Isao Takahata: Japanese animation master who co-founded Studio Ghibli
Known for directing some of the animation house’s most famous films, including ‘Grave of the Fireflies’, the filmmaker’s work set a high benchmark for animators across the world
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Your support makes all the difference.Japan’s Isao Takahata, known for films such as 2013’s Oscar-nominated The Tale of Princess Kaguya, will be remembered by the world of animation for generations with the same reverence that is reserved for Walt Disney.
Studio Ghibli, which he co-founded, is often compared with Disney – it will even be opening a theme park in 2022.
His animations never lost sense of the magical despite being so vivid and detailed in their realism.
The youngest of seven siblings, Takahata was born in Ujiyamada in Japan’s Mie Prefecture, but spent his childhood in Okayama.
He was nine years old when the city was targeted in a US air raid. Takahata and his sister fled for their lives, barefoot and still in pyjamas.
It was while studying French literature at the University of Tokyo that Takahata first became interested in animation.
He was inspired by Paul Grimault’s film, Le Roi et l’Oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird) for which his favourite poet, Jacques Prévert, wrote the screenplay. (Nearly half a century later, Takahata would publish a collection of his personal translations of Prévert’s poetry.)
Upon graduating, Takahata joined Toei Animation, working as assistant director on several of the studio’s shows before being invited to direct a feature of his own. Unfortunately, while Takahata’s directorial debut, The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968), would eventually be considered a classic, it was a commercial flop.
Takahata was demoted and, frustrated by the status quo, he quit. He was followed by friend and colleague Hayao Miyazaki.
The pair collaborated on several projects during the 1970s and when Miyazaki’s manga found commercial and critical success in the early Eighties, he invited Takahata to join him in founding a new studio.
The result was Studio Ghibli, named for a hot desert wind, signifying that Miyazaki and Takahata intended to “blow a new wind through the anime industry”.
To begin with, Takahata worked as producer to Miyazaki’s director but in 1988, Takahata returned to directing himself with Grave of the Fireflies.
The film was based on an Akiyuki Nosaka short story but also drew on Takahata’s own childhood experiences of the Second World War.
Critic Roger Ebert wrote of the film: “Yes, it’s a cartoon, and the kids have eyes like saucers, but it belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made.”
Grave of the Fireflies established Studio Ghibli’s reputation around the world. Takahata went on to direct Only Yesterday (1991) and Pom Poko (1994), while the studio’s international importance was further cemented with Miyazaki-directed hits Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004).
Studio Ghibli’s success led to it being dubbed “Japanese Disney”.
However, the relationship between Takahata and Miyazaki was not always easy and they gradually stopped working together. In 2015, Takahata said: “It wasn’t that I didn’t like what he was doing, I just couldn’t compete with him. I was very conscious of making films that he would steer clear of.”
Takahata was perhaps referring to his three-hour long documentary on the canal system of Yanagawa. The two men had very different styles. Colleague Kazuyoshi Tanaka said: “Miyazaki does everything on time ... Takahata has a freer lifestyle. If we didn’t call him up, he could disappear until sunset ... he forgets about time and place when he is in deep thought ... is meticulous in his work, and never compromises quality in the face of deadlines.”
Reviewing The Tale of the Princess of Kaguya for The Independent in 2015, Geoffrey Macnab applauded “its difference to Hollywood animation. It has a delicacy and a hand-crafted feel that you won’t find in the latest DreamWorks or Pixar blockbuster. Instead of brash primary colours, Takahata uses a pale and watery palette.”
He was, ultimately, far from Disney.
Isao Takahata, film director, born 9 October 1935, died 5 April 2018
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