Few filmmakers are as enigmatic and revered as Hayao Miyazaki, the powerhouse animator behind Studio Ghibli films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), “Spirited Away” (2001) and, most recently, “The Boy and the Heron” (2023). Equally rare is the level of access documentary filmmaker Kaku Arakawa has had to this anime icon over the past two decades.
Arakawa’s latest work, “Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron,” is his fourth documentary centered on Studio Ghibli and the man behind it, and it offers an unflinching and intimate look at Miyazaki as the now-octogenarian auteur grapples with his legacy, personal mortality and the herculean challenge of creating a masterpiece that could very well be his swan song.
First aired by national broadcaster NHK in 2023 and re-edited for its Cannes premiere last year, “Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron” is currently available to audiences outside of Japan on streaming services such as Max, Amazon Prime and Netflix.
In a candid conversation with The Japan Times at NHK’s headquarters in Shibuya Ward, Arakawa delves into his many years of documenting Miyazaki, their evolving relationship and the balance required to portray the vulnerable genius — a man as flawed and human as he is an unparalleled artist.
Reflecting on his initial encounter with Miyazaki, Arakawa explains how their relationship began in 2005 when he was filming Toshio Suzuki, Studio Ghibli’s producer, for a project about the goings-on behind the scenes of the production of “Ponyo” — a film about a goldfish who wants to be human.
“At the time, there was tension between Miyazaki and Suzuki due to creative disagreements,” Arakawa says. Suzuki was temporarily avoiding Miyazaki, but a chance encounter between Arakawa and Miyazaki sparked an enriching conversation.
Arakawa recalls how Miyazaki suddenly asked him, "What does it look like when the tide rises in the sea?" That unassuming desire to understand the world in its smallest details drew the documentarian into Miyazaki’s creative process. Though this interaction ignited their decades-long collaboration, Arakawa humbly claims that he still doesn’t know what Miyazaki initially liked about him.
Building trust with the notoriously private filmmaker, however, was far from easy. At first, Miyazaki wasn’t looking for an interviewer at all. “He said to me early on, ‘Don’t come here to interview me, but please come for a conversation,’” Arakawa explains. Over the years — albeit not always in the smoothest of ways with the frequently moody Miyazaki — their rapport grew, allowing Arakawa to capture sides of Miyazaki rarely seen by the public.
Arakawa’s filming style — naturalistic, intimate and unobtrusive — proved essential. “I often used a small camera, sometimes even just an iPhone,” Arakawa explains, adding that he wanted to minimize the distance between him and his documentary subject. This approach enabled him to record quiet, reflective moments, like Miyazaki sipping coffee after a long day at the studio.
“Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron” is, at its core, a portrait of the relationship between creativity and vulnerability. Early in the film, Miyazaki sits in his studio surrounded by sketches for “The Boy and the Heron,” only to declare, “I don’t have anything.” It’s a startling admission from an artist often regarded as a visionary, especially while sitting by a wall covered in storyboards.
However, it’s a typical admission for Miyazaki, says Arakawa, whose documentary shows how Miyazaki’s creativity is partially derived from this emotionally raw and exposed point of view.
“I feel like the true Miyazaki-san is the one who is asking me, ‘Arakawa, what should I do?’”
This is not to suggest that Arakawa isn’t still in awe of Miyazaki. On the contrary, Arakawa explicitly calls Miyazaki a “genius” repeatedly throughout the interview. But balancing these layers was one of the most challenging aspects of the documentary, says Arakawa, who was well aware that Miyazaki had already been put on an exceptionally high pedestal throughout his career.
“Suzuki-san told me, ‘Please liberate Miyazaki-san, who has been mythologized so much,’” Arakawa says, and this is what he ultimately came to do in his documentary. But at the same time, showing Miyazaki’s humanity — his doubts, his frustrations — only makes his genius more relatable.
Arakawa shows much more than that — even figuratively. When asked about the bold opening of the film where Miyazaki sits seemingly naked in a hot-spring bath (although he isn’t actually naked, but still pixelated where it matters, just in case), Arakawa says, “I guess that is the relationship that we have cultivated. I don’t know if it’s a bad or a good thing.”
For the viewer, it’s the latter. Scenes that show Miyazaki in unexpectedly private moments become both a metaphor for stripping away the layers of his public persona and a way to reveal Miyazaki’s sense of humor about himself and willingness to be vulnerable.
Mortality looms large in both Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” and Arakawa’s documentary. The loss of Isao Takahata, Miyazaki’s longtime collaborator and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, occurs during production and casts a shadow over it. But Miyazaki has always dealt with the theme of death.
“In most of his films, there’s a shadow of death, if you will,” Arakawa says. “Miyazaki also tends to almost romanticize death, which made me afraid he wanted to go to the other side.
“He would talk about the past, about how he became a filmmaker, and I’d feel this fear that he was preparing to leave. As if when he would finish telling that story of becoming a filmmaker, he would die. I even stopped some conversations, just because I didn’t want this to happen.”
But Miyazaki is still very much alive and healthy, Arakawa says. And so is Miyazaki’s long partnership with Suzuki, which is one of the documentary’s most compelling threads. Arakawa likens their bond to a “one-sided love story,” with Miyazaki often seeking Suzuki’s approval and affection. But in the film, their brotherly bond is clear to the viewer. Miyazaki can be demanding and difficult, and Suzuki balances him with pragmatism and humor — a dynamic that inspired the relationship between Mahito and the heron in “The Boy and the Heron.”
One of the most challenging aspects of editing the film was sifting through over 1,000 hours of footage. “It took a year just to watch it all,” Arakawa says. “I don’t think anyone other than NHK would have been so generous in letting me spend that much time.”
Although “The Boy and the Heron” is speculated to be Miyazaki’s final film, Arakawa isn’t ready to close the book on his collaboration with the animator. “I’m still filming him,” he says. “Miyazaki has teasingly said to me that as long as I’m intending to film him at the end of his life, I’m not going to be able to liberate myself from the idea of mortality and death.”
As for whether Arakawa plans to explore subjects other than Studio Ghibli, he remains open to the idea. “I’m interested in Toshio Suzuki’s story,” he says, while making it clear that Miyazaki is such a singular figure, there’s always more to uncover.
Arakawa also underscores how Miyazaki is still his filmmaking mentor in many ways even though they work with contrasting areas of the medium: documentary versus animation. But some things remain true in both genres, such as the beauty of not making things too clear.
“Miyazaki says that understanding something makes it obsolete,” Arakawa says. “If you fully understand a piece of cinema, that means it’s consumed in that moment and obsolete. He thinks that if you’re going to make films, then make something that’s on the verge of being understood. So sometimes when I show people my footage, not everyone understands it.”
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