The career of Japanese film director and manga artist Hayao Miyazaki is due to come to a finish following the release of the name of his last ever film, Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka, (“How do you live?”).
Miyazak is famous for founding Studio Ghibli, a highly successful animation film studio in Tokyo, which produced hits such as Spirited Away, and My Neighbour Totoro.
Miyazak officially retired from making features with Studio Ghibli in 2014, but put forward a proposal in August 2016 for a new feature length project, which he began animating before gaining approval.
The project has now been confirmed as Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka, which shares its name with a book written by journalist Genzaburô Yoshino in the 1930s. The film will not be an adaption of the book, but rather will focus on how this book influenced the protagonist.
Yoshino wrote the children’s book to avoid Government censorship, and consequently filled the book with complex themes such as class equality and Marxist economics.
The announcement was made at the opening of the Natsume Soseki (Botchan, I Am a Cat) memorial at Tokyo’s Waseda University, and the film is due to be completed in three to four years.
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