I read an odd entry in my Twitter feed the other morning. Not unusual for a forum dedicated to misinformed celebrity rants and the beekeepers that idolize them, but what struck me about this tweet was that it came from the account of Hayao Miyazaki, He that is Deus in the Machina at Ghibli Studios, and dare I say… a generally uplifting and motivational Twitterer. Bear in mind the Japanese language is composed of ideographs, so 140 characters can read like an American paragraph. Nonetheless, this morning I read this:
@Miyasan_bot:
They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for. In our last hurrah we borrow from outside staff (i.e. outsource), but soon we won’t be able to do that forever.
OK, now mind you, Miyazaki’s been talking a lot about the end of anime on Twitter lately. Sort of the same way people are decrying the end of print publishing. He’s not giving up on animation but suggesting it might be best to face up to the fleeting nature of all things. Yes, his micro-wisdoms border on sermonic.
So what I found interesting in this tweet was the casual observation that a sign of decline was that only women are responding to job solicits. He wasn’t trying to say anything about women. He was saying it’s over for Japanese animation. The bit about women was just a bit, but the mumble was deafening.
So I mustered some courage and replied to him.
@ill_iterate:
Really, @miyasan_bot?
I didn’t get a response per se… A few hours later, I saw this in my feed:
A five-part transcript of the whole statement from which he’d excerpted the top line earlier in the morning. The full statement is from a lengthy interview in Eiga pia (Movie Peer) magazine
@miyasan_bot:
Part 1:
They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for. In our last hurrah we’ll borrow from outside staff, to lend a hand but we can’t do that forever.Part 2:
These are not reasons for me to take production to China. I don’t want to deplete Japan in that way. So, what do we do?Part 3:
(Ghibli Studios) has been resolved to rowing the boat altogether as a team and giving it our all, while everyone around us is jet-propelled with new technology and running at full-speed. We still illustrate with pen and paper. I say we continue to give this our all, together.Part 4:
I counter the point some make that we’re in an age where you’ll find women driving buses by asking if it’s ok to have women all over cotton mills. (LOL)Part 5:
I think it would be great to see a female animation director, but as far as Ghibli’s concerned, I can’t think of a single one for us. So what about newcomers? Well, I believe women are incredibly fast-learners and self-starters. If you look at men, even today, they develop much slower.
I’ll cut to the chase: What do I see in the full statement? More obfuscation of the glass ceiling, but a genuine interest in seeing it shattered.
The first part of his quintweet is sort of unfortunate as there’s not doubt about it. He just said: women in the employment queue bum me out. Chauvnism is colorblind, deaf, and a little obnoxious, but well, let’s see what else he’s saying.
In Part 2 of the quintweet, Miyazaki calls out the harsh realities of competing with China for animators and technology. It’s a problem in just about every industry outside of the People’s Republic. From textile manufacturing to bootlegging Apple retail, we the people of everywhere else is kung-fucked. I empathize as my bootleg Apple store doesn’t stand a chance against theirs.
In Part 3 Miyazaki explains how Ghibli’s work is a labor of love. As much a labor as the biggest animation production company in Japan whose American distributor is Disney (one of the biggest media companies in the world) can be. Though it is really beautiful that they work in analog. I mean that. No one watches Pixar to see peach-shaped marhsmallow humanoids. No, we fell with the kid from Up because he was part of a good story.
Part 4 is as baffling as it is evocative to me. Miyazaki’s recapitulating his point about evening the status by playing devil’s advocate to some truism that “women are even driving buses now.” I’ve never thought of it that way, but (thinking…) yeah I guess it’s sort of a man’s world behind that huge steering wheel in Japan. In New York City I think every third bus driver I’ve encountered has been female but it just goes to show… Strange where we engender jobs, isn’t it?
Moreover, to counter the observation on female bus drivers by suggesting labor-equality can turn be flipped and end us up with sweatshops full of women begs the question… has Miyazaki picked up a newspaper in the last decade? These cotton mills ARE populated by women. This statement is what baffled me most particularly. Cotton mills? I’m hoping it’s
lost in translation. Hoping cotton mills is Japanese for Dick Shop. And yet…
there is no mistaking “LOL” which I’m positive is the correct translation of (laughter):
My conclusion from Part 4 of the Quintweet is that for Miyazaki, status quo is an issue that starts with the basic tenet that women do work at all. Amazing to think the studio responsible for so many phenomenal heroins doesn’t think women actually earn their keep in modern professions. Actually I take that back. Nausicaa is an animist warrior; Chihiro and Ponyo are both children, as are Totoro’s neighbors. The closest thing to a working professional woman in Ghibli films is a witch who delivers packages from a bakery. [Note: I LOVE all these films and still think primary, secondary and all tertiary female characters could categorically kick every female animated Disney character in the proverbial “Pocahontas”.]
And finally, Part 5. “Show me the women!” he says. Damn straight. And this is the variable that changes my perspective on the entire argument against his seeming indifference to the glass ceiling. Women are fast learners. Men are comparatively late-bloomers. Get a leg up, women! Get out of the cotton mills, stop driving all those buses and start rowing this boat to nowhere.
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Anne Ishii says:
Amazing to think the studio responsible for so many phenomenal heroins doesn’t think women actually earn their keep in modern professions. Actually I take that back. Nausicaa is an animist warrior; Chihiro and Ponyo are both children, as are Totoro’s neighbors. The closest thing to a working professional woman in Ghibli films is a witch who delivers packages from a bakery…
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Puh-leeze! The co-owner of that bakery is a woman. Mebbe the women who work — and build guns! — in the Iron Town of “Princess Mononoke,” (put together and run by Lady Eboshi) don’t qualify as “working professional[s],” but their labor is hardly considered trivial.
In “Porco Rosso” there is “Gina, who runs a sea pilots’ club and hotel in the Adriatic Sea. The plot revolves around Porco’s friendship with a girl named Fio, who is a talented aircraft engineer”; Porco “enlists the aid of the owner’s granddaughter, Fio, along with a workforce of female relatives, to work on redesign and repair of [his] plane.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porco_Rosso )
In “Howl’s Moving Castle,” the heroine is “Sophie, a hatter, is a responsible and beautiful 18-year-old girl, though she does not perceive herself as such, who runs her late father’s hat shop,” among other women hat makers. “Madame Suliman [is] the royal court’s magician,” a substantial power in her own right, more commanding than the King; at the end, it’s she who says words to the effect of, “call the ministers together; it’s time to end this foolish war.”
Miyazaki — whom his brother described as a “Mama’s boy” — is all too rare in the richness and variety of his women characters, ranging from “one of [Kiki’s] friends, a young painter named Ursula, [who] invites her to stay in her forest cottage,”{ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki%27s_Delivery_Service ), to the older women in that movie and in “Ponyo,” who are splendidly and affectionately characterized.
As to that “deafening mumble”…
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Hayao Miyazaki says:
They say it’s over for animation in Japan. When we look for new hires only women respond, and I get the feeling that we’re done for.
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Could Miyazaki be saying that men (in this society as well as Japan), routinely more ambitious in the careers they seek (look at the male-to-female proportions between doctors and nurses, for instance), no longer consider animation a field worth pursuing work in?
And that only those with “lowered expectations,” who don’t expect to get the top-of-the-line jobs, are bothering to apply for animation jobs?
Therefore he’s bemoaning that the prestige of animation as a career has substantially declined, not that “isn’t it awful, that we are flooded with would-be animator women”?
(One can imagine a modern-day military recruiter likewise depressed at the decline in the appeal of a career in the U.S. Armed Forces — http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/06/01/fewer_high_quality_army_recruits/ — and how it’s now seen more as a “job of last resort,” or — a widely noted motivation — a “necessary evil” in order to get a college education that would otherwise be out of reach.)
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Anne’s quite clear that Miyazaki’s female characters are very strong. But I think she’s also right that his comments about women here show a fairly unthinking denigration of women. His elaboration of his comments certainly doesn’t make me think that the most charitable interpretation of his remarks is the most likely one.
The point isn’t that he’s a horrible person, or that he’s a misogynist pig. It’s that he’s someone in whom misogyny and something that sounds a lot like feminism are mixed together.
I don’t know. For me it’s both somewhat depressing and somewhat inspiring. James Loewen said about Lincoln something like, if Lincoln could be racist (which he certainly was), we all can be racist. And if Lincoln could transcend his racism (as he certainly did at times), so can we. I think that applies to Anne’s account of Miyazaki and sexism here as well.
Incredible to thing a creator of such independant strong women, only thinks of it possible in fiction. Dear Hayao, you’ll get so kicked in the head by a woman some day. YOU BET!
He doesn’t think it’s just possible in fiction though, it doesn’t look like. He says women are better than men in his fuller response….
There’s misogyny there, but there’s feminism too….
I think a lot of it is definitely lost in translation for me. I don’t understand the parameters of Japanese sexism enough; I want to know why it bums him out that women are the only ones in the queue, and without that the rest eludes me. Does he not like working with women? Does he think if there are women in the boat the men won’t work as hard or as well, (a la the US military’s old oppositions to integration)? Does he think feminized professions are still marginalized ones (a la Mike’s point)? If women are fast-learners and self-starters, what is it that he thinks is wrong with them?
Distortion and exaggeration
Definitely and totally.
Kazuya, you need to be a bit clearer than that. Who’s distorting and exaggerating what?
To clarify the bus driving/cotton factory tweet, he is saying: We’re in an era where women are driving buses, so [Studio Ghibli] can become a factory where women are the majority, like a cotton factory. LOL.
My $0.02 as a woman who worked as an animator in Japan is that women are treated with more gentleness in the workplace. People actually make sure that their female employees stay healthy and take the day off when they’re sick. Animation studios are notorious for overworking their employees near a deadline, Ghibli especially. I think the sexism here isn’t that women can’t do the job, but that he doesn’t want to treat them as badly as he does his current employees.
Arisa, Thanks for the clarification. That makes more sense of everything, rhetorically, ontologically, politically.
I think Arisa’s idea and an elaboration on Mike’s theory work best (i.e. that he thinks that a creative profession which doesn’t attract both sexes can only be in its death throes). Arisa’s idea works because Miyazaki has a reputation for being a hard taskmaster (I think). Anyone’s guess if this says more about his real world bluntness or chauvinism. He’s old enough to be both.
Both in Porco Rosso and Mononoke, the women workers are praised for their courage and dedication, and generally for the quality of their work. But the fact that they HAVE to work is seen as illustrative of a problematic situation.
In PR, it’s the militarization of Italy which forces most men into military service and takes them away from the ‘real’ activities they should be practicing, while in Mononoke, Eboshi’s radical feminism can be interpreted as part of her (eventually destructive) obsession with modernization. In both movies, characters point out how unnatural it is to have women do these jobs.
I think Miyazaki is perfectly aware of feminine talent, if only from the very strong women in his working environment. But as a (elderly) Japanese, he probably also feels that if women start multiplying in the workplace, it means that somewhere, something has failed.
Maybe there are some elements of answer in the collection “Starting Point”.
Thanks for your insider’s insight, Arisa!
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Arisa says:
…Animation studios are notorious for overworking their employees near a deadline, Ghibli especially. I think the sexism here isn’t that women can’t do the job, but that he doesn’t want to treat them as badly as he does his current employees.
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Which sort of ties in with my earlier comment about changes in military recruiting. Women soldiers are likewise treated more gently by their officers, are far less likely to be placed in harm’s way. (The fact that men are considered more “disposable” by the public, that women GIs coming home in body bags would be more upsetting to the masses than men doing so, surely helps play a part…)
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Josselin says:
Both in Porco Rosso and Mononoke, the women workers are praised for their courage and dedication, and generally for the quality of their work. But the fact that they HAVE to work is seen as illustrative of a problematic situation.
In PR, it’s the militarization of Italy which forces most men into military service and takes them away from the ‘real’ activities they should be practicing, while in Mononoke, Eboshi’s radical feminism can be interpreted as part of her (eventually destructive) obsession with modernization. In both movies, characters point out how unnatural it is to have women do these jobs.
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Are the Italian women doing the “Rossa the Riveter” routine shown as unhappy about not doing their “real work,” unsuited for it? No, they DELIGHT in it, eagerly do a great job.
The women in Iron Town were mostly prostitutes whom Lady Eboshi gave the opportunity to work there instead. Is it a “problematic situation” that they “HAVE to work”?
And yeah, looking at the sorry expanse of human history, it’s more “unnatural…to have women do these [factory-type] jobs” than to be prostitutes, or unpaid servants for some lazy guy and spoiled brats.
Does Miyazaki indicate that these women should instead have been doing their traditional tasks?
If he had anti-feminist bias, it’s not enough that some “characters point out how unnatural it is to have women do these jobs”; his story and direction would push that attitude, emphasize its “rightness.”
(In the same fashion as Hollywood and TV regularly show hard-charging career women as lonely, unhappy, isolated; unfulfilled, unlike the happy wedded breeders they’re contrasted to.)
Instead, the characters who express those viewpoints are shown as louts, fools, or ignorantly sexist (and at least open to being corrected), like Porco. Miyazaki’s women are routinely shown as boisterous, confident; stronger than the men.
When a traditionally “feminine” woman appears in his films, they’re either minor characters or a not-too-flattering caricature, like the fluttery mother of Sophie in “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
Some more strong women in Miyazaki’s movies: Lisa, the mother in Ponyo, who is a dedicated caretaker for the elderly, and braves a storm to make sure they’re all right; princess Kushana in “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,” like Lady Eboshi and Yubaba (in “Spirited Away”), no two-dimensional villains, but admirable in many ways…
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…Miyazaki…probably also feels that if women start multiplying in the workplace, it means that somewhere, something has failed.
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It’s not that there are more women in the animation workplace that he fretted about; but that there are no men: “When we look for new hires only women respond…”
Pretty sure “miyasan_bot” is not actually Miyazaki but rather some fan has set up an unofficial account which automatically posts quotes from his interviews/writings. It’s a big thing on Japanese Twitter it seems. So effectively you’re talking to a spam-bot, good luck with that. :)
http://blog.japantimes.co.jp/japan-pulse/theyve-got-a-twitter-bot-for-that/
Shouldn’t we just look for the most obvious explanation. It is a bad sign when men are no longer attracted to a carreer in animation. It is a clear signal that men think there is no future in it. It is just an observation of reality. It does not say anything bad about women.
But if women are going into animation and men are not, doesn’t that mean there’s a future for animation with women? Why then is that a problem? Why are male artists more important to the health of anime than female artists?
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Tim Drage says:
…So effectively you’re talking to a spam-bot, good luck with that. :)
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…It would probably be more open to being reasoned with than some of the folks I’ve had online debates with!
(Thanks for the info…)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
But if women are going into animation and men are not, doesn’t that mean there’s a future for animation with women? Why then is that a problem? Why are male artists more important to the health of anime than female artists?
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By that same thinking, then, one could argue — about how guys vastly outnumber dames in comics — “Why then is that a problem? Why are female artists more important to the health of comics than male artists?”
(“Oh, but that’s completely different…”)
As I wrote earlier…
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Could Miyazaki be saying that men (in this society as well as Japan), routinely more ambitious in the careers they seek (look at the male-to-female proportions between doctors and nurses, for instance), no longer consider animation a field worth pursuing work in?
And that only those with “lowered expectations,” who don’t expect to get the top-of-the-line jobs, are bothering to apply for animation jobs?
Therefore he’s bemoaning that the prestige of animation as a career has substantially declined, not that “isn’t it awful, that we are flooded with would-be animator women”?
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If a particular creative field is not considered particularly profitable or prestigious, therefore top talent (with a few obsessed exceptions who are driven to pursue that particular path) will go elsewhere.
Look at the decline in the money and fame available to modern-day newspaper comics artists; is it just a coincidence that the talent working there, with a few exceptions, is nowadays overall utterly mediocre when compared to the heyday of the comic strip?
“…It would probably be more open to being reasoned with than some of the folks I’ve had online debates with!”
– haha too true, I know the feeling :)
It’s fairly different because there are answers to the question of why women don’t go into (superhero) comics) which have to do with sexism. What’s the alternative answer in anime? Men are systematically excluded? Or does Miyazaki feel that an industry without men isn’t serious?
It’s not clear what he thinks, but I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that (a) it’s not clear what he’s thinking and (b) there are reasonable ways to interpret his remarks which are not entirely flattering to him.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
It’s fairly different because there are answers to the question of why women don’t go into (superhero) comics) which have to do with sexism.
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Yes; it’s sexist prejudice barring women from going into superhero comics!
Because there are so many women eager for the chance to write & draw adolescent power-fantasies of musclebound guys in tights power-blasting and punching each other out!
I haven’t checked to confirm, but I’ve a sneaking suspicion that magazines focusing on cars, guns, and war are likewise overfilled with male writers.
Sexism must be to blame there too; editors and publishers banning all those masses of women obsessed with cars, guns, and war from contributing to their publications.
Because to admit that women as a group (note the qualifier) have different interests than most males, and would not find those subjects appealing, would be…sexist!
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It’s not clear what [Miyazaki] thinks, but I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that (a) it’s not clear what he’s thinking…
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Not that it stopped some from assuming he’s actually a sexist pig, who can only deal with strong women in fictional fantasy scenarios…
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…and (b) there are reasonable ways to interpret his remarks which are not entirely flattering to him.
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Sure, one could.
But, when a remark — whether through the chopped-up nature of a tweet (which apparently might have been taken by a spam-bot from a longer remark, as Tim Drage pointed out) or other reasons — is unclear, what is a reasonable way to interpret the remarks is to “consider the source.”
What is the background, past history of this person? In which way have his attitudes on the subject in question run through the years? As amply, comprehensively shown through his whole body of work?
When Sarah Palin said…
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Addressing an unknown person, Palin remarks:
He who warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.
A couple of things are wrong with that interpretation, but one central main point seemed to be lost on Palin: Revere wasn’t warning the British about anything. Indeed, he was warning the Americans about an impending British attack – as his celebrated historical catchphrase “The British are coming!” made abundantly clear.
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http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/6150-sarah-palin-qpaul-revere-warned-the-britishq
Naturally, some liberals (who’d argue to the death for the right of conservatives to stab them in the back) defended Palin as actually indicating a sophisticated awareness that “Americans” per se did not actually exist at the time; that those rebellious colonists Revere was seeking to warn were themselves still British. Her “Revere warned the British” thus making sense.
So, you could either interpret the remarks as further showing Palin to be the addlepated doofus she has repeatedly proved herself to be. Or, as revealing she’s actually a deep thinker!
In making this decision, “consider the source”…
(Alas, Palin’s subsequent comments — http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/jun/06/sarah-palin-paul-revere-british — showed — surprise! — that sophisticated historical perceptions were not at work…)
But women love superhero comics. Sailor Moon was hugely popular. They like superhero movies too, near as I can tell.
Sorry for commenting on a post half a year ago. I only saw this post just now.
I don’t have time to carefully think this over, and I do find Miyazaki’s five-part response baffling without the appropriate context. However I immediately have a gut reaction to Miyazaki’s first tweet, based on the little I understand of him.
I haven’t watched all Miyazaki films, and haven’t yet read his books, so I may be entirely wrong. But my general impression is that he’s a weird crypto-feminist (and a pedophile, but that’s another topic) who believes women to be naturally better than men.
My reading of that tweet is, he’s saying “the current working condition of the anime industry is so harsh, only women are willing to work in it due to various reason, from the socio-political (even worse opportunities and prospects for women in other areas) to the natural (women are tougher and more resilient than men)”, rather than “only women and no men would ruin the industry”.
For him, the Japanese animation industry has been ruined since the 1970s, anyway.
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Miyazaki fans y’all need to collect your grandpa. I love his work but this is some fuckshit.