Hayao Miyazaki explains why he came back from retirement to do one more movie

We owe Hayao Miyazaki jewels like ' Spirited Away ', ' Howl's Moving Castle ' or ' My Neighbor Totoro ', classics from Studio Ghibli. Now, even though he was retired, he has returned to work. In an interview for the New York Times, he has spoken about his new film, although without going into many details. We only know that it will be based on Genzaburo Yoshino's 1937 novel How Do You Live?

Miyazaki is one of the founders of the animation studio Ghibli. As he explains in the interview, his hallmark has always been the deepening of human contradictions and the manual elaboration of a large part of his work: "I believe that an animator's tool is his pencil. " It points out the quality of Japanese pencils, whose graphite has a great delicacy.

A couple of years ago there was already speculation about 'How do you live?', although it was not known if it was the one he was working on at the time. The synopsis of the novel is about a 15-year-old boy who lives in Tokyo and whose father has just died. At that moment he observes the city and feels overwhelmed by the situation he is experiencing. When asked if the movie will answer the question in the title, he answers that he is doing it precisely because he does not know what the answer is.

Retired, but not much

In 2013, after the premiere of ' The Wind Rises ', the cartoonist announced his retirement from the world of cinema. However, only three years later he confirmed that he had returned to work on a new project for his studio. Finally, in 2018 he released his short 'Boro the Caterpillar'. Also, a few months later we learned that he was working on two more films with his son, Goro Miyazaki.

Also featured in the report is Toshio Suzuki, producer and co-founder of the studio along with Miyazaki, who describes his next film as "large-scale fantasy" and who identifies with one of the characters. According to him, when just a year after his retirement he told him that he wanted to make another film, he stood still: "Give me a break. " 'The Wind Rises' had been successful, but less so, probably according to Suzuki, because it dealt with the guilt of the Japanese over the war. He also added, "Studio Ghibli's sole goal is to make Miyazaki movies. " Therefore, the one who picked up his father's pen when that happened was Goro.