By Alex Dudok de Wit.

The filmographies of Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, the two geniuses of this book’s title, stand as monuments to their creativity. But how do we weigh the achievement of Toshio Suzuki, the third man at the head of Studio Ghibli? Suzuki’s influence on Ghibli is hard to summarise because it is all-pervasive, at once macro and micro: he has overseen the studio’s operational side, devised its marketing campaigns, produced most of its films, provided calligraphy for their posters, and even helped Miyazaki shade and texture his manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Lately, as Ghibli slips into what may be its autumn years, Suzuki has devoted much of his copious energy to the orchestration of its legacy. A theme park here, a global streaming deal there. Less visible, at least outside Japan, has been the publication of various memoirs and anecdotal accounts of his forty-odd years in the company of Miyazaki and Takahata. Only one of these has come out in English to date (as Mixing Work with Pleasure: My Life at Studio Ghibli, a somewhat digressive set of portraits of the studio’s main players). Here’s another that should.

How Geniuses Think: Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki is structured as a chronological walk through Ghibli’s catalogue, each chapter offering a production history of one film, presented against the backdrop of the studio’s circumstances at that time. These texts originally appeared in Ghibli’s marvellous “textbooks”, anthologies of critical commentaries and staff reminiscences about individual features. It makes sense to package them together: How Geniuses Think effectively functions as a linear history of the studio, or at least Suzuki’s version of it. In detail and with remarkably little repetition, it tracks the evolution of Ghibli’s practices, of its directors’ careers, and – most vividly – of Suzuki’s own talents. Continue Reading