was a Japanese director, screenwriter and producer. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of Japanese animated feature films.
Born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Takahata joined Toei Animation after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1959. He worked as an assistant director, holding various positions over the years and eventually directing his own film, The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968). Under Nippon Animation he directed the television series Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974), 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother (1976), and Anne of Green Gables (1979). He also collaborated with colleague Hayao Miyazaki on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986).
Takahata, Miyazaki and others formed Studio Ghibli in 1985, where he would direct Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), Pom Poko (1994), and My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999). His last film as director was The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), which was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Animated Feature Film at the 87th Academy Awards.
Personal life
Takahata was born in Ujiyamada (now Ise), Mie Prefecture, Japan, on October 29, 1935, as the youngest of seven siblings and third son in the family. His father, Asajirō Takahata (1888–1984), was a junior high school principal, who became the education chief of Okayama prefecture after the war. On June 29, 1945, when Takahata was nine years old, he and his family survived a major United States air raid on Okayama City. During the raid, Takahata and his sibling were separated from their family for two days, which he called "the worst experience of his life." In 1954, he graduated from Okayama Asahi Prefectural High School and entered the University of Tokyo.
Career Early career Takahata graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1959 with a degree in French literature. During this time at the school, he had seen the French film Le Roi et l'Oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird), which led him to become interested in animation. Takahata was more interested in animation as a medium, and wanted to write and direct for animated works rather than create animations himself. A friend suggested he apply for a directing job at Toei Animation; Takahata passed their entrance exam, and was hired as an assistant director for several of Toei's animated television shows and films including Wolf Boy Ken, on which he was mentored by Yasuo Ōtsuka. Tze-yue G. Hu, author of Frames of Anime, reports that Takahata was one of a small number of university graduates recruited by Toei in 1959 and later trained as animation directors. At Toei, Takahata, Miyazaki, and Michiyo Yasuda were officials in the animation workers' union. Ōtsuka eventually asked Takahata to direct an animated feature film of his own; his directorial debut was The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968). Ōtsuka served as Animation Director on the film, while another Toei employee, Hayao Miyazaki, served as key animator. Toei screened Horus, Prince of the Sun in cinemas for only 10 days. Though it would later be recognized as one of the first defining works of modern Japanese animation, the film was a commercial failure, and Takahata was demoted to an assistant director on TV anime. His later Toei works were Secret Little Akko and Kitaro of GeGeGe.
Unable to further improve his standing at Toei, Takahata left the studio in 1971, along with Miyazaki and Yōichi Kotabe. Takahata and Miyazaki came up with the idea of creating an animated feature film based on the stories of Pippi Longstocking. They developed the idea along with "A Production", an animated studio formed by another former Toei animator, Daikichiro Kusube (the company became Shin-Ei Animation). Zuiyo Enterprise had produced the 1969 Moomin for the Calpis Comic Theater by contracting Tokyo Movie Shinsha, which worked with A Production on the series; this earlier children's-literature adaptation helped make A Production appear to Takahata and Miyazaki as a studio where television animation could support meaningful literary projects rather than routine commercial work. Takahata and Miyazaki had developed a number of storyboards and had flown out to Sweden for location shots, to meet with the books' author, Astrid Lindgren, and secure the rights for the character. However they could not reach an agreement with the rightsholders, and were forced to drop the project. The failed project became an provisional bridge between Takahata's Toei period and his later work in literary television animation. Takahata and Miyazaki collaborated at A Production on several other animation projects from 1971 to 1974, including taking over production of the anime series Lupin III at Ōtsuka's request, due to its poor ratings. They also made Panda! Go, Panda! for TMS around this time, which utilized some of the scenes, character designs, and concepts developed for the Longstocking project. Takahata directed the film, Miyazaki wrote it and designed scene layouts. Takahata tried to make Panda! Go, Panda more audience-friendly than his first directed one. Panda! Go, Panda! and its sequel were commercial successes.
Nippon Animation Not long afterward, Takahata, Kotabe, and Miyazaki were approached by the studio Zuiyo Enterprise to create an animated series based on the novel Heidi, which resulted in Heidi, Girl of the Alps (this also incorporated some of their work from the Pippi Longstocking concept). Takahata gave Heidi, Girl of the Alps a predominantly realistic style, that shows changing seasons, weather, rural work, cooking, and small details of the everyday life in the Alps. Heidi, Girl of the Alps was the sixth and final entry in Calpis Comic Theater. Although the series was successful, Zuiyo entered financial difficulties after Heidi's TV production costs exceeded international sales. In the 1975 reorganization, the financial and rights-holding side remained with Zuiyo. The animation production section of Zuiyo was established as a subsidiary company named Zuiyo Eizo, later becoming Nippon Animation, which Takahata and Miyazaki joined. During this period, He directed three long-form literary adaptations: Heidi, Girl of the Alps, 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, and Anne of Green Gables. He also contributed storyboards to other Zuiyo and Nippon works, including A Dog of Flanders, Monarch: The Big Bear of Tallac, and The Story of Perrine.
3000 Leagues in Search of Mother followed Heidi and had all 52 episodes made with Takahata as director and Miyazaki in charge of layout and scene composition. This series connected Takahata's approach with his interest in Italian neorealism, particularly its focus on children from the working class, their struggles, and their experiences within socio-economic hardships of child labour.
Miyazaki began directing Future Boy Conan for NHK in late 1977, after Takahata refused Nippon's plans to direct The Story of Perrine. Animétudes states that Takahata's refusal led Miyazaki, Yōichi Kotabe, Oh! Production, and other artists to avoid Perrine, opening the way for Miyazaki's directorial debut on Future Boy Conan. Takahata assisted Miyazaki with storyboards, direction, and he wrote episodes from 7 to 13.
By turning down Perrine, Takahata had little choice but to accept the next assignment that came his way, which was: Anne of Green Gables. Though initially thought unadaptable for animation, being "full of dialogue, lacking in dramatic developments and narrative shifts Thus Takahata directed the World Masterpiece Theater adaptation of Anne of Green Gables in 1979. For Anne of Green Gables, Takahata and the production team used location research on Prince Edward Island to reproduce the setting, architecture, and atmosphere of the original novel. A 2015 Ghibli Museum research report identifies Yoshifumi Kondō as animation director on the series and states that Miyazaki, who had participated in screen composition and layout for the first 15 episodes, left Nippon Animation during production and moved to Telecom Animation Film. The move followed Yasuo Ōtsuka's offer to Miyazaki at Nippon Animation after Ōtsuka had been assigned to direct the next theatrical Lupin III film which Miyazaki accepted. Takahata commanded over the screenwriting. He was credited as sole writer on several episodes and co-writer on many others. Producer Junzo Nakajima said that Takahata examined every cut, which contributed to the series' severe production schedule. Disrupted scheduling had a severe effect on the staff's health. Character designer Yoshifumi Kondō refused to quit work while receiving treatment for a serious lung disease, refusing hospitalization to finish the series. Art director Masahiro Ioka regularly operated on a loop of sleep deprivation to personally redraw, correct, and hand-paint massive volumes of background art under tight weekly deadlines. During this decade, Takahata directed and storyboarded long-form literary adaptation.
After Anne ended in 30 December 1979, Takahata left Nippon in early 1980. He joined Kotabe, Okuyama, and Miyazaki at Telecom Animation Film. He began work on Jarinko Chie in September 1980, releasing it in April 1981.
Telecom Animation Film Around 1980, Takahata left Nippon to join Telecom Animation Film Co., Ltd. (a subsidiary of Tokyo Movie Shinsha or TMS Entertainment), where he led production of an animated feature based on the manga Jarinko Chie, and a subsequent television spinoff. Animation work on the film began in September 1980, and it was released in April 1981. During the same period, Takahata also wrote and directed Gauche the Cellist, a 1982 animated feature based on Kenji Miyazawa's short story Gauche the Cellist. It surfaced Takahata's demanding, observational style. Takahata's focused on realistic musical performance. The project relied on a small core staff, primarily background artist Takamura Mukuo and key animator Shunji Saida from Oh! Production. Production extended the 63-minute film's production to six years. Key animator Saida went to learn to play cello so that Gauche's fingering could be animated without mistakes. Around 1982, Telecom came up with the idea of an animated feature film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland which adapted the Little Nemo comic, which was to feature joint direction between Japanese and American animation techniques. The project had been pursued since 1978, when producer Yutaka Fujioka, founder of TMS Entertainment, approached George Lucas about a film adaptation; Lucas and later Chuck Jones found problems with the narrative, before the project was announced in 1982 and Gary Kurtz was hired into directing the American side. The project was developed as a Japanese-American co-production and involved figures including Ray Bradbury, Gary Kurtz, Moebius, Frank Thomas, and Ollie Johnston. While both Takahata and Miyazaki were originally involved, they opted to leave the project and Telecom itself due to discord between the Japanese and American project directions. More specifically, Miyazaki left Telecom in November 1982 after his proposals for the project were rejected, and Takahata, who succeeded him as the Japanese-side director, also left in March 1983 after Kurtz rejected his direction plan.
Studio Ghibli