General Themes and Topics

The chapters and journal articles in this section include studies of general themes throughout Miyazaki's work, papers that analyze several different Studio Ghibli films at once, essays on the relationship between his films and other works of animation, film and literature, and examinations of broader topics and issues such as the production, distribution, marketing and worldwide reception of Studio Ghibli films.

2025

Keene, Andrea. Japanese animation: Between ecocriticism and protest art. Japan Forum (forthcoming).

"This article seeks to find how Japanese animation can function as both protest art and a valid text of ecocinema. It looks at the advocacy for the environment, which can be seen considerably during the late 20th century in four anime productions: Pom Poko directed by Isao Takahata, Nausicaä: Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Blue Gender directed by Masashi Abe. The article seeks to demonstrate that anime, can go beyond mere banal entertainment, acting as protest art and developing a social critique, which creatively protests environmental issues in an increasingly striking manner to encourage the conversation of a global human responsibility from the audience and as a valuable source for ecocriticism."

2024

Bellano, Marco. Transcultural musical encounters / 1: Jō Hisaishi and Yūji Nomi. Variation, citation, and emulation.
In Marco Pellitteri (ed.). The Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Japanese Animation (pp. 239-265). Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore.

"This chapter is a discussion on the postmodern attitude that gives way, in Japanese animation, to musical scores based on multilayered systems of genres and forms. When an animated production needs a symphonic sound, composers usually borrow techniques and excerpts from the European classical repertoire. But, even though they are so widely exploited, the goal-oriented forms of the European symphonic language are not automatically applicable to the styles of Japanese animation. Moreover, the former do not fit well into the latter’s typical musical production process, which usually asks for an “image album”: a collection of preliminary music based on pre-production materials and art. Symphonic pieces in Japanese animation are variations on the image album music, which, in turn, often variates on borrowings from the western repertoire. This shift is described, in the chapter, through the works of two famed composers: Jō Hisaishi, whose scores for Hayao Miyazaki’s films are largely based on music that was first written in a somewhat concert-like form, and Yūji Nomi, who bases his variation routines on 20th-century neoclassicism."

2023

Arnavas, Francesca, & Bellini, Mattia. Miyazaki's hybrid worlds and their riddle-stories: Western tropes and Kishōtenketsu. Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations, & Interventions, 12(1).

" “Fairy tales begin with conflict because we all begin our lives with conflict,” famously states Jack Zipes. And yet, this statement does not always seem to apply to non-Western story structures. An example of this is the East Asian Kishōtenketsu, which implies a story development that does not necessarily revolve around conflicts, but that interprets potential clashes more as contrasts that can be somehow harmonized. In many of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies (e.g., My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, The Secret World of Arietty), it is possible to detect, on the one hand, the widespread presence of Western fairy-tale tropes, and, on the other hand, a plot strongly influenced by the Kishōtenketsu model. This article argues that: 1.) The way in which Miyazaki’s stories represent conflictual situations is less dichotomous than in the Western tradition, and conflicts in his movies are depicted in the forms of open riddles, implying an interrogative attitude, a playful and flexible state of mind; and 2.) The employment of unusual narrative patterns in Miyazaki’s movies, mixing up together Eastern and Western frames of reference, gives rise to stories that puzzle the mind of spectators, working as complex narrative riddles."

Clifford, Lara. Frames of fantasy: Fantasy architecture in Hayao Miyazaki's works with Studio Ghibli.
In Gul Kacmaz Erk & Rebecca-Jane McConnell (eds.). Slicing spaces: Performance of architecture in cinema (pp. 329-414).
Champaign, IL: Common Ground Research Networks.

Engle, Justy. The prototypical cross-cultural female hero: Western inspiration, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli
In Kendra N. Sheehan (ed.). Cross-Cultural Influences Between Japanese and American Pop Cultures: Powers of Pop (pp. 319-335).
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Napier, Susan. The world according to Ghibli, or how a small Japanese studio became a global phenomenon.
In Alisa Freedman (ed.). Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, 2nd. Ed. (pp. 266-275).
Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

"This chapter examines Japan’s renowned Studio Ghibli in terms of the distinctive characteristics that helped it to become an increasingly significant alternative to Hollywood, especially Disney, animation in the twenty-first century. The chapter explores four films - My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya - that express the three most significant characteristics of Ghibli’s films: (1) a willingness to accept and even celebrate ambiguity rather than enforce a “happily ever after ending”; (2) female complexity and agency; and (3) most significant, an essentially animistic vision that places humanity as only one part of a multifaceted and profoundly connected world. These elements add up to the “Ghibli Worldview,” which is appropriate for the complexities and challenges of the twenty-first century. This chapter argues that this vision, along with Ghibli’s rich narratives, imaginative world-building, and sublimely beautiful imagery, are the reasons behind the growth of Ghibli’s influence and popularity."

Tvorun-Dunn, Maxim, & Pascaru, Nathalie. Environmentalism polluted: Consumerism and complicity in Studio Ghibli’s media mix.
Journal of Cultural Economy (forthcoming).

"The proliferation of franchise-driven consumption has created a social paradigm where branded symbols are overproduced across an endless array of consumer products. As a paradigm dependent on generating ever-more growth, we argue that transmedia production facilitates social modes which are inherently damaging to the environment. This is accomplished through an examination of the media mix of Japanese animation firm Studio Ghibli, who despite praise from critics and educators for their deeply nuanced environmentalist themes, have heavily commodified their works through plastic merchandise and tourist destinations. While this research demonstrates the studio had already broadly adopted media mix promotion by the early aughts, following the studio's 2014 hiatus in film production, we show a distinct rise in transmedia communication and production of goods made of non-renewable resources. In light of this, we discuss the commodification of Ghibli's themes as a product of recuperation, adding to discussions of capitalism's penchant for co-opting its opposition. Of this instance, we examine the industrial dynamics that led to this specific increase, the cultural-economic paradigms of media mix that frame commodification as a natural extension of texts – despite dissonant values – and consider how contemporary media ecologies may offer any hope of imagining genuinely environmentally conscious societies."

2022

Forni, Dalila. Eco gender gap in animated films: Real and fictional gender-based differences in environmental sensitivity.
European Journal of Research on Education and Teaching, 20(1), 603-611.
[My Neighbor Totoro; Princess Mononoke, article in Italian, abstract in English]

 "Animated films are nowadays an important and popular narrative medium that can create a socially shared imaginary. For this reason, they are considered an important indirect educational tool. One of the many applications of animation at pedagogical level is in environmental awareness, an area recently intertwined with Gender Studies. Research agrees on the existence of a marked gender gap in ecological interest (eco gender gap): data indicate that women usually approach environmental issues more effectively than men. Comparing social facts to imaginative figures proposed by narratives, similar trends emerge: if in real life ecological commitment is mainly female, also in film narratives it is mainly female characters who show a greater interest and sensitivity towards the environment. The study therefore intends to analyze some classic animated films, from Disney products to Studio Ghibli’s movies, in order to understand how the ecological issue is intertwined with gender, identifying the most relevant characters and their approach towards contact and respect for nature. The research wants to explore a parallelism between social and imaginary perception of nature and the environment, so as to open a reflection on how gender might be a determining element in the approach to ecology on different levels." 

Fortes-Guerrero, Raul. The marvellous, the uncanny, and the fantastic in the cinema of Hayao Miyazaki.
In Mario-Paul Martínez Fabre & Fran Mateu (eds.). Visions from the unexpected (pp. 39-54). 

Grajdian, Maria Mihaela. Connecting fantasy worlds and nostalgia: Miyazaki Gorō’s animation movies.
Russian Japanology Review. 5(1), 111-133. 

"In the particular context of post-Cold War Japanese animation, the name of Miyazaki Gorō 宮崎 吾朗 (born 1967) is mostly related to the name of his illustrious father, Miyazaki Hayao 宮崎 駿 (born 1942). Professionally speaking,  Miyazaki Gorō is a landscaper  (construction consultant in  the planning and designing of parks and gardens) as well as an animation director of two animation movies and one TV animation series. This paper focuses on the two animation movies  released by Studio Ghibli under Miyazaki Gorō’s direction: Tales from the Earthsea (ゲド戦記 Gedo senki, 2006) and From Up On Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から Kokuriko-zaka kara, 2011). Miyazaki Gorō’s two animation movies are described and analyzed, both as ideological manifestos continuing and, from a certain point onward, transcending what might be called the “Ghibli paradigm” and as aesthetical masterworks  combining  the “Ghibli paradigm” with fresh visions of employing animation as a medium, exploring, absorbing and integrating influences from beyond geographical boundaries and striving to break the “Japanese” limitations of the artistic language utilized in his approach to animated expressive modes."

Law, Jo. The kraft of labour, labour as craft: Hayao Miyazaki's images of work. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17(2), 195-208.

"The animated films of Hayao Miyazaki are populated by women, children and men at work. This article argues that the rendering of physical labour has the capacity to (re)connect the body to its broader social collective experience. The late philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, identifies the loss of savoir-faire (know-how) and savoir-vivre (life skills) as a critical deficit to how we live and work today. Miyazaki’s animated films provide a platform for potentially regaining savoir-faire and savoir-vivre in their reflexive portrayals of human labour. Every story told by Miyazaki involves scenes where bodies work with tools, with each other, and with machines to perform tasks. The rhythms of the working body speak to the ideals of labour as craft – not as exceptionally skilled expertise, but as an everyday practice – that presents ‘an opportunity to “think otherwise”’ as proposed by Glenn Adamson in The Crafter Reader (2010: 136). This article examines the performance of manual tasks in three contexts: the physical act of labour, labouring with machines and the animator’s labour. The author concludes by making the case that the animator’s labour extends to the craft of storytelling and, specifically, that Miyazaki’s animations are what Walter Benjamin called Kraftwerk – a ‘power work’ that re-models the ‘folkloric relations of space’ (see Esther Leslie’s, ‘Walter Benjamin, Traces of Craft’, 1998: 47) that keeps the human spirit alive." 

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Roy, Samragngi. "Why must fireflies die so young?" The picturesque of caution in the works of Studio Ghibli. Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, 3, 118-146.

As opposed to most contemporary usage of the word “picturesque” – which is generally taken to mean visually attractive in a quaint or charming way, or else something that resembles a picture –  William Gilpin introduced this term to the English cultural debate in 1792. Gilpin used “picturesque” to typify an aesthetic ideal wherein roughness, raggedness, and ruins would be privileged over smoothness, symmetry and perfection. Over time, his conceptualization of “the picturesque” led to a celebration of disorder, decay, and ruin, a kind of glorification of violence also familiar to the Gothic romances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, following the unimaginable havoc and mass destruction caused by the two world wars, ruins and images of ruins started to be viewed very differently. This paper seeks to explore how the picturesque mode has been used as an instrument of caution in the works of Studio Ghibli, spearheaded by two creative artists and directors, Hayao Miyazaki and Takahata Isao, who have experienced the horrors of WWII firsthand in their own childhoods. This paper specifically looks at two famous anime feature films produced by Studio Ghibli – Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and Howl's Moving Castle (2004) – that deal with the impacts of war and convey strong anti-war messages by uniquely employing the picturesque mode of representation."

2021

Barai, Aneesh, & Uematsu, Nozomi. Envisioning solidarity: Disrupting linear temporality in Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle and When Marnie Was There.
In Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak & Zoe Jaques (eds.). Intergenerational solidarity in children's literature and film (pp. 70-84). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

"This chapter discusses adult-child relations in two Japanese animated fantasy films that are based on English children’s literature, When Marnie Was There and Howl’s Moving Castle, both by Studio Ghibli. Both films draw strongly on the age-bending elements of their source texts, with Marnie transforming from the heroine Anna’s grandmother into her young friend and, in reverse, Sophie transforming from an 18-year-old into an older lady. Through the affordances of animation as a medium, and fantasy as a mode, the chapter argues these two films challenge the separation of adult and child into distinct realms and envision the mutual support that can come from bringing adults and children together into conversation, as equals: for Marnie, this supports both characters through childhood trauma and, for Howl, Sophie’s age-defying identity speaks to an intergenerational push for pacifism."

Cay, Merve. Tainted away: Violence over nature in the anime of Hayao Miyazaki.
In M. Nur Erdem, Nihal Kocabay-Sener, & Tugba Demir (eds.). Handbook of research on aestheticization of violence, horror, and power (pp. 259-279). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Crombie, Zoe. The spectacular mundane in the films of Studio Ghibli. Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, 2, 1-26.

"This article examines how Studio Ghibli constructs the mundane activities shown in their films as spectacular. Looking at the history of the ways in which domestic and routine events are depicted in Japanese animation, I will use various methodologies, beginning with formalism and phenomenology before moving on to feminism and Marxism to critically analyse several Ghibli films as case studies – My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999, Hōhokekyo Tonari no Yamada kun), Only Yesterday (1991, Omoide Poro Poro), and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004, Hauru no Ugoku Shiro). Using these methodologies, the films are placed into a broader cinematic context, and the filmic legacy of their treatment of the mundane is explored."

Mes, Tom, & Agnoli, Francis M. A modular genre? Problems in the reception of the post-Miyazaki 'Ghibli film'. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16(3), 207-220.

"With the eternally looming spectre of Miyazaki Hayao’s retirement, the death of Takahata Isao and the failure to establish a viable new artistic figurehead to follow in their footsteps, Studio Ghibli has been at a crucial crossroads for some time. Over the past few decades, the acclaimed Japanese animation studio has adopted three main strategies to cope with these changes: apprenticeship to foster new talent, co-productions both domestically and abroad, and shutting down their production facilities. Each approach has affected Ghibli’s evolving brand identity – and the meaning of the ‘Ghibli film’ – causing confusion in the international critical reception of the resulting movies. Academic approaches too have shown difficulties dealing with recent shifts. While conceptualizing the ‘Ghibli film’ as the product of a studio brand or as the work of auteurs Miyazaki and Takahata has proven useful, such frameworks have become inadequate for accommodating these changes. This article therefore proposes a new approach for understanding recent ‘Ghibli films’, arguing that, rather than being treated as a brand or genre, they have increasingly been fashioned along modular lines." 

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Yonemura, Shoko. Miyazaki Hayao's animism and the Anthropocene. Theory, Culture & Society, 38(7-8), 251-266.

"The need for a reconsideration of human-nature relationships has been widely recognized in the Anthropocene. It is difficult to rethink, however, because there is a crisis of imagination that is deeply entrenched within the fundamental premises of modernity. This article explores how ‘critical animism’ developed by Miyazaki Hayao of Studio Ghibli can address this paucity of imagination by providing alternative ways of knowing and being. ‘Critical animism’ emerged from the fusion of a critique of modernity with informal cultural heritage in Japan. It is a philosophy that perceives nature as a non-dualistic combination of the life-world and the spiritual-world, while also emphasizing the significance of place. Miyazaki’s critical animism challenges anthropocentrism, secularism, Eurocentrism, as well as dualism. It may be the ‘perfect story’ that could disrupt the existing paradigm, offering a promise to rethink human-nonhuman relationships and envisaging a new paradigm for the social sciences."

2020

Denison, Rayna. Hayao Miyazaki’s European animation: From European literary influences to nostalgic re-imaginings. Wasafiri, 35(2), 67-73.

"The article focuses on the sources on Miyazaki's anime offering new research insights into Miyazaki's sources and working methods for the creation of the stories and settings for his films. The author draws on research by other critics, such as Susan Napier, to trace the way in which European literary influences, especially children's literature, alongside Europe's geography, are mined to create a ‘Euroworld’. Denison also explores the tension between the fantastic and the real in Miyazaki's creative toolbox. While referencing Lindsay Smith's work on ‘transformative adaptations’, the author argues for Miyazaki's unique use of hybridised adaptation. This, Denison argues, enables Miyazaki to work his stories within a decentred context which nevertheless reflects global themes of industrialisation, the costs of war and the environment. The article argues that Miyazaki's anime ‘fantasies’ are always purposeful and anchored to the real world."

Jones, Robert. 'To become rich without limit': Positioning the Miyazaki antagonist within technological contexts of the Japanese economic miracle. Animation Studies, 15.
[Runner-up, Society for Animation Studies 2019 Maureen Furniss Award for Best Student Paper on Animated Media]

Williams, Wendy R. Examining Studio Ghibli’s animated films: A study of students’ viewing paths and creative projects. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(6), 639-650.

"Being literate in today’s world involves more than reading and writing traditional works in print. Students need experiences with a range of multimodal narratives, including animation. Multimodal narratives offer many entry points for engagement, and design plays an important role as readers/viewers navigate their way through these works and make meaning. This qualitative study took place in the U.S. Southwest and involved 20 university students enrolled in a Studio Ghibli Films course. Analysis of coursework using grounded theory and open coding revealed that participants designed nine viewing paths to interpret the films, approaching animated works as narratives, multimodal compositions, cultural/historical artifacts, transformed source materials, products of a director, objects of value, conversations between texts, commentaries, and personal experiences. Participants also composed a wide variety of creative projects that drew on their out-of-school interests. Animated works, such as the films of Studio Ghibli, have great potential in education."

Yoneyama, Shoko. Rethinking human-nature relationships in the time of Coronavirus: Postmodern animism in films by Miyazaki Hayao & Shinkai Makoto. The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 18(16), article 6.

"Issues we are confronted with in the age of the Anthropocene, such as climate change, extinction, and the coronavirus pandemic demand a fundamental rethink of human-nature relationships, but at the same time we are faced with a ‘crisis of imagination’, which is highlighted by the paucity of stories or narratives that enable us to fully engage with these issues. We have a ‘climate crisis’ as well as a ‘crisis of culture’ and both derive from the same source: epistemological limitations in the paradigm of modernity. The most problematic limitation is the fact that our social scientific knowledge has blind spots when it comes to nature and spirituality which makes it almost impossible for us to rethink human-nature relationships in a meaningful way. Miyazaki Hayao and Shinkai Makoto, however, directly illuminate these blind spots by making nature and spirituality central features in their animation films. This opens up new epistemological and ontological spaces in the hearts and minds of a global audience, making it possible to imagine something new. And that ‘something new’ is ‘postmodern animism’ which emerged from the fusion of a critique of modernity with the intangible cultural heritage of grassroots Japan. Postmodern animism is a philosophy that sees nature as a combination of the life-world and the spiritual-world thus enabling us to engage with climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic in a radically different way. It helps us to conceive a new paradigm that is more suitable for the Anthropocene."

2019

Barkman, Adam. “The Earth speaks to us all”!: A critical appreciation of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s Shinto environmental philosophy. Christian Scholar’s Review, 48(4), 323-335.

"Part of what has made Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki one of the most loved and influential filmmakers of all time is his attention to environmental concerns. Flowing out of a broad Shintōistic worldview, Miyazaki gives us countless memorable snapshots of a world where nature, man and the gods can prosper when in harmony or wither when not. This paper attempts to articulate Miyazaki’s environmental philosophy, and then critique it from a Christian point of view."

Castro, Ingrid E. The spirit and the witch: Hayao Miyazaki’s agentic girls and their (intra)dependent genderational childhoods.
In Ingrid E. Castro & Jessica Clark (eds.). Representing agency in popular culture: Children and youth on page, screen, and in between (pp. 255-282). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Grajdian, Maria Mihaela. The invention of traditions. The representation of family and community In Studio Ghibli’s anime work. BRUKENTHALIA. Romanian Cultural History Review, 9, 1037-1048

"The current paper deals with the relationship between real-life events and their representation in popular media, such as Japanese animation. At the center of the analysis are four major anime works – “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988, director: Miyazaki Hayao) and ”Grave of the Fireflies“ (1988, director: Takahata Isao), on the one hand, and “My Neighbors the Yamadas” (1999, director: Takahata Isao) and ”Spirited Away“ (2001, director: Miyazaki Hayao), on the other hand. These animations serve as practical examples for elucidating main artistic means employed by the two reputed directors to highlight the deep, strong dialectics between family and community, on an ideological level, such as the importance of the community during the gradual dissolution of the extended family and the friendship, when the social construct of “nuclear family” falls apart. The animations also reveal aspects on an aesthetic level, such as the colorful intricacies between Western and Japanese visual traditions and the efforts to confer credibility to the dynamic display of Japanese characters, locations and circumstances." 

Grajdian, Maria Mihaela. On musical vulnerability, the joy of life and the power of love as expressed in Hisaishi Joe’s anime soundtracks. Revista Muzika, 2/2019, 55-81.

Peres, Catia. Liberated worlds: Construction of meaning in the universes of Hayao Miyazaki. Animation Studies, 14.

Walsh, Brendan C. A modern-day Romantic: The Romantic sublime in Hayao Miyazaki. Comparative Literature: East & West, 3(2), 176-191.

"This article explores how the concept of the Romantic sublime is presented within the filmography of acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki (1941-). Fronting the Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli from 1985, Miyazaki has developed into an auteur figure with his films attracting considerable attention from scholars. The films of Hayao Miyazaki are characterized by a consistent creative philosophy, a philosophy that this article contends is profoundly shaped by the esthetic, philosophical, and artistic traditions of the European Romantic movement. Miyazaki’s engagement with Romanticism can be characterized by his interpretation of the Romantic sublime, a concept inherently linked to the traditions of the Romantic hero, the magical imagination, and the natural realm. This engagement with Romantic ideals is illustrated in this article by analyzing the thematic and visual elements of Miyazaki’s films, highlighting how these particular films reflect, and embody, particular Romantic ideals. In studying these films through a conceptual framework of the Romantic sublime, this article provides a deeper insight into Hayao Miyazaki’s creative philosophy."

2018

Grajdian, Maria Mihaela. Back to the roots: The representation of life and nature in Studio Ghibli’s anime works. BRUKENTHALIA. Romanian Cultural History Review, 8, 831-843.

"The current paper tackles the problematic of life and nature as well as their representation by means of artistic media – in this case, Japanese animation – while focusing on four anime works released by Studio Ghibli: Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War (1994, director: Takahata Isao) and Princess Mononoke (1997, director: Miyazaki Hayao), on the one hand, and The Wind Rises (2013, director: Miyazaki Hayao) and The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013, director: Takahata Isao), on the other hand. This paper draws on extensive fieldwork with producers and consumers of (Japanese) popular culture, as well as extensive literature research, and searches for answers to the ultimately fundamental question of the human being: what is life and how can we protect it, with its beautiful vulnerability and unique ephemerality? As to be shown in the course of the hermeneutic analysis, important concepts of Japanese traditional aesthetics, such as mono no aware (the “pathos of things”, going as far back in the past as the monumental Tale of Prince Genji from 11th century), the jo-ha-kyû structural principle (“exposition, acceleration, explosion”, as theorized by Zeami in 14th century for the Nô theater), the tension between giri (social obligations) and ninjô (individual emotions), indelibly established during Japan’s long seclusion from the world (Edo period, 1603-1868), which are organically integrated within the ideology of the wakon yôsai (“Japanese spirit/roots, Western knowledge/technology”) slogan of the Meiji era (1868-1912), emerge in the visual display of life in late-modern Japan, and its profound connection to nature, as the most important asset one possesses and could ever possess.  

Hadl, Gabriele. Nature, media and the future: Unnatural disaster, animist anime, and eco-media activism in Japan.
In Fabienne Darling-Wolf (ed.). Routledge handbook of Japanese media (pp. 336-362). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
[Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind; My Neighbor Totoro; Princess Mononoke]

Mumcu, Sema, & Yilmaz, Serap. Anime landscapes as a tool for analyzing the human-environmental relationship: Hayao Miyazaki’s films. Arts, 7(2), article 16.

"Common dualistic thinking in environmental design education adopts humans and the environment as separate entities, with the environment as raw material stock. This approach affects the intellectual development of landscape architects and limits their ability to create meaningful landscapes. Therefore, it is necessary to explore and highlight new ideas about the more integrated human–environment relationship. Through the films of Hayao Miyazaki, many audiences around the world have encountered a different worldview. By contrast with Western thinking, which adopts human superiority to nature, the worldview that Miyazaki reflects in his films depicts human as an inseparable part of nature. Being inspired by different communities and their relationship to nature in Miyazaki’s films, we propose using anime as a means of analyzing the human–environment relationship. We classified landscapes based on power relations between humans and nature. We explored how communities shape their physical environment based on how they socially construct nature and the resulting landscapes. Thus, through apocalyptic landscapes, the bitter results of exploiting nature were depicted. Wilderness landscapes reflect the bias humanity has about nature as wild and hostile. Responsible landscapes were introduced asway of understanding the unbreakable bond between humans and the environment. Through these animated landscape types, the ways landscape architecture should approach nature in professional practices was discussed, and the importance of creating responsible landscapes was emphasized."

Napier, Susan. Where shall we adventure? Robert Louis Stevenson meets Hayao Miyazaki.
In William Roger Louis (ed.). Effervescent adventures with Britannia: Personalities: politics and culture in Britain (pp. 71-82). London: I.B. Tauris. 

Peres, Cátia, Corte-Real, Eduardo, & Estela Graça, Maria. Ekonte: Visual narrative in the work of Hayao Miyazaki.
In CONFIA 208: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Illustration & Animation. (pp. 141-156). Barcelos, Portugals: Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave.

East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 4(1)

Rendell, James, & Denison, Rayna. Introducing Studio Ghibli (pp. 5-15).

Yoshioka, Shiro. Toshio's movie castle: A historical overview of Studio Ghibli's collaboration and promotional strategies (pp. 15-30).

"While so-called ‘Ghibli films’ attract global academic and popular attention because of their technical and textual genius, the current fame of the studio and commercial success of its films is in large part the product of an intricate system of promotion and advertising developed in the 1980s. At the nexus of the studio’s commercial success is Toshio Suzuki, the key producer at the studio. This article argues that the success of the studio owes much, not only to the superb quality of the films it has created, but also to its relationship with other parties involved in filmmaking, such as publishing house Tokuma shoten, TV broadcasting company NTV and film distributors Tōhō and Tōei, relationships developed by Suzuki. The links with these companies forged in the 1980s enabled Ghibli to come into existence and continue to thrive by virtue of their financial and promotional support. Besides detailing how the links were forged and their significance for Ghibli, this article will also examine how promotional strategies played an important role in making Ghibli films and the name of Hayao Miyazaki (and to a lesser extent film director Isao Takahata) widely known in Japan in the 1980s. Therefore, this article will examine the connections between Suzuki’s creative work as Studio Ghibli’s main producer, while investigating how the links he forged with outside companies led to unprecedented levels of success for his nascent studio."

Morimoto, Lori. The 'Totoro Meme' and the politics of transfandom pleasure (pp. 77-92).

"This article is an exploration of the ‘Totoro meme’ as a site of affective, transfandom pleasure. In the Totoro meme, Japanese and non-Japanese fans alike appropriate the now-iconic image of Satsuki, Mei and an umbrella-toting Totoro at a bus stop from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 film, Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), to their own fannish ends, creating fan art that inserts favourite characters from other media into the scene in ways that often have a doubled semiotic resonance. I argue that this meme is characteristic not of the global appropriation of a broad ‘Japanese anime style’, per se, but a specific, affectively appealing ‘Ghibli style’, one that is fully part of non-Japanese fans’ own popular cultural repertoires. In its cross-border merging of globally circulating Studio Ghibli aesthetics with other fan-favourite media, I contend that the Totoro meme and its associated fanworks are in fact wholly congruent with, and representative of, what Matt Hills has termed ‘trans-fandom’ (2015), contemporary practices of ‘navigating across and combining and fusing fandoms’ (Hills 2015: 159). I conclude with a consideration of the implications of what might be termed ‘corporate transfandom’ in the context of transfannish citations of Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind) (Miyazaki, 1984) in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)."

Rendell, James. Bridge builders, world makers: Transcultural Studio Ghibli fan crafting (pp. 93-110

"Whilst global hits such as Pokémon utilized what Marc Steinberg calls anime’s media mix, implementing a multiple-platform narrative world in an attempt to synergize/converge a franchise, what are we to do when one finds a dearth of official merchandise available to transnational audiences? What are the reasons or politics for such a decision that seems to run counter to a long sociocultural history of such media ecology? Equally as important, what do fans do when their championed fan objects offer a relatively restricted media palette? This article looks at how Studio Ghibli has, to a degree, negotiated and/or rejected the traditional ‘anime media mix’. This is not to say that Ghibli is void of media mixing; rather, via online communities, one has seen a growing presence of fan-crafts whereby audiences are making their own Ghibli objects. In doing so, these transcultural fan-made Ghibli objects extend fan ideologies linked to the studio, expanding on what Susan Napier terms ‘MiyazakiWorld’ (2006: 49, 2007: 193). Much like Miyazaki’s philosophy, this is not entirely rejecting industry, but offering creative alternatives. The fan-as-producer of Ghibli objects is doing so through convivial construction. Thus, this article offers new insights into global audience practices and affective meaning-making around Ghibli that goes beyond the films themselves."

2017

Heise, Ursula K. Environment, technology, and modernity in contemporary Japanese animation.
In Steven Hartman (ed.), Contesting environmental imaginaries: Nature and counternature in a time of global change (pp. 117-135).
Amsterdam: Brill.
[Laputa: Castle in the Sky; Pom Poko; Princess Mononoke; Spirited Away] 

Peres, Catia. Out of gravity: Physics in animation and in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Animation Studies, 12.

Swale, Alistair. Memory and forgetting: Examining the treatment of traumatic historical memory in Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises.
Japan Forum, 29(4), 518-536.

"Within Japanese popular culture, manga and anime have played a significant role in mediating responses to the outcome of the Pacific War. Miyazaki Hayao's (possibly) final feature-length film, The Wind Rises, has been an important addition to the preceding body of popular media ‘texts’ that raise such themes. This article aims to address the question of how far cinematic animation can reasonably be obliged to follow the kinds of historiographical concerns that inevitably arise when engaging with Japan's militarist past. To answer this question, considerable space is devoted to examining the historical context of what others have done in the post-war period and integrate that commentary into an analysis of how the works of Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao fit amongst a succession of creative works that have been co-opted in the reshaping of historical perceptions of the Japanese at war amongst the Japanese themselves. This will also require some incidental discussion of methodological issues that arise when dealing with such cases as vehicles for understanding transformations in historical consciousness. Ultimately it is argued that Miyazaki does indeed make an important contribution to the commentary on the Japanese war experience, although it must, perhaps unavoidably, be on highly personal terms so far as The Wind Rises is concerned."

Triscuzzi, Maria Teresa. Hayao Miyazaki: The kingdom of dreams and madness.
History of Education and Children's Literature, 12(1), 483-505.

2016

Calik, Selen. Re-viewing Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine after Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises: On the critical potential of anime. Kritika Kultura, 26, 258-273.

"This article aims to demonstrate how exactly Thomas Lamarre reads movement, plot, and characters in The Anime Machine (2009), as defined to an extent, yet not completely determined by the concept of the animetic machine. Mimicking the first part of Lamarre's book, it approaches Miyazaki's last work, The Wind Rises (Kaze tachinu, 2013). What Lamarre sees in Miyazaki's manga eiga is a new way of gaining "a free relation to technology" as idealized by Heideggerian philosophy, but, of course, "in animation" (Lamarre 62). This free, critical relation seems to be most noticeably depicted in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika, 1984) and Castle in the Sky (Tenkū no shiro Rapyūta, 1986). But does the same kind of criticality that Lamarre finds in Miyazakifs prior works also apply to the latest one, and if so, to what extent? This again leads to the question whether the conclusions Lamarre arrives at actually capture the critical potential of his theory. In the discussion of these issues, anime is viewed not as a text, but a hub of interrelations, including those between audience groups. Finally, the argumentation arrives at the plurality favored by the medium itself, suggested by Lamarre himself, but not ultimately prioritized."

Darling-Wofl, Fabienne. The "lost" Miyazaki: How a Swiss girl can be Japanese and why it matters. Communication, Culture & Critique, 9(4), 499-516

"In the United States, anime is often branded as a quintessentially Japanese genre whose attractiveness to foreign audiences comes from its mix of exoticism and universal human values. Some animated texts do not, however, easily fit this characterization. One example is the series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, which spread to some 35 countries starting in the late 1970s. This article explores the consequences of scholars' failure to engage with Heidi despite its significance as an extremely globally influential text and an exemplar of Miyazaki's early work. Exploring how Heidi resonates with dimensions of Japanese culture and of Miyazaki's oeuvre, it demonstrates how “reclaiming” Heidi can help us develop a more sophisticated understanding of transcultural dynamics under conditions of globalization."

Hernandez-Perez, Manuel. Animation, branding and authorship in the construction of the ‘anti-Disney’ ethos: Hayao Miyazaki’s works and persona through Disney film criticism. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11(3), 297-313.

"Walt Disney (1901–1966) is one of the most important figures in the history of cinema, but he may also be one of the most criticized. Adjectives referring to Disney in their different forms (‘Japanese Disney’, ‘Asian Disney’, ‘Disney from the Orient’, etc.), have also been applied to the analysis of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (1941–). Disney’s legacy has been reviewed and examined through different theoretical lenses derived from cultural studies and film criticism. In contrast, scholarship and cultural criticism have decoded Miyazaki’s works in terms of auteurism. These approaches also emphasize similarities based on high quality of production and individual signatures while differentiating between ideological and cultural readings of each author’s legacy. In this construction of what has been referred to as ‘anti-Disney’, the most common strategies of classical auteurism act together, including the mythical construction of the creator’s persona through cultural criticism and other film paratexts. In order to better understand the role of authorship in animation, a distinction between brand, style and creator’s persona is suggested."

Wu, Cheng-Ing. Hayao Miyazaki's mythic poetics: Experiencing the narrative persuasions in Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Ponyo. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11(2), 189-203.

"Some of Miyazaki’s mythic narratives, rendered within dreamlike figurations, are certainly not detached fantasy. The director portrays relatable human actions and a reasonable amount of setbacks during the (heroic) spectating process. Miyazaki’s animated realm infuses the audience with a bright outlook for the future. His narratives are often based upon graphical details and a calculated emplotment. The present study proposes reading Miyazaki’s animated tales by means of the audience’s internal projection onto the signs in the film frame. In this article, the narrative highlights that render Spirited Away (2001) an archetypal quest will be discussed. Finally, the article examines the narrative oscillation in Ponyo (2008). Alluding to Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenological perspective, the study aims to look into the textual aspects of the three cases, demonstrates how Miyazaki renders the film frame to exert persuasive impact upon the audience, and describes Hayao Miyazaki’s persuasive artistry."

2015

Chan, Melanie. Environmentalism and the animated landscape in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997).
In Chris Pallant (ed.). Animated landscapes: History, form and function (pp. 93-108). New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Feng, Yang, & Park, Jiwoo. Bad seed or good seed?: A content analysis of the main antagonists in Walt Disney- and Studio Ghibli-animated films. Journal of Children and Media, 9(3), 368-385.

"The purpose of this study is to examine the cultural difference in the portrayal of main antagonists between Walt Disney-animated films and Studio Ghibli-animated films. We analyze whether main antagonists engage with both prosocial and aggressive behaviors (including physical, indirect, and verbal aggression). Moreover, we explore demographics of main antagonists and context of each aggressive and prosocial act initiated by a main antagonist. Results from a content analysis showed that main antagonists in Studio Ghibli-animated films tend to participate in both prosocial and aggressive behaviors, while those in Walt Disney-animated films tend to commit only aggressive behaviors to harm others. This study concludes that the difference in the portrayal of main antagonists between Walt Disney-animated films and Studio Ghibli-animated films may reflect the difference between analytic and holistic thinking style."

Hairston, Marc. Miyazaki’s view of shojo.
In Masami Toku (ed.), International Perspectives on Shojo and Shojo Manga: The influence of girl culture (pp. 101-108). New York, Routledge.

Hall, Chris G. Totoros, boar gods, and river spirits: Nature gods as intermediaries in the animation of Hayao Miyazaki. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2(3), 158-165.

Lioi, Anthony. Introduction to Studio Ghibli. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2(3), 111-112.

Morgan, Gwendolyn. Creatures in crisis: Apocalyptic environmental visions in Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2(3), 172-183.

Ue, Tom. Narrative, time and memory in Studio Ghibli films.
In Noel Brown & Bruce Babington (eds.). Family films in global cinema: The world beyond Disney (pp. 223-238). London: I.B. Tauris.

2014

Carew, Anthony. The wind rises, a genius departs. Screen Education, 74, 8-15.

"Anthony Carew delves into Hayao Miyazaki's oeuvre and finds that despite some significant departures, his final film is a fitting farewell to a stunning body of work."

Garza, Oscar. Hayao Miyazaki and Shinto: A spiritual connection. Film Matters, 5(3), 19-26.

2013

Kohara, Itsutoshi & Niimi, Ryosuke. The shot length styles of Miyazaki, Oshii, and Hosoda: A quantitative analysis. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(1), 163-184.

"How does a director express his or her film style in animated films produced by a group? To address this issue, the authors analyzed the shot length of 22 Japanese animated films directed by Miyazaki Hayao, Oshii Mamoru, and Hosoda Mamoru. Their analysis reveals the statistical measurements of shot length were clearly dependent on directors. Miyazaki’s films show that he avoids both longish and brief shots, Oshii’s shot length is relatively long on average, while Hosoda prefers relatively short shot length. Furthermore, both Oshii’s and Hosoda’s first films deviated from their subsequent films in terms of statistical indices, suggesting that they established their style of shot length during their first or second time directing. The authors determine that all three directors controlled shot length primarily through their own storyboarding as a crucial process of determining the value, since the shot lengths correlated well with the designated shot lengths on the storyboards. In conclusion, the authors identified the distinctive shot length styles of the directors."

2012

Bellano, Marco. From albums to images: Studio Ghibli’s image albums and their impact on audiovisual strategies. Trans – Transcultural Music Review, 16.

Rustin, Margaret & Rustin, Michael. Fantasy and reality in Miyazaki's animated world. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 17(2), 169-184.

"This article explores the Japanese animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, which are outstanding contributions to contemporary popular culture. It describes their representation of developmental experiences of children and adolescents and compares them with work in the British and American traditions of children's fiction. It deploys psychoanalytic perspectives to suggest that one of their many admirable qualities is their sensitivity to the unconscious anxieties of normal children. While the films belong broadly in the genre of fantasy, they nevertheless convey a subtle awareness of social differences and changes. Their traditional method of hand-drawn animation is shown to make possible a great diversity and delicacy of visual representation. The films provide many beautiful animated representations of natural, man-made, and imagined environments and express deep concerns. After an overview of Miyazaki's work, the article gives a more detailed consideration of Our Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo, and Porco Rosso."

2011

 Rifa-Valls, Montserrat. Postwar princesses, young apprentices, and a little fish-girl: Reading subjectivities in Hayao Miyazaki’s tales of fantasy. Visual Arts Research, 37(2), 88-100

"In this article, I explore the representation of girl power in Hayao Miyazaki’s shōjo anime through feminist media studies. Located in feminist post-structuralism and media/cultural studies (Valerie Walkerdine, Mieke Bal, Elisabeth Ellsworth), I focus on the interpretation of the following films: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008). I have organized the narrative analysis of these animated films from a gender perspective by the articulation of four key problematizations: the construction of subjectivity through Miyazaki’s heroines; “preposterous history” used to produce otherness and difference; the creative relationship between fantasy and liminality in the critique of contemporary society; and transformation, corporeity, and transitivity involved in visuality, spectatorship, and education."

2010

Bellano, Marco. The parts and the whole: Audiovisual strategies in the cinema of Hayao Miyazaki. Animation Journal, 18, 4-55.

Denison, Rayna. Anime tourism: Discursive construction and reception of the Studio Ghibli Art Museum. Japan Forum, 22(3/4), 545-563.

"Anime tourism has been an important phenomenon within Japanese culture for the past decade. The signs of this global tourism can be read in the growing number of museums and theme parks in Japan dedicated to the history, and contemporary global success, of anime culture. However, the reputed aims and forms of these entertainment venues varies wildly, with some anime companies choosing to venerate animators, as with the Osamu Tezuka Museums in Kyoto and Takarazuka, while, alternatively, others are adopting theme park aesthetics, as with Sanrio Puroland. A common denominator among these anime venues is, however, an attempt extend the life and value of their products. The article argues that the Studio Ghibli Art Museum is an attempt to rebrand their hit films as 'art' products, but that the responses of the museum's international users display a tendency to perform a resistant tourist and consumerist gaze within the museum space. This article is an attempt to delve into the complex relationship between anime producers and global consumers, viewing the museum space as one in which the cultural meanings of anime are put to the test."

Koizumi, Kyoko. An animated partnership: Joe Hisaishi's musical contributions to Hayao Miyazaki's films.
In Rebecca Coyle (ed.). Drawn to Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity  (pp. 60-76). London: Equinox.

Niskanen, Eija. Riding through air and water - The relationship between character, background, fantasy and realism in Hayao Miyazaki’s films.
In Eija Niskanen (ed.). Imaginary Japan: Japanese Fantasy in Contemporary Popular Culture (pp. 16-19). Turku, Finland: International Institute for Popular Culture.

Ross, David. Musings on Miyazaki: Early and late. Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 32, 170-176.

"Hayao Miyazaki's films have transformed Japanese animated cinema into a universally beloved art form, and Miyazaki himself has emerged as a sage of environmental consciousness. David A. Ross accesses Miyazaki's films and recently published early writings. He argues that Miyazaki is both more problematic and more intriguing than the usual adulation implies."

2009

Bigelow, Susan. Technologies of perception: Miyazaki in theory and practice. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 4(1), 55-75

"The current Western fascination with Japanese animation can be understood in relation to the experience of the digital in cultural production that opens new avenues of understanding about the self-as-subject. Visualization to engage with the image in interactive, virtual environments involves relinquishing control to recognize the individual as emerging through the unique pattern of their relationships, both human and non-human. This reality is articulated in Eastern philosophical notions of interrelatedness and pre-reflective thinking, what Marshall McLuhan called `comprehensive awareness'. The Japanese animator Miyazaki Hayao draws on a Zen-Shinto religious imaginary to empower the individual to relinquish the self. As an alternative politics to the moral confusion of the post-modern age, his practice demonstrates that Walter Benjamin's gamble with cinema is in play."

2008

Denison, Rayna. Star-spangled Ghibli: Star voices in the American versions of Hayao Miyazaki's films. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3(2), 129-146.

"This article offers an examination of the use of American stars in re-voicing a set of Japanese animated texts. The author argues that a new industrial, contextual and textual understanding of stardom is required to penetrate the dense network of meanings attached to star voices in animation. Furthermore, she utilizes a mixed textual and contextual approach to several of Studio Ghibli's American DVD releases to consider the markets for and meanings of anime in America. In so doing this article represents an intervention into a range of academic debates around the nature of contemporary stardom and the significance of anime in America."

op de Beek, Nathalie. Anime and anime: Environmental perspectives and new frontiers in Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.
In Mark West (ed.). The Japanification of Children's Popular Culture: From Godzilla to Miyazaki (pp. 267-284). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Sorensen, Lars-Martin. Animated animism - the global ways of Japan's national spirits. Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook, 6(1), 181-196.

"This article discusses the tremendous global success of Japanese anime, its uses and negotiations of Japanese religious and nationalist mythology, and the way these features are appropriated domestically and abroad. Emphasis is given to the works of Hayao Miyazaki, whose films have been categorized as ‘de-assuring’ Japaneseness and as promoting an environmentalist agenda. It is discussed whether the indigenous religion, Shinto, which has historically served as a vehicle for nationalism, can be applied to progressive ends unproblematically. The article argues that while the intended meaning of Miyazaki’s films may be to further ecological awareness, another concern of Miyazaki’s, namely to promote traditional cultural values, puts his work at risk of being construed along the lines of contemporary Japanese nationalism. Finally, the broader workings behind the global success of those apparently highly culture-specific films are discussed."

Yamanaka, Hiroshi. The utopian "power to live": What the Miyazaki phenomenon signifies.
In Mark West (ed.). The Japanification of Children's Popular Culture: From Godzilla to Miyazaki (pp. 237-255). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

2007

Niskanen, Eija. Untouched nature, mediated animals in Japanese anime. Wider Screen, 2007/1.

Ota, Carol. Liminal gazes and allegorical quests: Anime of Hayao Miyazaki.
In The Relay of Gazes: Representations of Culture in the Japanese Televisual and Cinematic Experience  (pp. 24-40). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Thomas, Jolyon Baraka. Shukyo asobi and Miyazaki Hayao's anime. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 10(3), 73-95.

"This article attempts to address the lack of terminology concerning the long-standing but often overlooked relationship between religion and entertainment in Japan, arguing that these two seemingly discrete and opposing fields are often conflated. Examining the underlying thought behind the animation films of director Miyazaki Hayao, and investigating audience responses to those works, the article suggests that this conflation—religious entertainment or playful religion—can best be described by the neologism shûkyô asobi. Composed of the words "religion" and "play" in Japanese, shûkyô asobi jettisons the artificial distinction between popular entertainment and religion in favor of describing the common space between them, as well as describing the utilization of that space by various interest groups. This deployment of simultaneously religious and playful media or action can result in the creation of entirely new religious doctrines, interpretations, rituals, and beliefs."

2006

Freiberg, Frida. Miyazaki's heroines. Sense of Cinema, 40.

Gordon, David. Studio Ghibli: Animated Magic. Hackwriters: The International Writers Magazine: Film Space.

Goulding, Jay. Crossroads of experience: Miyazaki Hayao's global/local nexus. Asian Cinema, 17(2), 114-123.

"This paper explores the double folding of time and space in the anime films of Miyazaki Hayao: the past becomes the present and the present becomes the past. Particular attention is paid to Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) and Sen To Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away). Miyazaki entertains a unique Japanese response to the cultural challenges of globalization with the use of Shinto and Buddhist themes. For him, "global goes local" is more than a slogan. In the wake of the influx of American commodity culture in Japan, Miyazaki's films attempt to enact an ironic reversal. Global trends (especially from the West) are themselves "spirited away" and transformed into deep Japanese and Chinese philosophy against a backdrop of local folk culture. Hence, the roots of Japanese heritage emerge through the crossroads of experience: East and West, ancient and modern, old and young, inside and outside." 

2005

Hagiwara, Takao. Globalism and localism in Hayao Miyazaki's anime. The International Journal of the Humanities, 3(9), 7-12

"Exploration of tensions between and synthesis of globalism and localism in Miyazaki anime, and of Miyazaki anime's abilities to control what some critics perceive to be 'runaway globalisation'."

Iles, Timothy. Female voices, male words: Problems of communication, identity and gendered social construction in contemporary Japanese cinema. Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, discussion paper 3 in 2005.

Mayumi, Kozo, Solomon, Barry D., & Chang, Jason. The ecological and consumption themes of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Ecological Economics, 54(1), 1-7.

"Films are an underutilized media to explore and amplify the many messages of ecological economics. While a few popular films and videos have effectively addressed environmental themes, this commentary argues that they have an even greater role to play in the educational process in order to reach a broader audience and help it to rethink its role in the world's ecosystems. Hayao Miyazaki, the masterful animator from Japan, is singled out to offer ample material in many of his popular and children's films to stimulate such critical thinking on the systemic problems addressed by ecological economics."

Wright, Lucy. Forest spirits, giant insects and world trees: The nature vision of Hayao Miyazaki. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 10.

"This article is an exploration of the themes and symbols of Shinto mythology and spiritualism in the early animated feature films of Hayao Miyazaki. In his use of resonant moments of communion with nature, I argue that Miyazaki is cinematically practicing the ancient form of Shinto, which emphasised an intuitive continuity with the natural world. At the same time he is subverting Japan’s cultural myths, such as the myth of an idealised ancient Japan living in harmony with nature, as articulated by kokugaku (National Studies) scholar Moto-ori Norinaga. Miyazaki is a tremendously popular anime director in Japan and his recent film, Spirited Away (2001), won an Academy Award, illustrating his global appeal. His work transforms and reinvigorates the tenets of Shinto, and these are juxtaposed with global culture–inspiration is taken from American science fiction, Greek myths and British children’s literature–to create a hybrid "modern myth" that is accessible (in different ways) to post-industrialised audiences all over the world."

Wright, Lucy & Clode, Jerry. The animated worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: Filmic representations of Shinto. Metro: Australia's Film & Media Magazine, 143, 46-51.

2004

Loy, David & Goodhew, Linda. The dharma of Miyazaki Hayao: Revenge vs. compassion in Nausicaa and Mononoke. Journal of the Faculty of International Studies Bunkyo University, 14(2), 67-75.

Loy, David & Goodhew, Linda. The dharma of nonviolence - Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke.
In The Dharma of Dragons in Daemons: Buddhist Themes in Modern Fantasy (pp. 73-100). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.

Wright, Lucy. Wonderment and awe - the way of the kami. Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 5.

2002

Looser, Thomas. From Edogawa to Miyazaki: Cinematic and anime-ic architectures of early and late twentieth-century Japan. Japan Forum, 14(2), 297-327.

"The influence of Miyazaki Hayao,whose animated films consistently break Japanese film box-office records, and those of Japanese anime in general, is locatable within an increasingly global interest in new media - an interest that is accompanied by a sense that new media are inaugurating new modes of sociality. This is not altogether new: earlier in the twentieth century, for example, Edogawa Rampo depicted the onset of modern conditions in Japan in terms of filmic modes of orientation. This article assumes that both the early and late twentieth century are transformative eras - and, focusing first on an earlier twentieth-century story by Edogawa, and then the late twentieth-century work of Miyazaki (and other anime creators), it views the two eras as a relation between filmic and ' anime -ic' conditions. These conditions do have technical grounds; the article examines claims regarding privileged technologies (the analog versus the digital) and orientations supposedly constructed within these technologies (especially of perspectival depth versus surface 'flatness'). But I also argue that these conditions are systemic (including economic relations) and epistemic, and therefore part of more general shifts in the horizons of everyday life. Juxtaposing the two eras in this way provides a history of sorts, while it also allows for consideration of arguments that new media are somehow emancipatory."

2001

Napier, Susan. Confronting master narratives: History as vision in Miyazaki Hayao's cinema of de-assurance. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 9(2), 467-493.