Hayao Miyazaki - 'The Auteur of Anime'

Margaret Talbot obtained an interview with the notoriously press-averse master when she simply showed up at the Ghibli Museum, his Tokyo compound, and waited.

The resulting piece, published in the January 10 issue of the New Yorker, is worth a trip to the library to read.

The reason I say that is because the New Yorker, sensing demand for this article, simply chose not to put it up online.

They do offer an interview with Talbot, the piece's author.

As if that is somehow gonna substitute.

So short-sighted is the New Yorker, and all who think they must "protect" their intellectual capital: they should have, instead, rushed to put it up online and announced it in big, bold type.

Well, they'll figure it out eventually.

Trouble is, they may not have a magazine left when they do.

But hey, that's not our problem, is it?

From the article:

He complained, "everything is so thin and shallow and fake."

Only half in jest, he said that he was hoping for the day when "developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer, and wild grasses take over."

Miyazaki films are as popular in Japan as Disney films are in America. "Spirited Away" is Japan's highest-grossing movie ever.

Miyazaki-inspired merchandise is nearly as ubiquitous in Japan as Disney stuff is here.

Miyazaki is a master at conveying emotions as a child would experience them; obliquely, often physically, with a thread of magical thinking that promotes resilience.

"I don't have much patience for calculating and intellectualizing anymore," he said. "It has to do with the times. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what's going to happen. So my conclusion is, don't try to be too smart and wise. Why does anybody feel the way they do? Why is somebody depressed? Or angry? Even if you have a therapist, you're never going to figure it out. You're not going to solve it. Besides, every trauma is an important part of you."

"I'm hoping I'll live another thirty years [he's 63]. I want to see the sea rise over Tokyo and the NTV tower become an island. I'd like to see Manhattan underwater. I'd like to see when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises, because nobody's buying them. I'm excited about that. Money and desire—all that is going to collapse, and wild green grasses are going to take over."

He said he'd visited the office tower of NTV, a Japanese television network, the day before: "I climbed two hundred and six meters up, to where the red lights are to warn the planes. You could see the whole city. And I thought, This place is haunted, doomed. All those buildings. All those cubicles."

Here's a 2001 interview with Miyazaki.