In September 2013, Hayao Miyazaki retired from making feature-length films. Again. Earlier that year, distributor Toho Co. had released Miyazaki’s 11th feature, The Wind Rises, which was expected to be his final film. The legendary, then-72-year-old filmmaker seemed more serious about finally slowing down than he had been about his previous unofficial “retirements.” “I’ve caused a stir before by saying I’m quitting,” he told reporters during a crowded press conference two months after the premiere of The Wind Rises, which went on to become the year’s highest-grossing film in Japan. “So people don’t believe me. But … this time … I mean it.”
Retirement didn’t mean that Miyazaki would give up his work altogether. In the first sentence of his official retirement statement, he even wrote: “I hope to work for 10 more years.” Just about 18 months after the announcement, Miyazaki was back at Studio Ghibli creating a short film to be shown exclusively at the Ghibli Museum in suburban Tokyo, Boro the Caterpillar—Miyazaki’s first project to be crafted primarily through the use of computer-generated animation. And by 2016, the supposed retiree had already decided that he had one more feature-length film left in him: How Do You Live?
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Miyazaki’s 12th film was released in Japan on Friday, 10 years after his formal retirement. Now 82, Miyazaki took longer to finish this movie than any of his previous works. Despite his recent CG experiment with Boro, the animator returned to the rigorous demands of his distinctive hand-drawn process for his latest and—possibly—last film. “We are still hand-drawing everything, but it takes us more time to complete a film because we’re drawing more frames,” producer Toshio Suzuki told Entertainment Weekly through a translator in 2020. “So, there are more drawings to draw than before. Back when we were making [1988’s] My Neighbor Totoro, we only had eight animators. Totoro we made in eight months. [For] the current film that Hayao Miyazaki is working on, we have 60 animators, but we are only able to come up with one minute of animation in a month.”
Although How Do You Live? was once planned for release ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Miyazaki didn’t adhere to an established deadline, as he had with his previous features. And that isn’t the only unique approach that Studio Ghibli took with the new film. In the months, weeks, and days leading up to its release, little to no information about the project was revealed to the press or the general public. Suzuki, who is also the president and cofounder of Studio Ghibli, made the bold decision to forgo marketing the film altogether, eschewing any trailers, TV commercials, or even newspaper ads. As he explained to Japanese magazine Bungei Shunju in early June: “Deep down, I think this is what moviegoers latently desire.”
Beyond a smattering of mentions by Suzuki and Miyazaki, the only promotion for the film leading up to its release in Japan was a single poster:
Here’s what was known: How Do You Live? is inspired by a 1937 Japanese novel written by Genzaburo Yoshino. Yoshino’s novel is a coming-of-age story about a young boy learning to process the world after the death of his father, and it’s said to be a childhood favorite of Miyazaki’s. However, Suzuki suggested that the film would be an original story, one he described as “fantasy on a grand scale.” In the weeks preceding the film’s release, a few other tidbits surfaced: a running time (124 minutes), a report that the film would be Studio Ghibli’s first simultaneous release in IMAX, and confirmation that longtime Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi had returned to compose the score. That was pretty much it.
It’s exceedingly rare, and risky, for a studio to take such a secretive tack with a major theatrical release—especially one that could be the final feature for one of the greatest living filmmakers. But Studio Ghibli has employed unconventional approaches to promoting—or not promoting— previous releases, often to great effect. Without Suzuki’s instincts and marketing tactics, the studio might never have become a global brand.
At Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki has directed some of the most critically acclaimed animated films ever created—and in Japan, some of the most commercially successful, too. In 1997, Princess Mononoke became the highest-grossing domestic film of all time. It held that crown until 2001, when Miyazaki’s next film was released. Spirited Away held Japan’s box office record for 19 years before it was finally supplanted by 2020’s Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. However, before those massive hits expanded the studio’s global reach and all but ensured its survival and prosperity, Ghibli was once on the brink of collapse.
In Suzuki’s 2018 autobiography, Mixing Work With Pleasure: My Life at Studio Ghibli (translated by Roger Speares), he writes about the financial challenges the studio faced in its early years as it operated under publishing house Tokuma Shoten:
Studio Ghibli was established in 1985 following the success of Nausicaä. Many people may think that it was all smooth sailing after that, but they would be wrong. The reality was quite the opposite. People in the film industry, especially those concerned with distribution, were wondering when the end would come. They took the view that if the latest film achieved a certain percentage of what its predecessor had, that would be fine, but if it didn’t, that would presage the coming of the end. The rubric of “If one succeeds, we’ll try another; if it fails, that’s the end” was not just rhetoric; it indicated an ever-present sense of imminent disaster.
Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) was a critical and commercial success, but—as with all of Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata’s works—the production process was extremely arduous and expensive. The company that produced Nausicaä, Topcraft, went out of business not long after the film’s release. According to Suzuki, Studio Ghibli was created out of necessity: No other production company was willing to take on the filmmakers’ next projects.
Ghibli’s first releases were Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky (1986) and a double feature of contrasting films in 1988, Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies and Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. Each movie was praised by critics, yet the audience and revenue numbers were less than those of Nausicaä. (Speaking of bold release strategies, how about the decision, decades before Barbenheimer, to simultaneously release a harrowing World War II tragedy about two starving orphans and a light-hearted tale of two young girls befriending forest spirits in postwar rural Japan. Pain and destruction, paired with catharsis and healing.) The studio’s slow start threatened its existence just a few years after its inception; Miyazaki’s subsequent film, 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, almost didn’t get made. But as author and Tufts University professor Susan Napier writes in her 2018 book Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art, Suzuki’s connections and marketing efforts were instrumental to the success of the movie that “turned the studio’s fortunes around.”
“Toshio Suzuki becomes more and more important as the studio revs up in the 1990s,” Napier told me over the phone last year. “There’s a big moment around Kiki’s Delivery Service when a lot of people really did feel that Ghibli was washed-up and they were almost going bankrupt. And then Suzuki got this big marketing contract with a delivery firm. … [Suzuki] really worked all the different angles, and he’s very good at that. And he got better and better.”
The delivery firm, Yamato, had a logo of a black cat carrying a kitten, which made a charming movie about a young witch and her talking black cat, Jiji, a natural fit for a tie-in. Starting with Kiki’s Delivery Service, Suzuki began to seriously consider how to turn the masterpieces from the likes of Miyazaki and fellow Ghibli director and cofounder Takahata into commercial successes, if only to provide a path for the studio to produce more of their films. Between Kiki, subsequent Ghibli hits like Takahata’s Only Yesterday and Pom Poko, and Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso, Suzuki and the studio mastered a release model to bolster its auteurs.
Shiro Yoshioka, a professor at Newcastle University who has published articles and book chapters about Miyazaki and Ghibli in both Japanese and English, refers to the studio’s promotional strategies for its films from this time as the “Ghibli Method.” “The ‘Ghibli Method’ is, or maybe was, a massive promotion campaign combined with strategic planning of exhibition,” Yoshioka writes to me over email. “Media is flooded with articles and programs on the film and Miyazaki/Ghibli as well as past films. This is complemented with merchandise and adverts by sponsors. Thus, the release of any Ghibli film in the past was turned into a massive media event.
“Exhibition of films was also carefully planned, especially back in the period around Princess Mononoke, to ensure that the film [was] shown in as many prestigious cinemas as possible,” Yoshioka says. “When these two are put together, Ghibli could show the film to the largest number of audience possible right from the day of release.”
All of this came to a head with the record-breaking box office of 2001’s Spirited Away, the film that earned what is (somehow) Miyazaki’s sole win at the Academy Awards. According to Suzuki’s autobiography, many people told Miyazaki that “the film was good, and the advertising was fabulous,” a distinction that apparently really bothered him, as some people seemed to be crediting the movie’s success to its marketing campaign more than to the actual quality of his work. And so for Miyazaki’s next film, 2004’s Howl’s Moving Castle, Studio Ghibli shifted its promotional tactics entirely.
In many ways, the novel strategy that Suzuki and Studio Ghibli employed for Howl’s Moving Castle was a precursor to the approach the studio is now taking with How Do You Live?. “Our principal advertising strategy was that we wouldn’t advertise,” Suzuki wrote in his autobiography, referring to Howl. “Ordinarily, advertising presents the essence of the product. This time, though, rather than trying to do that, we were going to limit the amount of information offered. I figured that this in itself would be a kind of entertainment.”
In the press material for Howl’s launch, Suzuki elaborated on his rationale even further: “Advertising is indispensable to any film, but this time there wouldn’t be any. No, to put it more precisely, there wouldn’t be any detailed commentary on the nature of the film or its theme. We wanted viewers to see the film with an open mind, without any preconceptions. This was Hayao Miyazaki’s ardent desire.”
Despite a complete reversal in marketing style, Howl’s Moving Castle became another commercial success for Studio Ghibli, out-earning all of the studio’s films save for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Almost 20 years later, will a similar strategy work for How Do You Live?
There are some similarities between Howl’s Moving Castle and How Do You Live?. Notably, both are based on books: Howl’s Moving Castle is a loose adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’s 1986 novel of the same name. However, while that novel would have provided fans with a sense of what to expect in the film, Suzuki has stated that How Do You Live? borrowed only the title of the 1937 novel. An even more important distinction, perhaps, is that the films arrived decades apart, and at very different junctures in Miyazaki’s long, illustrious career.
Miyazaki may be as popular as he’s ever been in the United States. His films can be seen in theaters every year during the annual Ghibli Fests, and Studio Ghibli’s entire catalog was added to HBO Max (as the streamer later renamed “Max” was then known) in 2020, which was followed by a fantastic temporary Miyazaki exhibition at Los Angeles’s Academy Museum in late 2021. In Japan, Miyazaki is still a massive name, but 10 years have passed since The Wind Rises. And with the rise of the internet and social media in the nearly 20 years since the release of Howl’s Moving Castle, it’s harder than ever to hold any substantial portion of society’s collective attention.
Yoshioka, for one, speculates that this latest release strategy may be effective only for the hard-core fans of Ghibli and Miyazaki, rather than the rest of the film’s prospective audience. “There may be a significant rupture between Ghibli fans and the general audience,” Yoshioka writes. “Because in the past, [the] success of Ghibli was a result of bringing both fans of the studio/Miyazaki as well as [a] huge … general audience to cinemas by establishing the studio and their films as something enjoyable for everyone, thus separating it from ‘anime’ in general.
“Yet, after 10 years of absence of Miyazaki films from cinemas, I am wondering whether young audiences would be that much interested in the studio/director/film compared with people like Shinkai Makoto or Hosoda Mamoru,” he says. “In other words, Studio Ghibli/Miyazaki films are now for older people, who have seen them as young children or teenagers. … Young people nowadays also haven’t gone through the ‘Ghibli Method’ bombardment, meaning they may not have the mindset that their films are something special compared with anime in general.”
Even Miyazaki has expressed that he’s worried about whether the lack of publicity will work in the film’s favor, according to Suzuki. But the Ghibli president still feels as if he’s on to something. “In my opinion, in this age of so much information, the lack of information is entertainment,” Suzuki said recently at the Friday Roadshow and Ghibli Exhibition in Tokyo. “I don’t know if this will work. But as for me, I believe in it, so this is what I’m trying to do.”
To Suzuki’s point, the absence of marketing has generated plenty of media coverage in and of itself, including this very piece. (Studio Ghibli has had some unwanted publicity in the past few months, as well: Suzuki was accused of misappropriating company funds, and those allegations were linked to the resignation of former Studio Ghibli president Hoshino Koji in April. According to Variety, Ghibli denied any connections between Koji’s retirement and the allegations against Suzuki, while making no comment on the allegations themselves.)
All concerns aside, the promotional strategy for How Do You Live? epitomizes the traditional Ghibli spirit that prioritizes the audience’s experience over any commercial considerations. It may be a gamble, but it’s one that Suzuki feels is fitting for an era when the audience can be flooded with an overabundance of information about a movie before even setting foot in the theater. As he wrote in his autobiography, every release strategy has to be specifically catered to the project. “The way advertising is conducted differs from film to film,” Suzuki explained. “You must have a feeling for the times or things will not go well. And simple mass advertising does not guarantee success. When things do go well, what makes you happiest of all is the fact that you have correctly judged the mood of the day.”
With How Do You Live? now playing in Japanese theaters, more information is starting to trickle out about the mysterious project—but Studio Ghibli is still limiting its own promotional output. At midnight on the day of the release, Ghibli’s main Twitter account released a graphic that features only a slightly clearer version of the bird featured on the original poster:
In a matter of days, we’ll learn whether Suzuki and Studio Ghibli’s gamble paid off at the Japanese box office. With no announcements yet about international releases, there’s no telling how long it will be until How Do You Live? lands in American movie theaters, or how the film will be marketed abroad. It will, of course, be impossible to replicate the promotional strategy that Ghibli used in Japan; after all, there can be no blank canvas for an audience when the film’s plot summary can likely already be found on Wikipedia at the time of this article’s publication. (Reader, I refuse to check.) There are few filmmakers today anywhere in the world who can draw audiences back to the theaters to see their latest work by name recognition alone. But Suzuki and Studio Ghibli are betting that the great Miyazaki is one of them.
Perhaps the best promotion for the film came from Miyazaki himself, years before How Do You Live? was remotely close to completion. At the end of the 2016 documentary Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki, the titular filmmaker has decided that he’s going to come out of retirement to create a new feature. As Miyazaki takes bites from a bowl of ramen and reflects on the commitment he’s made, he teases what a new project could even be after all his years of storytelling. “Being the work of a retiree, it’ll have to feel like it had to be made,” he says. “I insisted no more was needed, after all. I don’t know, but it’ll be something new. A place I’d never been before.”
