A visit to the Ghibli Museum

Among the rare red pines of the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka stands a most peculiar structure. Now a few years old and accessible only through limited ticketing bought in advance, the Ghibli Museum is a multicoloured magic mushroom of a building dedicated to the work of Japan’s greatest animator Miyazaki Hayao.

If it were really true – as some commentators have claimed – that Miyazaki is Japan’s Walt Disney, then this would be Miyazakiland, crammed with such product lines as mugs, keyrings and PC games. But the Ghibli Museum is more of a shrine (in a country of shrines) to the unfettered imagination and wide-open spaces of childhood than an altar to raw product and added value. Just why has Miyazaki – who says he’ll make just three more features before his retirement – avoided lucrative merchandising deals and turned down offers from South Korea and other countries to build other Ghibli museums?

A few miles away from Inokashira Park – on whose fringes the museum was built, with the local mayor on the board – lies the answer. Despite its fame, Studio Ghibli hides itself well and rarely receives visitors. Like its guiding hand, it’s as reclusive as a woodland spirit, its nondescript two-storey facade in a nondescript suburban street giving little indication of what lies inside. A few hundred yards away, where Miyazaki has his own little house and offices set apart from the main production centre, studio president Suzuki Toshio is organising a press conference as a passing typhoon dumps inches of rain and studio flunkies hand out white umbrellas.

Miyazaki Hayao is pleased by the rain. The local river had been low on water, and the wellbeing of the natural world is a growing preoccupation that has replaced the active socialism of his youth. He sits with the air of an owl who has just woken from a deep sleep, blinking at the international press with amused indifference. He doesn’t do personal interviews and has no stomach for promotional work. When Howl’s Moving Castle received its world premiere at Venice last year he declined to attend (though the self-confessed Italophile has been tempted to Venice this year to pick up a special award). He also boycotted the Oscars ceremony in 2003 where Spirited Away triumphed in its category – but that’s another story.

Born in 1941, the son of the man who designed the bullets for the lightweight World War ll Zero fighter plane, Miyazaki has been an animator and card-carrying Marxist for most of his life (armaments manufacturers are among his cinematic targets). Fellow animator Oshii Mamoru has half-jokingly referred to Studio Ghibli as “ ‘the Kremlin”, adding, “I think for them making a movie is still a kind of extension of the union movement.” By 1964, one year into his first animation job at Tokyo’s Toei studios, Miyazaki is said to have organised a strike and he subsequently became chief secretary to the union. In 1984, during the UK miners’ strike, he was found lurking in the Rhonda Valley; he used what he witnessed as material for 1986’s Castle in the Sky. “I really admired the way the miners’ union fought to the very end for their jobs and communities,” he has said.

But it seems Miyazaki has learned not to talk about politics any more, and his Tokyo press conference was a succession of polite observations designed not to rock the boat. Asked where the action of Howl’s Moving Castle takes place, he described a notional belle epoque in an indistinguishable European country. “I believe in the original novel the place is probably Wales,” he added, “but I didn’t want to set the movie there. It’s a great place to depict coal mines!” Amid the press laughter there seemed little realisation that these Welsh coal mines had once been a touchstone issue that preoccupied him greatly.

When asked if his interest in politics had grown or lessened over the years since its most telling expression in 1997’s Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki was characteristically evasive, as if briefed not to mention, for instance, that he had avoided the Oscars because he disapproved strongly of the US attack on Iraq. “It has changed in that I take the shared environment more seriously… But just because I make films about the environment it doesn’t mean I’m contributing something to the world. Rather, I think we should try to do something in our everyday lives to try to solve that problem.”

It seems entirely possible that Miyazaki avoids promotional activities precisely because he can’t ‘mention the war’ or broadcast his interest in socialism and green politics. Up to now it’s been assumed that he’s a recluse because he’s shy and old-fashioned, believing his art should speak for itself. He laments the increasing mechanisation of the animation process (“I feel that a very important chunk of my work [has been] lost”) and famously sent Harvey Weinstein a samurai sword with a note saying “no cuts!” when that larger-than-life American first took possession of a print of Princess Mononoke. Here is a man who believes in the integrity of his art. But is there more to it than that?

The first indication that the situation may not be all it seems came when Miyazaki’s press conference ended and charismatic studio boss Suzuki Toshio took over. Suzuki is comfortable with the press – indeed seemed to relish the encounter.

“First I want to correct a misunderstanding,” he laughed. “Mr Miyazaki loves character merchandising. He loves it so much he would often make suggestions as to what we make. The trouble is, his suggestions don’t sell!” Later, as we were guided round the studios themselves (two floors with dozens of people painting and drawing and a solitary CGI boffin relegated to a comer), one of Miyazaki’s closest aides let slip that many of the toys on sale in Tokyo could not be exported because they would fail EU and US safety standards. Would there even be a market for them outside Japan? Disney was largely blamed for never distributing Princess Mononoke theatrically and for failing to promote Spirited Away correctly, but the truth is that North America has proved a hard market for Miyazaki’s often ambiguous films to crack, with their lack of obvious Christian ethics and redemption arcs.

It’s reasonably clear that while Miyazaki, a sprightly 64-year-old, is still working, it’s likely that the Ghibli Museum’s parent company will resist the temptation to boost its income by further exploitation of the brand. The museum, it turns out, is not just a money-making side venture but an integral part of the way Miyazaki and his studio function. In the sizeable period of time since he finished work on Howl’s Moving Castle and his new feature to be announced in December (not an adaptation of the Chinese novel reported on the web, according to Suzuki) Miyazaki has been busy making short films that are only ever shown in the Saturn Theatre in the museum basement. He’s also been rejigging some of the exhibits, making new drawings and rearrangements of permanent exhibitions like A Boy’s Room, an idealised version of his own room as a child where he first dreamed up his ideas.

“Running the Ghibli Museum is hard work,” says Suzuki. “We don’t want more museums overseas.” When I pointed out that apart from a ten-centimetre model hidden behind a door, there are no images of himself in the museum, Miyazaki replied: “Look at the leader of North Korea. He has a lot of his own portraits around.”

It seems that Miyazaki is not just the polar opposite of the looming, noxious Walt Disney in terms of politics, but is also a craftsman who abhors the cult of personality. The Ghibli Museum, it could be argued, is not even about business – it’s about controlling the content of the films and giving Miyazaki a limited exposure to his audience that he doesn’t find alarming. With its rooftop garden and eco-friendly design, it’s also a whistle-stop tour of many of the things the director finds important.

My favourite moment of the press conference was when Miyazaki was asked what kind of creature he would be if he were turned into an animal, as happens to so many of his characters. Perhaps he would be a dragon or a tree-spirit or a demon pig? Not a bit of it. “A pu bug,” he said, then his translator repeated the curious words before a consensus of whispering came up with ‘woodlouse’. Why a woodlouse? “It’s non-aggressive, totally unselfish and just so pure. It’s just busy living.” It’s hard to think of his friend John Lasseter of Pixar wanting to be a woodlouse.