

Hayao Miyazaki: Do everything by hand, even when using the computer.

Hayao Miyazaki: When you watch the subtitled version you are probably missing just as many things. There is a layer and a nuance you're not going to get. Film crosses so many borders these days. Of course it is going to be distorted.

Hayao Miyazaki: If [hand-drawn animation] is a dying craft we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era.

(Discussing CGI animation) Hayao Miyazaki: I've told the people on my CGI staff not to be accurate, not to be true. We're making a mystery here, so make it mysterious.

Hayao Miyazaki: When I talk about traditions, I'm not talking about temples, which we got from China anyway. There is an indigenous Japan, and elements of that are what I'm trying to capture in my work.

Hayao Miyazaki: The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.

Hayao Miyazaki: I'm not going to make movies that tell children "You should despair and run away."

Hayao Miyazaki: I am an animator. I feel like I'm the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I'm rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work.

Hayao Miyazaki: Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.

Hayao Miyazaki: I wanted to show that people actually have these things in them that can be called on when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. That is how I wish my young friends to be, and I think that is also how they, themselves, hope to be.

Hayao Miyazaki: Prizes do not mean anything to me...it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside.

Hayao Miyazaki:I was almost on the brink of becoming autistic while working on the Nausicaa manga.

During Japan's economic boom in the 80's and 90's, Miyazaki was often heard to criticise other animators for their animations that featured demons, robots, sex, and boys with super armour, super guns, and super libidos. Hayao Miyazaki: Thirty-five animation shows a week on television, the service sector booming...this is a situation none have encountered before. Historically, it's like the ancient city of Rome - political corruption, murder for entertainment value. The Roman citizens of those days demanded not only their bread, but their circuses.