Portal:Tokyo/Selected biography/April

Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿) is the prominent director of many popular animated feature films. He is also the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company.

He remained largely unknown to the West, outside of animation communities, until Miramax released his 1997 Princess Mononoke. By that time, his films had already enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan and East Asia. For instance, Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan. Currently his later film, Spirited Away, has that distinction as well as being the first anime film to win an Academy Award.

Miyazaki's films often incorporate common themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women; the villains, when present, are often morally ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.

Miyazaki's films have generally been financially successful, and this success has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney. However, Miyazaki does not see himself as a person building an animation empire, but as an animator fortunate enough to have been able to make films with complete creative control. In 2006, Time Magazine voted Miyazaki one of the most influential Asians of the past 60 years.