Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, writing and directing films such as Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), and Porco Rosso (1992), which were met with critical and commercial success in Japan.

Miyazaki's works are frequently subject to scholarly analysis and have been characterized by the recurrence of themes such as humanity's relationship with nature and technology, the importance of art and craftsmanship, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic in a violent world.

[31] After graduating from Toyotama, Miyazaki attended Gakushuin University in the department of political economy, majoring in Japanese Industrial Theory;[28] he considered himself a poor student as he instead focused on art.

[37][note 4] Miyazaki worked as an inbetween artist on the theatrical feature films Doggie March (1963) and Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon (1965) and the television anime Wolf Boy Ken (1963).

[40][36] Around this time, Miyazaki questioned his career choice and considered leaving the industry; a screening of The Snow Queen in 1964 moved him, prompting him to continue working "with renewed determination".

[61] Under the pseudonym Akitsu Saburō (秋津 三朗), Miyazaki wrote and illustrated the manga People of the Desert, published in 26 installments between September 1969 and March 1970 in Boys and Girls Newspaper (少年少女新聞, Shōnen shōjo shinbun).

[119][120][114] The main character, Nausicaä, was partly inspired by the character from Homer's Odyssey (whom Miyazaki had discovered while reading Bernard Evslin's Dictionary of Grecian Myths) and the Japanese folk tale The Lady who Loved Insects, while the world and ecosystem was based on Miyazaki's readings of scientific, historical, and political writings, such as Sasuke Nakao's Origins of Plant Cultivation and Agriculture, Eiichi Fujimori's The World of Jomon, Paul Carell's Hitler Moves East.

[105][131][132] Production began on May 31, 1983, with animation beginning in August;[131] funding was provided through a joint venture between Tokuma Shoten and the advertising agency Hakuhodo, for whom Miyazaki's youngest brother worked.

Miyazaki's work on My Neighbor Totoro prevented him from directing the adaptation; he acted as producer, while Sunao Katabuchi was chosen as director and Nobuyuki Isshiki as script writer.

[197] From March to May 1989, Miyazaki's manga Hikōtei Jidai was published in the magazine Model Graphix,[206] based on an earlier film idea he had assigned to a younger director in 1988 that fell through due to creative differences.

[242] His historical research, including that of Eiichi Fujimori, led him to the conclusion that women had more freedom during the prehistoric Jomon period, and he opted to focus on ordinary people in society.

[262] In 1999, a Japanese theme park engaged Studio Ghibli to create a 20-minute short film about cats; Miyazaki agreed on the condition that it featured returning characters from Whisper of the Heart.

[293] Miyazaki traveled to Colmar and Riquewihr in Alsace, France, to study the architecture and the surroundings for the film's setting,[295] while additional inspiration came from the concepts of future technology in Albert Robida's work.

[303] After Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki created some short films for the Ghibli Museum, for which he returned solely to traditional animation techniques;[294] all three began screening in January 2006.

[305] Studio Ghibli obtained the rights to produce an adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea novels in 2003;[306] Miyazaki had contacted her in the 1980s expressing interest but she declined, unaware of his work.

[310] In February 2006, Miyazaki traveled to the United Kingdom to research A Trip to Tynemouth (based on Robert Westall's "Blackham's Wimpy"), for which he designed the cover, created a short manga, and worked as editor;[311] it was released in October.

[323] In early 2009, Miyazaki began writing a manga called Kaze Tachinu (風立ちぬ, The Wind Rises), telling the story of Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter designer Jiro Horikoshi.

[325] From July 2008, Miyazaki planned and produced the film Arrietty (2010),[326] for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Keiko Niwa,[327] based on the 1952 novel The Borrowers;[328] it was the directorial debut of Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who had started as an inbetween artist on Princess Mononoke.

[332] In November 2012, Studio Ghibli announced the production of The Wind Rises, based on Kaze Tachinu, to be released as a double bill alongside Takahata's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya;[333] the latter was ultimately delayed.

[338] The Wind Rises reflects Miyazaki's pacifist stance,[335] continuing the themes of his earlier works, despite stating that condemning war was not the intention of the film;[339] he felt that, despite his occupation, Horikoshi was not militant.

[355] In August 2016, Miyazaki proposed a new feature-length film, Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka (titled The Boy and the Heron in English), on which he began animation work without receiving official approval.

[369] After the release of The Wind Rises in 2013, Miyazaki recognized leftist values in his movies, citing his influence by communism as defined by Karl Marx, but criticized real experiments of socialism in countries like the Soviet Union.

[370] Miyazaki felt events like Japan's ownership of the Liaodong Peninsula and its invasion of Manchuria led him to lack an affinity for his homeland, though in his thirties he examined that the land itself had "tremendous power".

[373] He felt the government should give a "proper apology" to Korean comfort women who were forced to service the Japanese army during World War II and suggested the Senkaku Islands be "split in half" or controlled by both China and Japan.

[377] In November 2016, Miyazaki believed "many of the people who voted for Brexit and Trump" were affected by the increase in unemployment due to companies "building cars in Mexico because of low wages and [selling] them in the US".

[399] Miyazaki has described his female characters as "brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart", stating they may "need a friend, or a supporter, but never a saviour" and "any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man".

[387] Michael Toscano of Curator found Miyazaki "fears Japanese children are dimmed by a culture of overconsumption, overprotection, utilitarian education, careerism, techno-industrialism, and a secularism that is swallowing Japan's native animism".

[402] Schellhase wrote that several of Miyazaki's works feature themes of love and romance, but felt emphasis is placed on "the way lonely and vulnerable individuals are integrated into relationships of mutual reliance and responsibility, which generally benefit everyone around them".

[415] Miyazaki's wife, Akemi Ōta (大田朱美), was born in 1938 and hired as an inbetween artist at Toei Animation in 1958, working on Panda and the Magic Serpent and Alakazam the Great (1960).

[427] Miyazaki has frequently been cited as an inspiration to numerous animators, directors and writers around the world, including Wes Anderson,[428] Tony Bancroft,[239] James Cameron,[429] Barry Cook,[239] Dean DeBlois,[430] Guillermo del Toro,[431] Pete Docter,[432] Mamoru Hosoda,[433] Bong Joon-ho,[434] Travis Knight,[435] John Lasseter,[436] Nick Park,[437] Henry Selick,[438] Makoto Shinkai,[439] and Steven Spielberg.