Hayao Miyazaki Trivia
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60 free Hayao Miyazaki trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hayao Miyazaki has announced his retirement more than once and never quite meant it. This quiz follows the man rather than just the studio: the wartime childhood in a family that made fighter-plane parts, the sickly boy who could draw tanks but not people, the union organiser at Toei who met Isao Takahata, the trips to Sweden, Switzerland and Wales, and the Lupin III caper that became his first feature. From there it runs through the Nausicaä manga, the founding of Studio Ghibli, the Totoro merchandise that saved the company, Princess Mononoke's box-office records, the Oscar he boycotted for Spirited Away and the one he was too old to collect for The Boy and the Heron. There are questions on his family (his animator wife, his son Goro, the niece behind Mei), on his opinions (anime, AI, Iraq), on Joe Hisaishi and Toshio Suzuki, and on the awards from Venice, Berlin, the Academy and the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a Ghibli film; the expert tier asks about Citroëns, pen names and a princess's wedding dress. If you want the studio's other directors and films, try our Studio Ghibli quiz too. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Miyazaki and his films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01In which year did Hayao Miyazaki co-found Studio Ghibli?
1985
He founded it with a long-time colleague as a subsidiary of the publisher Tokuma Shoten and designed its Kichijōji offices himself.
Q 02In which city was Hayao Miyazaki born in January 1941?
Tokyo
He was the second of four sons; his earliest memories are of bombed-out cities after the family evacuated during the war.
Q 03Miyazaki's father ran a family firm that manufactured what during World War II?
Rudders for fighter planes
Miyazaki Airplane kept the family affluent, and planes have haunted his films ever since.
Q 04Which 1958 film, Japan's first colour animated feature, sparked the teenage Miyazaki's interest?
The White Snake Enchantress
He sneaked out to see it instead of studying for entrance exams and later said it moved him to tears.
Q 05What did Miyazaki study at Gakushuin University, graduating in 1963?
Political science and economics
He considered himself a poor student, spending his time on art and in the Children's Literature Research Club.
Q 06Which studio hired Miyazaki as an inbetween artist in 1963, launching his career?
Toei Animation
He was soon a leader in a labour dispute there and became chief secretary of the union in 1964.
Q 07Which Toei union vice-chairman did Miyazaki meet in 1964 and collaborate with for the rest of his life?
Isao Takahata
Takahata directed The Great Adventure of Horus, on which Miyazaki volunteered as scene designer.
Q 08Miyazaki's wife Akemi Ōta worked in what job when they met at Toei in 1964?
Inbetween animator
She quit in 1972 to raise their sons Goro and Keisuke so he could focus on his work.
Q 09Miyazaki's directorial debut came co-directing which 1971-72 television series with Takahata?
Lupin the Third Part I
He and Takahata were brought in to emphasise the series' humour over its violence.
Q 10Miyazaki's first trip outside Japan was to Sweden, to seek the rights to adapt which children's books?
Pippi Longstocking
Astrid Lindgren would not meet them, the project died, and the storyboards were recycled into the Panda! Go, Panda! shorts.
Q 11Miyazaki travelled to Switzerland in 1973 to research which World Masterpiece Theater series?
Heidi, Girl of the Alps
The team wanted the Johanna Spyri adaptation to set new heights for television animation.
Q 12What was Miyazaki's first self-directed TV series (1978), adapted from Alexander Key's The Incredible Tide?
Future Boy Conan
He directed 24 of its 26 episodes; only eight were finished when it went on air.
Q 13What was Miyazaki's first feature film, released in December 1979?
The Castle of Cagliostro
Q 21The name Studio Ghibli comes from an Italian word for a hot desert wind that was also the nickname of what?
A Caproni aircraft
Miyazaki registered the name a year before the studio opened.
Q 22The heavily cut mid-1980s US release of Nausicaä, retitled Warriors of the Wind, had what consequence?
Miyazaki refused Western releases for a decade
Almost 30 minutes of dialogue and character development had been removed.
Q 23Miyazaki drew the mining villages of which country in 1984 while researching Castle in the Sky?
Wales
He witnessed the miners' strike in the Rhondda and admired the miners' dedication to their communities.
The Lupin III caper was made in four months; Animage readers voted it the best animation of all time.
Q 14Whose 2005 wedding dress was reportedly inspired by Clarisse's gown in Miyazaki's first feature film?
Former princess Sayako Kuroda
The imperial bride was said to be a fan of Miyazaki's work.
Q 15Legal trouble with which estate halted Miyazaki's 1980s series about a canine Sherlock Holmes after six episodes?
Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Hound resumed without him in 1984 and was his last television work.
Q 16Which Miyazaki manga, serialised in Animage 1982–94, became his breakthrough film?
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
The seven volumes total 1,060 pages and sold more than ten million copies in two years.
Q 17The heroine Nausicaä was partly inspired by a character from which ancient work?
Homer's Odyssey
The other inspiration was the Japanese folk tale The Lady who Loved Insects.
Q 18Which real environmental disaster inspired the poisoned world of Miyazaki's Nausicaä film?
Mercury poisoning of Minamata Bay
He was struck by how nature responded and thrived in a poisoned environment.
Q 19Which composer, hired for Nausicaä in 1984, has scored every one of Miyazaki's feature films since?
Joe Hisaishi
Takahata enlisted the then-experimental minimalist musician; the pairing has lasted four decades.
Q 20Miyazaki and Takahata named their company Nibariki, 'two-horse power', after which car Miyazaki drove?
Citroën 2CV
The little French car's nickname literally means 'two horses'.
Q 24The floating island in Castle in the Sky is borrowed from which classic novel?
Gulliver's Travels
Laputa was Studio Ghibli's first film, released in August 1986.
Q 25My Neighbor Totoro was released in 1988 as a double bill with which Takahata film?
Grave of the Fireflies
Producer Toshio Suzuki reasoned that schools would take students to the historical film and they would see both.
Q 26What eventually turned My Neighbor Totoro into a money-spinner that sustained Studio Ghibli for years?
Merchandising rights approved in 1990
Akira Kurosawa named the film among his hundred favourites, and an asteroid, 10160 Totoro, is named after it.
Q 27Which family member inspired the character Mei in My Neighbor Totoro?
His niece
Mei Okuyama later married the animation artist Daisuke Tsutsumi.
Q 28The bedridden mother in My Neighbor Totoro echoes Miyazaki's own mother, who suffered from what?
Spinal tuberculosis
Yoshiko Miyazaki was ill from 1947 to 1955, and her strict, questioning intellect shaped several of his heroines.
Q 29Which Swedish city was the main inspiration for the seaside town in Kiki's Delivery Service?
Stockholm
Staff shot eighty rolls of film there and on the island town of Visby.
Q 30Porco Rosso began life as what kind of production before growing into a feature?
A 45-minute in-flight movie for JAL
The airline stayed a major investor, so the film premiered in the air before its 1992 theatrical release.