A number of Western authors have influenced Miyazaki’s work, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lewis Carroll, and Diana Wynne Jones. Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea has been a great influence on all his works, and that he has kept her books on his bedside.[17]

Miyazaki and French writer and illustrator Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) have influenced each other and have become friends as a result of their mutual admiration. Monnaie de Paris held an exhibition of their work titled Miyazaki et Moebius: Deux Artistes Dont Les Dessins Prennent Vie (Two Artist’s Drawings Taking on a Life of Their Own) from December 2004 to April 2005. Both artists attended the opening of the exhibition. Also Moebius has named his daughter Nausicaa after Miyazaki’s heroine.

Miyazaki has been deeply influenced by another French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He illustrated the Japanese covers of Saint-Exupéry’s Night Flight (Vol de nuit) and Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), and wrote an afterword for Wind, Sand and Stars.

In an interview broadcast on BBC Choice on 2002-06-10, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Philippa Pearce as influences. The filmmaker has also publicly expressed fondness of Roald Dahl’s stories about pilots and airplanes; the image in Porco Rosso of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl’s They Shall Not Grow Old.

As in Miyazaki’s films, these authors create self-contained worlds in which allegory is seldom used, and characters have complex, and often ambiguous, motivations. Other Miyazaki works, such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.

Miyazaki attributed his inspiration to go into the animation field to the release of Hakuja den (Panda and the Magic Serpent), considered the first modern anime, in 1958.

Miyazaki’s work in television is less known than his films. In the 1970s he worked as an animator on the World Masterpiece Theater television animation series under Isao Takahata. His first directorial credit is for the television version of Lupin III in 1971; he was co-director (with Takahata) of the second half of the first television series, and director of two episodes of the second series. His first feature film was a Lupin III adventure titled Castle of Cagliostro.

Miyazaki’s most famous television work was his direction of Future Boy Conan (1978), an adaptation of the children’s novel The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key. The main antagonist is the leader of the city-state of Industria who attempts to revive lost technology. The series also elaborates on the characters and events in the book, and is an early example of characterizations which recur throughout Miyazaki’s later work: a girl who is in touch with nature, a warrior woman who appears menacing but is not an antagonist, and a boy who seems destined for the girl. The series also featured imaginative aircraft designs.

Miyazaki directed six episodes of Sherlock Hound, an Italian-Japanese co-production which retold Sherlock Holmes tales using anthropomorphic animals. These episodes were first broadcast in 1984-85.

Miyazaki has illustrated several manga, beginning in 1969 with Puss in Boots (Nagakutsu wo Haita Neko). His major work in this format is the seven-volume manga version of his tale Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which he created from 1982 to 1994 and which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Other works include Sabaku no Tami (砂漠の民, People of the Desert?), Shuna no Tabi (シュナの旅, The Journey of Shuna?), The Notebook of Various Images (雑想ノート, Zassō Nōto?), and The Age of the Flying Boat, which was the basis of his film Porco Rosso).

In October 2006, A Trip to Tynemouth was published in Japan. Miyazaki based it on the young adult short stories of Robert Westall, who grew up in World War II England. The most famous story, first published in a collection called Break of Dark, is titled Blackham’s Wimpy. The rival Royal Air Force crews in the story fly Vickers Wellington Bombers, the nickname comes from the character J. Wellington Wimpy from Popeye comics and cartoons.

Source:netglimse.com