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Text File | 1998-09-05 | 26KB | 429 lines

Many thanks to Brian Stacy San for editing!

Talk: Miyazaki Hayao, 'Animation Makari Toru (Here Comes Animation)'
(At Nagoya Cinema Festival '88)

Miyazaki-San gave this talk on May 22, 1988, at the Nagoya City Imaike
Hall, after the showing of 'Laputa', 'Panda Kopanda', and 'Panda
Kopanda: Rainy Circus'.

The transcript of the talk was originally published in 'Anipeke', a
fanzine published by the Tokai Animation Circle.

From Kinema Jyunpo Special Issue: 'Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao to
Studio Ghibli no Animation tachi'.  1995, No. 1166, July 16th.
Copyright: Kinema Jyunpo Sha, 1995.

Translated without permission for *personal entertainment purposes
only*. The translator is solely responsible for any mistranslation or
misunderstanding due to it.

(  ) is added by the translator to supplement the words to make things
easier to understand.

This is *not*, by any means, an accurate word for word translation.  The
translator simply does not have the capability, the patience, or the
dictionary for that (excuses, excuses ^^;;).

_______________________________________________________________________

'Panda Kopanda' was made, well, how many years ago was it, when
Japanese TV animation was at its lowest.  If you look at the history of
TV animation, there are many such 'lowest' times.  It's still at a low
even now -laughs-.
I thought we had used many more pieces (cels) than TV animation then,
but I realized that we were still stringent.  Watching it now, I feel
that we should've moved it more, and it's a bit painful (to watch).
But I made it with Paku-San (Takahata-San), and (we) went to a movie
theater, well, this was really an unpopular theater and there were very
few children, but those children were really enjoying it.  I took my
kids with me, and they were really concentrating while watching it.  It
was commonly said that children would run around if they got bored.  It
gave me confidence that I could make something (which would entertain
children), and this is an important work for me in terms of inducing me
to do such works as 'Heidi' later.   Until then, I had been thinking
that I wanted to make (anime) for myself, but I became a parent, and
this was the first anime that I really wanted to make for children.
We talked about what we would do if we got to make a third or fourth
episode, should we do this or that, but we only got to the second one
('Panda Kopanda: Rainy Circus').  We couldn't make more than that, so
when I made 'Totoro', well, it wasn't like I wanted to recreate it, but
I wanted to make a movie (for children) properly.


'The pig who offers a tissue flower'

It's really stupid, but I once planed a movie with a pig in a tank -
laughs-.
There is a foolish pig who made a tank as big as this hall.  He was a
military officer, but something bothered him, and he says 'I quit!'.
The pig hasn't been married yet, but he has many nephew pigs in the
military: about thirty of them in total.  So, the uncle and the thirty
nephews get on the tank they made, and whatever the cause for the
rebellion is, they make a stupid pledge that they would march straight
across the country and never make a turn -laughs-, and start advancing
toward the imperial capital.
On the way, when they are passing a town, they find a lovely girl, so
they kidnap her as 'the first war trophy'.  The tank even has a room,
which can be elevated to scout from the higher point, then can be
brought back into the tank.  The pig locks her up in this room, and
tries to win her over.  With a flower made from tissue paper or
something.  The girl has a boyfriend, and he comes chasing after her,
riding a motorcycle.  He is no match for the tank, but in the end, the
tank gets destroyed because of the boy and the girl.  At first, it was
that kind of a movie.
As I kept fiddling with the story, the boy began to disappear, and it
ended up with a happy ending in which the pig's love won the girl over
-laughs-.
At first, the girl was supposed to be an ordinary girl who was working
at a station restaurant, but she began to change as well, and she
became a bar singer like Marilyn Monroe in 'River of No Return', in
which she was really lovely, only that this girl is a bit younger and
purer.

Well, what do you know, this project got accepted as an original video
animation.  But I couldn't do it, since I was about to make 'Laputa' at
that time -laughs-.
So, I told a certain young person, 'Direct this', and he said yes, but
as we proceeded, we found ourselves totally disagreeing with each
other. The pig is a kind of guy who says 'I love you' to the girl whom
he kidnapped as 'the first war trophy', offering her a tissue flower,
and when the girl says 'No, I already have someone I love' and rejects
him, he says 'That's fine, I'll wait forever till you change your
heart', but the young director said he couldn't believe that such a man
existed.  He said 'I have no doubt that he is going to have this girl
(Mono ni Suru)'. I insisted 'No, if he did so, a life wouldn't be
interesting at all. It's no use to make a story where a guy has a girl
the minute he kidnaps her.' 'Instead, there could be a pig who does
kidnap a girl, but still considers (her) heart very important.  That's
why people feel that it's a movie worth paying money.'  But the young
director said, 'I can't understand such a villain', and quit.
Because he quit, this project got scrapped -laughs-.  Till today, it
hasn't resurfaced yet.

I've made several movies, and I'm often told, 'There is no true villain
in your movies'.  Somehow, they (the villains) turn good, or become
good people while they are working hard.  These days, for example, I
can predict that this villain will definitely become a good person
before I finish three episodes of a TV series.

[Side Note: The last TV series he directed was 'Sherlock Hound', in
1982.   Sure enough, the villain, Professor Moriarty became a good guy
in the fifth episode: 'The Abduction of Mrs. Hudson' -Ryo.]

I mean, it's the way I wish things to be.  Certainly, we don't know if
a pig who kidnaps a girl will try to win her over stoically or
platonically.  But if there are billions of pigs, there could be one
pig like that.  The rest of them may be the violent ones who will have
the girl.  So, whether you think that since this is the pigs' truth,
you should make the pig have the girl to make a true pig movie, or you
think that if there is such a pig even though he is just one in a
billion, you want to make a movie about such a pig, that's the point
where the disagreement occurs.
I don't want to have such a true villain, who doesn't think of people
as humans, who has completely lost sympathy towards other people, who
thinks that since he already had 100 girls, it doesn't matter if he has
101 or 110 girls.  I don't feel like making a movie to depict such a
villain.  Then, many people say, 'Your villains are too good' or 'They
are too nice'.  They say 'Humans are not like that.' Especially, girls
say, 'Women are not like that.'
-laughs-
For some reason, men don't say 'Men are not like that'.  They think
that there may be such a man, but women say with confidence, 'This is
not a (real) woman'.  I'm not sure (why).
(I've been told that) 'You aren't developing characters deep enough' or
'You are neglecting evils and stupidities inside a human, and depicting
only affirmative or good things (in him/her)'.  For example, that's
totally true with this 'Totoro' (this talk was given around the time
Totoro was released in Japan).  I intentionally did so.  It was like 'I
wish there were such people, I wish there were such neighbors'.  Well,
I can make a movie in which you moved only to find a nasty old lady
living next door, and she always complains such as 'Don't touch my
vegetable field' -laughs-.  And two poor sisters cry and cry... well,
this is getting more like a movie Paku-San makes -laughs-.
It is so.  It is certainly so, but I don't feel like making such a
thing. There are other people who make those kinds of movies, so I
think those are their movies to make.  For myself, even if I were told
'there is no such woman', I think I have no choice but to keep going
with 'I wish there were such a person'.

[Side Note: Miyazaki-San was somewhat criticized for making Clarisse in
'Cagliostro' such a perfect princess.  Some said 'There is no such
girl' (and I agree ;).  It is said that this motivated Miyazaki-San to
change his heroines into more realistic and lively ones, with some
flaws which they struggle to overcome. -Ryo]


'The memory of the war I experienced at age four'

Actually, what I want to talk about today is how my childhood
experiences may have influenced what I do.  I was only able to talk
about this story calmly after I got close to fifty, but until recently,
I didn't want to talk about it at all, since it involves my father and
mother.

The home I grew up in did very well during the war.  Because our family
business, of which my uncle was the president and my father was the
plant manager, was a part of the munitions industry.  Though it was at
the periphery.  It was making and assembling wingtips and wind shields
for war planes in the rural part of Tochigi prefecture, where we
evacuated to, it had more than one thousand employees during the war.
Speaking of war, we hear a lot of stories about people getting
conscripted and forced to kill people or get killed, or that people
suffered a great deal, but in short, it's a state in which a society
conducts its activities very vigorously.  So, although there are in a
sense many noble things, such as self-sacrifice - though they would be
considered wrong in the end-, many ugly things happen.  Many things
happen, like doing terrible things to make money, deceiving people, or
selling defective products.
More precisely, -I heard this from my father- that the wingtips of the
Kamikaze planes, well, I guess it's not as serious as in the case of
engines, but, those wings made by unskilled part-time girls didn't fit
the standard.  They were unfit, but they were still accepted if you
bribed the inspecting military officers.  So, the planes those Kamikaze
pilots flew (had many defects) such as no holes for machine guns.  It's
a true story. The engines were in the worst condition when they were
brand new, and the troops tinkered with them to make them usable.  They
were really in bad shape, such as engines leaking oil.  For example, a
1000 hp engine had only 500 hp from the beginning.  No matter how you
tinkered with it, it wouldn't give you 1000 hp.  Well, in such a
situation, we lost the war.
But what happened when people engaged in this munitions industry was
that, first, none of my relatives on my father's side went to war.  By
saying that they were needed to keep the munitions industry operating,
they weren't even conscripted.  Further, my father owned an automobile
during the war.  Not a charcoal car, but a gasoline car.  Surely, my
mother said that she had a hard time making sure her sons had enough to
eat, but it was nothing compared to the hardships other people had to
go through.  In short, in my family's history, we were most prosperous
during the war, though we certainly suffered some degree because of the
war such as the air raids or the evacuation.  And we did manage to eat
during the confusion of the postwar period.
In July 1945, when I was four and a half years old, Utsunomiya, the
city I lived in got bombed.  So, well, it's no use going into details.
Since this is the memory of a four year old, I think I created a large
part of the story while I was recalling it over and over.
When I woke up in my Futon, I mean, I was awakened because of the air
raid, it was midnight, but the sky was dyed in red, no, pink, like an
evening glow.  Even the inside of the house was pink.  So, since it was
a big house, we went into the shelter made in the corner of the garden,
but we were told that it was dangerous even there.  I have three
brothers, but my youngest brother hadn't been born yet at that time, my
younger brother was a baby, I was four, and my older brother was six
years old.
My mother carried my younger brother on her back and my father held my
hand.  And my other uncle, I think he was also working for the
munitions plant, he held my older brother's hand, and we evacuated to
under the railroad bridge of Tobu Railway.  It was under the bridge,
outskirts of the town, and there were lots of greens, so we thought
bombs wouldn't be dropped there.  Actually, it was cloudy, and the
firebombs, called oil and fat incendiary bombs which contained oil in
them, were raining from the sky and the town was already on fire.
A night fire is usually scary, but it was so bright, like during the
day, I wasn't so scared when we were evacuating on the railroad. It
wasn't that scary for a four year old child.
Then, we thought being there might still be dangerous.  That day, my
uncle brought the company truck to the house.  It was a very small
Datsun truck, smaller than today's light car.  It was a troublesome
truck since the engine was hard to start, but my uncle went back home
through the town in the fire to get that truck.  He went back and found
that the fire was coming right up next to the truck, but the truck
wasn't burned yet, and when he tried to start the engine, it
immediately started since it was warmed well by the fire.  Well, (it
was a kind of truck) you have to crank (the engine) up by hand.  And he
came back through the fire, and we decided to evacuate to outside of
the town riding on this car.  My mother holding my brother sat in the
passenger's seat, my uncle was in the driver's seat, and it was full
since it was such a small car. And my father, my older brother, and I
sat on the loading platform, covered by a Futon, since we had to run
through the fire, and anyway, we started going.
Then, there were several people taking shelter under the railroad
bridge, and I don't remember clearly, but I surely heard a woman's
voice saying, 'Please give us a ride'.  I don't know whether I saw her
myself, or I thought I saw her, since I heard my parents talking about
her later, but anyway, a woman holding a girl, who was one of our
neighbors, came running towards us, saying, 'please give us a ride'.
But the truck just took off.  And her voice saying 'please give us a
ride' gradually died away in the distance...well, that was made up in
my head like a drama.
Anyway, I kept the Futon over my head until I was told that it was OK
and I got off (the truck) in the middle of a field outside the town.
The night was nearly ended, but only the sky over Utsunomiya (was
bright), like the evening was just born, like the dome-shaped fort in
'Laputa' on fire.  I remember that I was watching it, thinking 'Ah,
there is Utsunomiya'.

Fortunately, later I heard that both she and her daughter survived, and
I think that's good, but it was possible that they wouldn't have
survived. And the fact that I grew up comfortably under parents who
were making money in the munitions industry when others were suffering
during the war, and the fact that we ran away riding a rare gasoline
truck while others were dying, deserting even those who were asking us
to take them with us, those facts remained as a very strong memory even
for a four years old child.  That was very difficult to bear, when you
think about what people say about living right or being considerate
toward others.  And as a small child, you want to believe that your
parents are good people, the best in the world.  So, I suppressed this
memory inside of me for a long time.
So I forgot about it, and I was forced to deal with this memory once
again when I became an adolescent.

[Side Note: Japan has to depend on imported oil.  During the war, it
was increasingly difficult to import oil, and that precious oil was
used for the military.  Therefore, it was really a privilege for a
private citizen to own a gasoline car -Ryo]

In my time, because of economic reasons, there were still many people,
even in Tokyo, who couldn't go to high school, who had to go to work,
who couldn't go on school trips, or who had to miss classes for a long
time.  There were several students like those in every class.  And when
I became interested in social issues, and, for example, as I compared
myself with such kids, or as I became worried about such kids, I
realized that there was a terrible fraud at the base of what I was, at
the base of my life from the day I was born.  But it was scary to
confront it, so I pretended to be a sensible, gentle, good boy until I
graduated from high school.  I studied hard, too.
But I couldn't stand it anymore.  I mean, if I had continued, I would
have had to keep lying for the rest of my life.  So, when I was
eighteen, after I entered university, I was forced to deal with it: to
think about the issue, what I thought about it, and why I was there
then.
It was really painful.  Of course I had a fight with my parents.  But
after all, I couldn't bring myself to ask them why they didn't give her
a ride.  Because I'm not sure about myself if (it happened) now. If I
were in my father's or my uncle's shoes now, I'm not sure if I would
stop the car.  In other words, if most of the billion pigs are the pigs
who would have the girl, I think I would belong to that side.

If there had been a kid who could say 'Please let her ride', I think
maybe a mother and a father would have stopped the car at that moment.
I mean, if I'm a parent and my kid says so, I think I would do so.
There were many reasons that you couldn't do that.  If you had stopped
(the car), more people might have come and created more confusion.  I
understand that well, but I still wish I could've said so then.  Or I
wish my older brother could've said so.  Of course, it would have been
better if my parents had stopped (the car).
Actually, this story about the truck has very little to do with the
essence of the war.  Even if I satisfy my conscience by doing so, how
about the issue of the munitions industry?  Or, comparing the issue of
some being burnt by the air raid and some not and the issue of, for
example, Japan as a nation doing many horrible things such as massacres
in China, the Philippines, or other countries in South East Asia, I
have to conclude that Japanese as a whole were perpetrators, so the
problem isn't that simple.  But after all those years, I realized that
I wanted to make an animation with a kid who can say 'please stop the
car' in such a situation, not (giving up since) humans can't say so
after all.
So, offering a girl a tissue flower and saying 'please accept my love'
might sound unrealistic.  A four year old kid asking his parents,
'Please stop the car' might be unrealistic.  But if there is a kid who
can say so, and if we can feel 'Oh, it's OK to say so in such a
situation', I think that would be better.  At least, I see myself as a
person who can't make a movie in any other way.  I saw many movies
which depicted the dark side or stupidity of humans and made the
audience feel that they were the ones who were accused and then go home
depressed, and I think there is a significance to such movies, and we
have to watch such movies from time to time, but I want to make
something like, 'I wish things are like this'.  It was so in 'Panda
Kopanda'.  It was so in 'Totoro'.  Well, most (of my movies) were like
that.  I think I have no choice but to keep making such movies.


'A person who makes and a person who eats'

I had one more experience.
Since it was such a household, we had a maid.  Well, we should call
them 'helpers' now, instead of 'maids'.  I guess it was when I was
around six, since the war had been over, that I saw the Ohitsu (a
wooden container you put cooked rice in) in the kitchen and said, 'Oh,
that's the Ohitsu we eat rice from'.  Then, the girl said angrily, 'In
my home, there was nothing we could put in such a thing'.  I think she
was one of those who experienced the severe food shortage while growing
up, and her words still remain inside of me very vividly.
I have been very sensitive towards unfairness since the time I was a
kid. I think that's because I was a second son.  My first memory was
that my older brother took my egg, and I cried, thinking there was
nothing more horrible than that in this world. -laughs-
I thought life was so unfair.  I remember feeling so then.  I was three
years old, so my childhood memory wasn't a good one from the start, but
I was a kid who was really sensitive towards unfairness.

There is a Russian Proletarian children's story called 'Whose bread is
it'.
The characters are a little red cock, a dog, a cat, and a pig. The cock
has wheat seed, and says, 'Let's sow it', but the other three are
playing cards or something, and say 'No, we don't want to'.  So the
cock sows it by himself.  Then the wheat grows, and when the cock
proposes 'Let's pull the weeds', the dog, the cat, and the pig say
'No'.  When the cock asks them, 'Help me harvest', the three say 'No'.
So the cock does it by himself.  He asks, 'Help me grind the wheat',
and the three say 'No'.  So he grinds it by himself.  And then he makes
bread, and when he is about to eat it, the three say 'Let us eat it'.
The cock says, 'This is my bread.  I won't give it to you'.  I remember
that I was very much absorbed in reading that story.

For me, that is another important motif.  Not only about being fair,
but also about who makes it and who eats it.  It can be a relationship
between production and possession, or it can be a relationship between
labor and capital.
I mean, even 'Mobile Suit Gundam' is made by someone.  When you create
a world in a manga movie (i.e., animation), no matter how imaginary it
is, unless someone makes it, no one can eat it.  We think that humans
work in the fields, farmers work in the fields and make (crops), but if
you think deeper, the plants in the field are making (crops) with the
power of the sun and photosynthesis.  So, if you ask who is making it
(possible) to live on this earth, actually, plants are. I mean,
including fossil fuel, everything was made by the sun, the sun and
plants on the earth.  The earth doesn't have more production power than
that.  If it has, that would be nuclear power or nuclear fusion, but I
think everyone knows what kinds of consequences such power would and
did bring.  In short, you can use it because someone is making it.  It
is so with electricity.  It is so with manga movies.  I think that we
shouldn't create a world in a manga movie without thinking about such
things.
Even 'Nausicaa', or even 'Laputa', someone is making it.  Someone is
making the bread.  It's the same with 'Totoro'.  Someone is making it.
Sci-fi, detective stories, anything.  It's the same with 'Lupin III'.
If Lupin thinks being a thief is the coolest job, he is the lowest man.
He can be a thief because there are honest people.  Because there are
honest people and there are those who exploit these honest people, he
can steal (from the bad guys).  I think he is that kind of guy.  Even
if it's not the movie in which you tell who is making and who is eating
out loud, I think we have to realize that there is such a relationship.

There is a movie called 'Hakujya Den (The Legend of White Snake)' -I
was once captivated by it, and it was one of the reasons why I decided
to become involved in animation-, and in it, although the white snake
is a Mononoke, she falls in love with a human.  When the Dragon King
says 'What were you thinking falling in love with a human?', she
answers, 'A Human has a soul, a very precious thing we don't have'.
When I watched it, I thought that's not true.  Because, all the faces
of other people in the movie were drawn indifferently.  Only the faces
of the handsome hero, Shu-sen and the heroine, Pai-nyan were drawn in
an affirmative way, but others had almost indifferent faces.  They were
either coolies who pulled ships and got drunk on cheap drinks, or
(people) lying wearing rags.  At best, they were some kids who were
walking the road.  I wondered why (she thought that) humans were
better, where is the soul.  In short, they didn't draw as they spoke.
So, when we are making a movie, I often tell the staff members not to
draw the incidental characters indifferently.  Especially in 'Lupin
III'. Well, the faces of the policemen don't matter so much, but if you
draw the faces of other town people indifferently, and make the film,
thinking Lupin is cool, this will be the worst kind of movie. Rather,
we have to draw the faces of those 'others' as well as we can, even if
they are characterless, and we have to recognize that because of them,
fools like Lupin can go on, and standing on it, (we can make a story in
which) he steals a girl's heart.  I tell them so.  Though, it's
difficult to achieve.

As the pig who offers a tissue flower to a girl and never uses violence
even if he confines her in a room, I think I should never forget about
these two things, and I have to make a movie standing on them.
There might be many contradictions in it, but I can't change it
anymore, so I've decided I just have to keep going with it, no matter
what people might say.

The end.

Ryo