The women coloring the worlds of Studio Ghibli from behind the scenes

For readers of a site like Anime Feminist, and indeed for most arts and culture focused publications, Studio Ghibli needs no introduction. As the prestige anime studio behind films like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ghibli’s movies have been known for decades for their highly detailed animation, unique and mature plot elements, and layered, intelligent themes. The studio have also rightfully become popular in part for their depictions of complex, energizing female characters who, in founder and director Miyazaki Hayao’s own words, “need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior.”

I’ve written before about how the girls of Studio Ghibli’s filmography encouraged me in ways that live action characters never have, with each of them serving as diverse examples of how to navigate the world as a confident, self-assured, empathetic woman. But a lingering question about the studio remained, and continues to pop up in the back of my mind even as I enjoy some of my favorite animations of all time. Characters like the determined Chihiro, the principled San, and the imaginative Shizuku have inspired women and girls across generations—but do these fantastical worlds reflect the reality for women making films at Studio Ghibli, and are their ambitions equally respected?

Famously, Studio Ghibli was founded by three men—directors Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao, and producer Suzuki Toshio—and the narrative that these films as sprang forth entirely from Great Men understandably lingers. In many ways, they are; by pointing out the lack of female directors at the studio, I don’t intend to denigrate the achievements of the male directors, particularly those who have created films widely lauded for the reasons I mentioned above. But animation on this scale is almost never created by individuals, and the collaborative process at Ghibli is not strictly male dominated—case in point, the women who have helped shape the studio, and who have gone largely unrecognized in part to their lack of directorial credits.

This is a discussion that has happened very little in Western media in light of Ghibli’s feminist legacy, at least in part because of the difficulty of acquiring English-language materials on the studio’s artistic practices with regard to their staff. This is demonstrated in a Harper’s Bazaar article that seeks to compare Ghibli’s female characters to both the more gender-conforming animations created by Disney and the exposure of misconduct and sexual harassment at Pixar directed toward female staff. Though the article is accurate in its analysis, it only acknowledges the industrial, behind-the-scenes factors of the American studios it discusses, highlighting how Ghibli occupy the position of “feminist studio” in the cultural consciousness because of their films, not their actions beyond the cels. While protagonists written and designed with feminist sensibilities can serve as positive representation for viewers, this only goes so far if the industry these characters are rendered in falls prey to the discrimination their films allegedly stand against.

While Ghibli’s legacy of animated women is rightly celebrated, the real-life women who work on their films and for the company are in a more complex situation. On the one hand, Ghibli (and Miyazaki in particular) have shown themselves to be supportive of female employees in a number of ways. For example, the studio has a built-in creche for working mothers, meaning that fewer professional sacrifices need to be made in order for these women to provide childcare duties. In a chapter about Ghibli’s treatment of female workers, Ghibli researcher Rayna Denison identifies a trio of “women’s films” that seem to simultaneously celebrate women while giving them an opportunity for creativity. For instance, the team behind Porco Rosso was, as emphasized in Japanese marketing, almost all female, a surprising fact for one of the few Ghibli films to center an adult male perspective. As explained by Denison, “key animator Kagawa Megumi was promoted to animation director, Hisamura Katsu became the film’s art director, Asari Naoko was made sound designer, Tateno Hitomi took charge of animation checking, and Tateyama Teruyo and Kimura Ikuyo, both trained by Yasuda Michiyo, undertook color design.” So clearly, women have not been entirely neglected at Ghibli—but why have we, as anime enthusiasts, heard of so few of them?

While hearing about projects like Porco Rosso is encouraging, women still rarely seem to rise to prominent positions in the anime industry, and Ghibli is no exception. The lack of any female directors at the studio is the most damning example—infamously, when asked about this, producer Nishimura Yoshiaki stated that women were too grounded and “realistic” to make movies, while men are more imaginative and “idealistic.” It’s an interesting reversal of the conventional sexism that positions women as following flights of fancy and men as realist leaders, but clearly a harmful one nonetheless that may have prevented the rise of female talent within the studio. Where men like Kondo Yoshifumi, Yonebayashi Hiromasa, and the much-maligned nepo baby Miyazaki Goro were able to rise to the rank of director, a senior female member of the Ghibli staff has never been permitted this degree of responsibility. Although Nishimura later apologized for making these comments, Ghibli—and the animation company he subsequently founded to one day succeed Ghibli, Studio Ponoc—have yet to work with a woman director.

This isn’t to say that no woman has ever achieved success within the studio—key animator Futaki Makiko was renowned for her precise rendering of scenes of nature in their films, and many of the workers responsible for coloring the cels of Ghibli features have been female. This follows a long running tradition in animation of women being assigned the technical, below the line work, most famously the women of Disney’s Ink and Paint department responsible for finishing cels with color and final touches before they were sent to be photographed. Although this work was seen as more technical than creative, filling in the lines sketched out by men, these women were talented professionals, providing an essential service that required a keen eye, a high degree of skill, and a creative understanding of animation. Even though they were paid substantially less than their male colleagues—only $18 per week in 1941 compared to $300 for the top male animators—they took pride in their work, and are an integral element of the studio’s history in spite of the low value put upon their labor. The same can be said of Ghibli’s female cel artists.

However, there is one woman in particular that lingered throughout Ghibli’s history, solidifying their position as the touchstone of quality Japanese animation for many: Yasuda Michiyo, the color designer of Studio Ghibli, and one of the most prominent artistic voices in the studio’s four-decade long history. Yasuda rose up alongside Miyazaki and Takahata at Toei Doga, the studio that brought early anime feature films like Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon and The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun to Japan in the 1960s. In fact, while Miyazaki and Takahata joined the studio in 1963 and 1959 respectively, Yasuda had worked at Toei Doga since 1958, making her their senior. At this point in history, as media scholar Diane Wei Lewis found in her research, women at the studio were on contracts that could be terminated upon them getting married or having children, just one example of how the careers of female animators were cut short.

On that note, it is worth mentioning that Miyazaki’s own wife, Ota Akemi, was also an animator at Toei Doga, the two meeting through their work with the studio. However, while he was able to continue working and ascend to the status he currently possesses, Ota eventually quit her work in animation in 1972 to look after their children and allow her husband to prioritize his own work—Miyazaki seemingly breaking a promise he had previously made that they would both proceed with their careers. While not contractual, this curtailing of Ota’s career is certainly representative of the barriers that women working in anime did, and still do, face. As is the case with so many industries, women in anime are frequently faced with the choice between work and family, a situation that, for men like Miyazaki, tends to resolve with them having their cake and eating it too. It’s easy to imagine, in another world, the works that could have been directed by Ota and Miyazaki as a team had her domestic duties been equally taken on by her husband.

Though it’s easy to associate Ghibli films with characters, locations, or memorable melodies, the colors selected by Yasuda are a subtly essential element of the distinct identities of these movies. Beginning with color design on the not-quite Ghibli film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the film that precipitated the forming of the studio, Yasuda then led the color department in deciding upon the appearances of films from Castle in the Sky to her final work with the studio The Wind Rises. Yasuda’s palettes, beyond generating meaning within the films themselves, came to be a key part of the Ghibli aesthetic, referring to both their brand and art style and their ubiquitous presence on certain “aesthetic” spaces online. 

When thinking of the sense of serenity and depth that often comes as part of the viewing experience of a Ghibli feature, you can’t discount the impact of the colors selected for elements like the painted backdrops and character designs. Colors like the deep reds and navy blues of Kiki’s Delivery Service and the rich, vibrant greens of My Neighbor Totoro continue to generate joy and enhance meaning for viewers globally, even being integrated frequently into merchandise to reinforce links with specific movies. For instance, you’ll typically see products tied to Howl’s Moving Castle in bright blues with blazing oranges to represent the fire demon Calcifer, while Spirited Away related merchandise tends to reflect the bright red of the towering bathhouse and of Chihiro’s iconic jinbei uniform. With much of Ghibli’s online popularity coming from the visually appealing elements of  films like these, it’s easy to pin much of their contemporary internet fame on Yasuda’s masterful work.

Color is also an intrinsic element of setting the correct tone for a Ghibli film, and Yasuda’s intuitive understanding of harmony and mood in relation to color is key to the visual language of these animations. Take Princess Mononoke on one end and Ponyo on the other, for instance; where the former abounds in rich, naturalistic colors with the occasional splash of blood, the latter is playful with its bright primary colors, resembling a child’s sketchbook as much as a beautiful work of art. Yasuda’s input to the creation of these films is invaluable, and paradoxically as visible onscreen as she is invisible in most histories of Studio Ghibli.

As in film industries all over the world, women are often an invisible presence within anime production. Though you’ll see exaggerated designs of women all over your screens, the real women behind their creation typically receive the short end of the stick. But thankfully, this seems to be shifting. Okada Mari took an unusual path and worked for years in the industry before eventually achieving directorial status with her debut feature Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms. Similarly, Yamada Naoko’s A Silent Voice has become one of the most internationally popular and celebrated anime features in recent years, with her latest feature The Colors Within receiving critical acclaim. There are also, of course, studios that take initiative to ensure diversity, Kyoto Animation (where Yamada first received significant attention) being one of the more famous examples. 

The industry landscape seems to be experiencing a change; for that, we have trailblazers like Michiyo Yasuda and Ghibli’s many below-the-line female staff to thank. As they colored the worlds of the studio, they brightened the real world of the anime industry too, and made clear the potential of opportunities for women within it. A glimpse at credits of The Boy and the Heron—proudly displaying the names of editors Matsubara Rie and Shiraishi Akane, color keys Numahata Fumiko and Takayanagi Kanako, and unit director Okada Chihiro—is enough to give me optimism for the place of women in the future of the medium, too.