ISAO TAKAHATA
Detail man…
Raised in Okoyama, Isao Takahata (1935-2018) studied French Literature at The University Of Tokyo, where Jacques Prévert’s poetry and Paul Grimault’s animations proved influential. On graduating, he worked at Toei Animation and befriended Hayao Miyazaki, sharing his longing to create far-reaching works. Takahata’s directorial debut, The Little Norse Prince (1968), flopped but secured critical favour and solidified his resolve.
After Toei, Takahata alternated literary realism (Anne Of Green Gables) and fantasy (Panda! Go, Panda!). He continued working with Miyazaki, who changed their lives when Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind – produced by Takahata - helped birth Studio Ghibli. The duo’s subsequent works highlighted key contrasts: Miyazaki made hit adventure Laputa: Castle In The Sky while Takahata meticulously crafted a costly, sprawling doc on canals.
Takahata was an early devotee of fastidious, slowcrafted detail. Miyazaki praised Norse Prince’s psychological ambition but lamented its delays. For The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya, he insisted animators practise cutting melons to animate the slice and speed correctly. The film took eight years to complete.
While Takahata claimed he was “not a genius like Miyazaki”, he had a gift for rendering real feelings as heightened abstraction. With subtlety and sophistication, Grave Of The Fireflies essays a devastating hybrid of wartime history and personal experience. In Only Yesterday, limpid images correlate hazy nostalgia; in My Neighbors The Yamadas, episodic plotting, microscopic detail and open spaces mix to evoke family life’s nuances.
Takahata brought the same finesse to fantastical works such as Pom Poko, an energetic satiri-fantasy with eco-themes. After Yamadas flopped, he took a Ghibli backseat before beginning his final film. Drawn from a Japanese folk tale, Princess Kaguya upholds Takahata’s faith in 2D animation, inviting “viewers to imagine what is behind the images”. Beneath Takahata’s lush command of granular surface detail, deeper truths beckon.