From Japan to Switzer­land: Discov­er­ing the universe of Isao Taka­hata

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Isao Taka­hata is the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, the studio that, for example, created the famous char­ac­ter Totoro. He was born in 1935 in Mie Prefec­ture, in the south of Honshū, the largest island in Japan. When he was nine years old, during the Second World War, the Okayama Prefec­ture where he lived was bombed by the Amer­ic­ans. He and his sister had to flee and were very frightened. This exper­i­ence influ­enced his world­view and the way he tells stor­ies.

After high school, Isao Taka­hata stud­ied French liter­at­ure at the Univer­sity of Tokyo. One day, he went to the cinema to see The Curi­ous Adven­tures of Mr. Wonder­bird (1952). It was the first French anim­ated feature film (i.e. a film longer than one hour). This would change his life: this discov­ery impressed him so much that he decided to become a director. This may be surpris­ing because he was not an illus­trator. However, the role of a director is to choose how to tell a story rather than draw it directly: he coordin­ates the trans­form­a­tion of an idea into a visual work. He chooses the style, atmo­sphere, and rhythm of the film.

Isao Taka­hata began work­ing in a major Japan­ese studio. There he met a bril­liant illus­trator, Hayao Miyazaki, with whom he became friends. They would work together through­out their lives. Their first film, Little Norse Prince Vali­ant (1968), tells the fantasy story of a young boy who tries to save his village, which is attacked by a demon. After its release, the two colleagues left the studio and worked on another film. For this one, they created a char­ac­ter who would become very famous in Japan: the panda from Panda! Go, Panda! (1972).

They were then offered the oppor­tun­ity to adapt into a tele­vi­sion series the adven­tures of Switzer­land’s most famous girl: Heidi! In this novel, Heidi, an orphaned girl, is entrus­ted by her aunt to her grand­father, a solit­ary man living in a remote chalet in the Swiss Alps. The book was trans­lated into Japan­ese and widely read. Taka­hata, Miyazaki, and their colleagues wanted to create a real­istic portrayal of Switzer­land and there­fore decided to travel there. This was the first time an anim­a­tion team conduc­ted on-site research. They visited vari­ous places, includ­ing the Swiss moun­tains, to under­stand how people lived there. And it worked, as the Heidi series became a huge success, includ­ing in Switzer­land.

Taka­hata and Miyazaki now had well-estab­lished careers. They were there­fore able to real­ize their dream in 1985: they foun­ded their own studio, Studio Ghibli. There, Taka­hata direc­ted films that achieved enorm­ous success in Japan and around the world. In Grave of the Fire­flies (1988), he tells the story of two chil­dren during the Second World War, a narrat­ive close to his own exper­i­ence. The film depicts the extremely diffi­cult real­it­ies of war, as well as the love between a brother and sister who do everything they can to support each other.

Taka­hata had a strong idea: for him, anim­a­tion should speak about the real world. His films portray emotions, every­day life, human rela­tion­ships… everything that makes up real life, even when it is diffi­cult.

The film Pom Poko (1994) is set in the Tama Hills, just outside Tokyo. This is where tanuki live. They must fight against an enorm­ous construc­tion project that threatens their habitat. Tanuki are char­ac­ters from Japan­ese folk­lore, inspired by real anim­als found in Japan. Isao Taka­hata’s final film, The Tale of The Prin­cess Kaguya (2013), tells the story of a humble couple of wood­cut­ters who discover a tiny baby inside a bamboo stalk. They raise her as their own daugh­ter, but Kaguya is not an ordin­ary child. This film is an adapt­a­tion of the oldest known Japan­ese folk­tale.

Isao Taka­hata passed away in 2018, but his films continue to move and inspire millions of view­ers. At the mudac, you can discover his work as well as all the stages of anim­a­tion film creation, from the project and script to the story­board and final draw­ings.

This article was writ­ten in collab­or­a­tion with Carré Pointu, the small journal that is seri­ously funny.