Isao Takahata 14
Books: How Geniuses Think
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 […]
Takahata: The Exhibition
By Andrew Osmond. The magnificent exhibition “Takahata Isao: A Legend in Japanese Animation” (the title puts Takahata’s family name first, Japanese style) runs at Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art until 6th October. Struggling to take in Takahata’s career of over 50 years, I was reminded of an immodest quip made by Orson Welles in […]
Books: Totoro for Two
By Motoko Tamamuro. For months after the release of Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Hirokatsu Kihara waits for news of the next production for Studio Ghibli. The studio suddenly gets lively when the announcement comes that the next film will be Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata. However, nobody says anything to […]
Books: Living Colour
By Motoko Tamamuro. Yasuko Shibaguchi’s book, The Colour Artisan of Animation, is one of the (currently) untranslated gems of anime history, an account of the career of Michiyo Yasuda (1939-2016), described by Hayao Miyazaki as “three times sharper and more particular than me,” and a mainstay of Studio Ghibli. This biography throws light on the […]
Books: The Ghibli No-One Talks About
By Motoko Tamamuro. I think we can see why this one wasn’t translated into English. From the moment you open Dare mo Kataranakatta Ghibli wo Kataro (Let’s Talk About the Ghibli That No One Talks About) by Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii, you are assaulted by a machine-gun salvo of incendiary language. Hayao […]