Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki had great respect and admiration for each other. Hence this absolutely magical meeting between the two organized by Nippon TV in 1993.
There are absolutely magical encounters and sequences that swell the heart of the movie buff in each of us. But above all, sequences immortalized on video, like this interview between two immense talents of the 7th Art: Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki, unearthed by the X account @DepressedBergman. The two sacred monsters discuss the importance of storyboarding in their respective works.
“Do you draw them after you write your script?” Miyazaki asked. “Most of the time, yes, but sometimes it’s at the same time” Kurosawa replies. Who adds: “it’s very strange, in my youth, I wanted to be a designer, my dream was to have my own shop in Paris. [..] I had the opportunity to give a conference at the Louvre Museum in Paris, I said “I’m not a professional drawing artist!”
Mr. Umehara [NDR : Umehara Ryûzaburô, très célèbre peintre japonais mort en 1986] said my drawings were brilliant. The thing is, I never tried to be good when I did storyboards. I just draw them with the perspective of making a film.”
My Neighbor Totoro, one of Kurosawa’s favorite films
Kurosawa and Miyazaki had very high regard and admiration for each other. Kurosawa will also tell the master of Studio Ghibli that one of his favorite films was My Neighbor Totoro. While the latter slipped The 7 Samurai among his ten favorite films.
In fact, the sequence where the two masters talk about storyboarding is a short extract from a documentary broadcast on Nippon TV (NTV) in 1993, which then had the idea of bringing the two legends together for a long discussion. You can see this wonderful video footage here.
The channel sent Miyazaki to Kurosawa as part of a program called Miyazaki meets Kurosawa. While Miyazaki finished making his classic Porco Rosso in 1992, Kurosawa’s final film, Madadayo, was released a month before they met.
Miyazaki-San moved
It was during this same discussion that Kurosawa spoke of his love of My Neighbor Totoro, citing the film as an example of what he could never have achieved as a live-action filmmaker, envious of the freedom that the art of animation offered Miyazaki.
A confession that leaves the always modest Miyazaki moved. “The fact is that I grew up in the city… right after the war… when my only perception of Japan was that it was a poor and desperate country. At least that’s what we were told always said. It was only after my first trip abroad that I began to appreciate Japan’s natural environment.”