An interview with Studio Ghibli's Kitaro Kosaka

Written by A. H. on 01 Oct 2014

To celebrate the UK release of The Wind Rises, we're hosting an interview with Studio Ghibli's chief animator Kitaro Kosaka on his experiences working on Hayao Miyazaki's final film. Read on to learn some of the challenges of the project and plenty more besides.

When I was watching The Wind Rises, a lot of the scenes felt like they’d been imagined, specifically, to be the hardest possible scenes to animate. First of all, because of all the wind in the film. Everything seems to be alive. This must have been the most difficult project you have worked on so far?

Kitaro Kosaka: It could be, yes.

What were some of the more difficult things to achieve in the film?

Kitaro Kosaka: People often ask me that. The old Japanese landscape is almost totally gone now. We worked very hard at reconstructing that.

You worked with Miyazaki since Nausicaä. How have his working methods changed since that stage of his career?

Kitaro Kosaka: Basically, nothing has changed. But as he’s getting older, he can’t do what he did when he was young. More specifically, the way he checks the drawings, as a director, has become quite a bit rougher. The films he made earlier in his career, because of the influence of TV series, were edited more in a “one shot = one action” way. But in The Wind Rises, in particular, a single shot is often filled with lots of things happening in it. This has been a gradual trend in his films.

When did you discover it was to be Miyazaki-san’s final film?

Kitaro Kosaka: Well, officially I didn’t know until the press conference. I went on holiday after the film was finished.

But did you suspect while you were working on it? Did it feel like a last film?

Kitaro Kosaka: Yes, I felt it. He wasn’t able to maintain the same concentration as before. And the actual content of his work was also getting... less precise. His checking was getting rougher, so... There was even whispering among the staff that this film might be his last.

What was your reaction, when that was announced?

Kitaro Kosaka: Well, I’d been grateful for all he’d done up until then. He worked harder than anybody else. I felt he’d done more than enough.

Which kind of animation effect in the film are you most proud of? Is there a particular scene or shot that you think represents, purely in terms of the animation, the great high point of the film?

Kitaro Kosaka: Well, in my own opinion... The Japanese townscape from the old days, the bustling scenes of people, going about their lives... I’m really proud that I drew those scenes even better than a live-action film.

I agree, I think the scenes of, the very, very busy street scenes in the direct aftermath of the earthquake sequence are some of the most incredible things that Ghibli has done. When you researched those scenes, did you go back to examine old period photographs or film footage? How do you go about building a sequence that is quite as enormous as that?

Kitaro Kosaka: I think every member of the staff was studying old films or collections of old photos. But I think, basically, Mr. Miyazaki’s own instructions had a big influence on what we did. He was the only one among us who’d lived through that time!