To understand Totoro and his story, it's necessary to know who is behind his creation: the visionary director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, the animation studio that brought to life some of the most beloved works in the history of Japanese animation.
Hayao Miyazaki is considered one of the greatest animation directors of all time. Born in Tokyo in 1941, he studied economics at the University of Tokyo before entering the world of animation in 1963, working as an entry-level animator at Toei Animation, a division of the Toei studio and Asia’s largest producer of animation (Ray, 2025). After working in various animation studios in the 60s and 70s, he gained international recognition with films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), which effectively anticipated the founding of Studio Ghibli.
The founding of Studio Ghibli thus marked the beginning of the series of successes that characterized Miyazaki's career, leading him to establish himself as one of the greatest animation directors of all time and receive many awards, including two Oscars for Best Animated Feature with Spirited Away (2001) and The Boy and the Heron (2023), as well as an honorary Academy Award for his career.
Miyazaki's style perfectly blends the fantasy of his works with real-world themes. In his films, many references to the futility and brutality of war can be found, as well as various plots related to his personal life, especially his early years. Miyazaki's father was an airplane engineer and contributed to the creation of the famous Zero Fighter planes, passing this passion down to his son (Verbeck, 2023). There are many Miyazaki films in which the director indulges in creating fantastic aircraft, such as in Porco Rosso (1992), or where he even draws on his father's personal story, as in The Wind Rises (2013). Miyazaki's mother, on the other hand, suffered from spinal tuberculosis, an illness that confined her to a hospital bed for eight years during most of the director's childhood (Verbeck, 2023). This story forms the basis of the concept for My Neighbor Totoro (1988), where the two protagonists have to move to the countryside specifically to be near the hospital where their mother is hospitalized.
Miyazaki has always stood out for his unique, sometimes elusive, character. The documentary 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki (2019), directed by NHK World Japan, follows his life from 2006 to 2016, demonstrating both his passion for his work – “This isn’t work. It’s fun.” – (From ep. 1 of the documentary 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki), but also his struggles, the stress involved in his work, his constant self-questioning, and also the difficult and complicated relationship with his son (NHK WORLD, 2019). Many of these themes were revisited and transformed into a fantasy story in what he declared to be the final film of his career, The Boy and the Heron (2023), where he retraces many autobiographical aspects, from his early childhood, to references to his countless films, to his relationship with his mother and especially with his son, and the search for a conceptual heir.
Image credit: Imdb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12221602/