By Shaenon K. Garrity
My friend Kit, rushing around Viz with bluelines for
20th Century Boys, wants to know what Hayao Miyazaki smells like. I consider the question seriously. "We were in his
atelier," I say, "and it was all wood-paneled. So kind of a woody smell."
My friend Konstantin, getting ready to add ink wash to an illustration, tells us about a friend who cried after seeing Miyazaki's film
Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind for the first time. "He looked at me and said, ‘What will we do when he dies?'"
What happened on my last day in Japan was this. Andrew and I took the train to Mitaka, on the outskirts of Tokyo, where Kenzo, our eternally patient translator, picked us up and drove us to the Studio Ghibli Museum. After a tour of the museum and hot dogs in the staff lunchroom, where one wall is covered in signatures from visiting artists—Pete Docter, John Lasseter, Nick Park, Moebius, Steven Spielberg—we walked to the offices of the Ghibli Museum.
The Ghibli Museum office building has a roof covered in growing grass. Because Miyazaki thought that would be a good idea. It also has a big stuffed Catbus head mounted on the wall, because the Ghibli Museum goes through a lot of Catbuses.
Then we went to Studio Ghibli itself, in the Nerima/Suginami area of Tokyo, where most manga and anime companies are headquartered; we could see the Studio Gainax parking lot down the street. The area is quiet, green and mostly residential, and Studio Ghibli itself comprises two modest buildings on a tree-lined side street. Inside, animators were working shoulder to shoulder, the directors' desks alongside the rest. The digital ink and paint department scanned the pencil art and filled it with color, there was an animation camera in the basement… and that was it. Even granting that much of the busywork is done in Korea, it's amazing that these unassuming offices produce some of the greatest animated films ever made. I'd previously been to Pixar, a sprawling Northern California utopia where the animators zip around on razor scooters, live in tiny houses they design themselves, and have their own tiki bar and vintage Chuck E. Cheese band. By comparison, it was clear the Ghibli staff was there to work.
Studio Ghibli's work has a quality Disney animation had in its early days, a fascination with the challenge and joy of capturing motion. Disney called it "the illusion of life," and it does have the quality of a magic trick. But at its best, it's about making people see the real world through the ink and paint on the screen. There's a sequence in
Pinocchio where the animators can play around with a room full of cuckoo clocks and mechanical toys for about ten minutes, just exploring the way they move. You can't imagine a Disney movie today including such a sequence; it'd slow down the action, it'd lose the story thread. Yes, but aren't cuckoo clocks great?
At the Ghibli Museum we watched an animated short, "Mei and the Kittenbus," in the museum theater, which has tall windows like a train car and a big sun painted on the ceiling. The first several minutes of the film consist of a little girl walking through a yard on a windy day, unwrapping a caramel, and eating it. They are riveting. Later, Mei finds a baby Catbus and feeds it a caramel, and it is every animal you've ever seen struggling with a piece of sticky food. It's a magic trick. It's magic.
Eventually Mei gets to ride the Kittenbus to a vast nighttime confabulation of Catbuses and Totoros. I already knew there was more than one Totoro, I guess, because there are three in
My Neighbor Totoro: the big gray one, the little blue one, and the very tiny white one. But it turns out there are hundreds, maybe thousands. Crowds of Totoros riding Catbuses and Cat-Trains and, at last, an enormous Cat-Zeppelin packed to the gills with Totoros beyond imagining. A sky full of Totoros! Of course only one is Mei's Totoro, the one we all love, and Mei is deeply relieved when he shows up with his umbrella to guide her.
After the Studio Ghibli tour, we walked by Miyazaki's nursery school. He started a nursery school. Our hosts gossiped about the problems Miyazaki had with parents due to his unusual childrearing philosophy, but Kenzo had difficulty explaining in English what that philosophy was. "He wants children… to all be different," he said at last. He pointed out that the children were hammering real nails with real hammers, playing with real sand and water.
Then we went to Miyazaki's
atelier, a little private studio down the street. His car was parked outside, and if you want to picture it you can rent
The Castle Cagliostro. We opened the door and Hayao Miyazaki was standing there in his work apron, and then we all had tea.
Miyazaki talked about his nursery school, which he said was the work he was proudest of. He asked if Andrew and I had any children. We did not. "It is hard work," he said through Kenzo, "but very rewarding. But some people, they do not have the talent for growing children." He talked about the newest batch of animators at Ghibli: eighteen women and four men. "The men find they are being ignored—is all woman power." I'd known that Miyazaki made a point of encouraging women in animation, but I was surprised by his enthusiasm. He talked for fifteen minutes or so. Then an animator came in to introduce his new wife to the great director, and teatime was over.
Now I'm back in the States, and my friends all want to know what Hayao Miyazaki was like. My friends are cartoonists, writers, artists, editors. They are amazing people. Not a single one has not been touched by Miyazaki's films and comics. He is loved by top animators at Pixar. He is loved by struggling webcartoonists. There is such love in his work. It makes you see the joy of living, and the joy of making art, and that these two things are not so different. It makes you want to live and build.
Someday, yes, Miyazaki will die. And when that happens we will pick up our pencils and brushes and Wacom styluses and carry on his work. There is only one Miyazaki, just as there's only one Totoro with the umbrella. But the sky is full of Totoros. All different.
Image credits:
Photos © Shaenon K. Garrity
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2008
