Miyazaki was an avid reader from his earliest years, something he attributes to his mother. His interest in animated film was sparked in school when he saw Hakudahen, the first full-length colour animated film produced in Japan. Already an artist accomplished at depicting aircraft and ships, Miyazaki turned his attention to capturing the human form. 

Miyazaki studied political science and economics at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, and joined a literature club that would today be recognised as a group for fans of manga or anime. After graduating in 1963, he started work at Toei Animation as an artist on the animated series Watchdog Woof Woof. 

Working on another project the following year, Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon, Miyazaki took the bold step of informing his superiors that the ending to the short film did not work and proposed an alternative conclusion. His colleagues agreed and he was soon being given additional responsibility for titles. 

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Miyazaki moved to the A Pro studio in 1971 and was joint director of six episodes of the Lupin III television series, which was developed in 1979 into his first full-length feature title, based on the Lupin tales and titled The Castle of Cagliostro.

He honed his skills further on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the first film that Miyazaki both wrote and directed, and which gave him free rein to explore some of the themes that have featured consistently in his works, including pacifism, environmental concerns and feminism. The film was a success at the box office on its release in 1984. 

On the back of the acclaim for Nausicaa, which was distributed by Toei, Miyazaki and long-time collaborator Isao Takahata decided to set up Studio Ghibli the following year. Takahata is a respected and prolific director in his own right. The third member of the founding team was producer Toshio Suzuki. 

Headquartered in the Tokyo suburb of Koganei and with a staff of just 150, the company takes its name from the Italian noun ghibli, which in turn is based on the Libyan Arabic word for a hot desert wind. Asked about the meaning behind the studio name, Miyazaki has said that he hoped it would be a “new wind” that would blow through the anime industry. 

Castle in the Sky was the studio’s first release, in August 1986, but it was the second Ghibli movie that really caught the public’s attention. My Neighbor Totoro came out in April 1988, with the round and fluffy character Totoro quickly capturing hearts – and being adopted as the company logo.

The film won three domestic awards for anime and attracted a cult following around the world, with Time Out magazine ranking it the best ever animated film. It took more than US$41 million at the box office and US$277 million in home video sales. Licensed merchandise sales earned the title a further US$1.14 billion. 

Between them, the output of Miyazaki and Takahata has been prolific. Studio Ghibli released at least one full-length feature film a year between 1988 and 1995, including such instant classics as Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Princess Mononoke.

Roland Kelts, a lecturer on popular culture at Tokyo’s Waseda University and author of Japanamerica: How Japanese pop culture has invaded the US, says the appeal of Studio Ghibli titles is easy to explain.

“This is, without a doubt, some of the most beautiful animation ever done anywhere in the world,” he said. “And that is just talking about the craft and art form in each of the films. The stories are also completely fresh; I saw Spirited Away for the umpteenth time recently and even now I notice something new in the images and the storytelling.

“So at the core we have this beautiful, hand-drawn art work and refreshingly delightful characters and stories; it’s not really a surprise that it has such a following,” he said – adding that on visits to the offices of animation studio Pixar, where Miyazaki is revered as a master of his trade, Totoro “plushies” are much in evidence. 

Nick Park, of Britain’s Aardman Animations and the creator of Wallace and Gromit, is another huge fan of Studio Ghibli’s work, Kelts said, while John Lasseter, the former creative chief of industry giants Pixar and Disney Animation, was instrumental in convincing the judges of the Oscars that more emphasis needed to be placed on animated movies – and championed Miyazaki’s work. In 2003, Spirited Away won the Oscar for best animated feature film.

To date, four of the top 10 Japanese-made animated films are Studio Ghibli titles and five of its films have been nominated for an Oscar. 

Yet the competition has begun to pick up in recent years, Kelts points out, with Demon Slayer shattering box office records late last year and supplanting Spirited Away as the top-grossing domestic film of all time. Another animated film, Your Name, also fared well at home and abroad, underlining the scale of the challenge that Studio Ghibli faces to keep ahead of the competition. 

Studio Ghibli sales last year were less than one-tenth of the figure the company reported in 2001, according to the Association of Japanese Animations, although this has prompted the company to look at new opportunities and revenue streams.

The Ghibli Museum, in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, has been a popular destination for fans of the titles since opening in October 2001, while the company performed an about-face last year and announced that it would license its back catalogue to major streaming platforms such as HBO and Netflix. 

Miyazaki has in the past indicated his disdain for animation that is not drawn by hand – in an interview he granted me in 2015, Miyazaki lamented changes in the industry, saying: “We no longer use watercolours and soon production of poster colours for backgrounds is going to halt. I cannot find good brushes any more and the quality of drawing paper has declined. It seems the world has fundamentally changed.”

But the company appears to have also relented on this point. The Earwig and the Witch is the studio’s 21st full-length anime title but is only the second to be released as a television special. Shown on terrestrial television in Japan in December, it was also Ghibli’s first film produced without the input of the studio’s founders or older artists, while it is also the first to be made entirely in 3D with computer graphics design. 

Given the challenges that the industry is facing, it is also little surprise that Studio Ghibli has decided to build on the popularity of its Tokyo museum, revealing some of the details of the plans for a Ghibli theme park close to Nagoya in central Japan. The blueprints for the park show life-size replicas of Howl’s castle and a village from Princess Mononoke. 

Work has already commenced at the 7.1-hectare site and it is due to open to the public in the autumn of 2022, with additional sections opening over the following year. The company is investing 34 billion yen (US$312 million) in the park, which will also include a replica of the town from Kiki’s Delivery Service. 

The company has not released figures for anticipated visitor numbers, but it is all but certain that the park will contribute significantly to the company’s bottom line, with its location also lending itself to further expansion in the future. And it’s inconceivable that Totoro will not be in attendance.