Do we like Hayao Miyazaki?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A decades-long anti-war, pro-children, pro-nature record with real giving, held back only by second-hand tales of a tough workplace.
Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli, the home of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron, which won him a second Oscar in 2024. He skipped the ceremony, as he reportedly did for earlier wins. The record we could open on his early life is thin, so this card leans on what he has said and done in public.
His real stoush has always been politics. His 2013 film The Wind Rises, about the designer of the Zero fighter, was called both unpatriotic and pro-militaristic. In 2013 he also wrote an essay calling a push to amend Japan's constitution outrageous, and told people who don't think enough to leave it alone.
The harm check comes up clean. In 2015 he joined protests against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's security changes, said Japan couldn't stop China through military strength, and drew online accusations of being a traitor. He also heads a fund to block a new US base on Okinawa. We found no statements from him on LGBTQ+ people either way, and that gap is worth knowing about.
At the 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia's equivalent of a Nobel, his speech was read out in Manila in his absence. It said the Japanese did terrible things in the war and must not forget it. That's a hard thing to say in a country where the wartime record is still fought over.
On the nice test, there's one asterisk. Veteran animator Shinsaku Kozuma has claimed in an interview that Miyazaki seated Ghibli staff by blood type and fined latecomers. Neither Miyazaki nor the studio responded in the report, and it comes from one person's recollection. It paints a strict boss rather than a villain.
The good stuff is real. In 2015 he gave 300 million yen to the town of Kumejima in Okinawa to build a children's centre in a forest park. He told the Weinstein story with relish: when the producer pushed for cuts to Princess Mononoke, Ghibli's producer mailed him a samurai sword with a note saying no cuts, and the cuts were dropped.