MIYAZAKI: They are trying to shorten childhood, which is the best time of one’s life. I’m afraid the world of children changes when they learn how to read and write. From what I saw of my own children, when they didn’t know how to read and write and didn’t yet have the ability to grasp abstract matters, they were so free in making wonderfully

UMEHARA: Art becomes no good when theory is obviously displayed on its surface.

I often hear from children these days that, “It’s a film, after all,” no matter what kind of film I make. Their feeling of mistrust has encroached on many areas. Young people no longer read fiction. Sales of illustrated children’s books have fallen drastically. At the root of these phenomena is this sense of mistrust. This is what leads to

AM: You call it a healthy ambition? MIYAZAKI: You can’t get anywhere without ambition. You have to want to expand your influence and your powers of expression. There are increasingly too many people who think it is enough to do a good job with what they have been assigned. Having ambition means wanting to become, for example, an editor-in-chief so

Children these days have it tough. Yet they are told to live with hopes and dreams. When grown-ups themselves are doubtful whether a bright future exists, how can they insist that children have hope for the future?

To the generals, aircraft were reserves of military capacity, to the manufacturing industrialists they were pure profit, to engineers they were professional accomplishments, and to the young men who flew in them they were a chance for glorious fame and excitement.

MIYAZAKI: A friend of mine from Nagoya says, “Nagoya got rid of alleyways with its city planning. The result is that young people don’t stay there. I was surprised when I came to Tokyo to discover so many narrow alleys that are fun to stroll along.” As I’m used to them, I don’t notice them as much, but alleys seem to provide a psychological

By the way, when a director makes a film, does he have in his mind a clear image of the completed work? MIYAZAKI: No, that’s not the case for me. It’s only after it is completed that I see what I have made. I don’t see the entirety at the initial planning stage. The part that can be explained in words and sentences is only the surface layer of what

The heroine of this film disavows humanity. She thinks humans are despicable beings. This is an issue relevant to many people who live in this world. They can’t consider humans to be worthy. They are beginning to think that the most despicable creatures on this earth might be human beings. This is something that was unthinkable in the nineteenth