I recently saw a YouTube short about how the 90s and 2000s
in Japan were a kind of nostalgic golden age. Japan then was still the
second-largest economy in the world and a major cultural influence—both on its
own and through its ties with the US and the rest of the world. Japanese
consumer tech was ahead of its time – think Walkman and Nintendo. Japanese cars
were state of the art – Toyotas and Hondas were top-notch. Japanese management
ideas – kaizen, just-in-time, etc. – were all the rage in business schools.
Tokyo, especially, was the world’s biggest city and had this mix of high-tech
modernity and ancient, arcane traditions. Tokyo, in particular, was the biggest
city in the world and was a unique blend of cosmopolitan, techno-West, embedded in an old-world society.
It’s in this setting that Steve Alpert’s book about his time
at Studio Ghibli takes place. It’s an easy read, and Alpert writes with a
casual pace, recounting his time as a Gaijin inside the world of
Japanese office culture. He captures the eccentricity of people like Hayao
Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki, while also drawing an insightful contrast with
their interactions with large American establishments like Disney and Hollywood.
Alpert doesn’t take sides, but it’s clear he has a soft spot for his Japanese
colleagues. He often points out how brutal and crass the American style of
business could be compared to the more refined, if rigid and dogmatic, Japanese
way.
I picked up this book while researching something I was
writing – whether the AI threat to art is real – and wanted to understand more
about Miyazaki and his potential views on the Ghiblification trend. While the
book doesn’t go deep into Miyazaki’s biography, it gave me a good sense of the
people, the culture, and a feel for the Ushinawareta Jūnen—the Lost
Decade. That period of economic stagnation in Japan, post-bubble, which ironically
turned out to be rich in culture.
Alpert talks about the evocative scenes of central Tokyo
that were visible out the offices of Tokuma Shoten, the publishing company
behind Studio Ghibli. It is very well described and evokes the metropolitan
madness that is Tokyo very well – almost like out of a scene from a Stuido
Ghibli movie.
Our tenth-floor office also had large corner windows with views that extended all the way out to Tokyo Bay. From my desk I could see all of Japan's various modes of transportation at a single glance. There was the shinkansen Bullet Train just slowing on its final glide toward Tokyo Station. The various color-coded JR local and long-distance lines came and went every few minutes. The newly built and driverless Yurikamome train zipped along on rubber wheels toward the Odaiba entertainment area and the Big Site convention center.
The aging but still graceful Monorail, a leftover from the 1964 Olympics, leaned precariously leftward as it rounded a curve on its way to Haneda Airport. There were the gracefully arching branches of the Shuto, the overhead highways. These were clogged with traffic that barely moved all day. Once or twice a day I could spot a ferry just easing into its berth at the Takeshiba piers after completing its twenty-four-hour trip from one of the far-away Izu-Ogasawara Islands, incongruously an official part of metropolitan Tokyo. There was the newly built Rainbow Bridge standing astride the harbor and linking it to the island of Odaiba. The bridge was silvery white in the morning sunshine or bathed in colored lights against a hazy pink and purple sky at dusk.
All day, passenger jet aircraft banked low over Tokyo Bay on their final approach to Haneda Airport. Immediately below, bustling Shinbashi's wide main streets were packed with cars and buses mired in the heavy traffic. The warren of narrow pedestrian-only alleys in the Mizu Shobai (bar) district were mostly empty in the morning and crammed with wandering pedestrians once the evening rush began. At the beginning and end of the lunch hour, which everyone took at exactly the same time, the sidewalks were full of people.
The more humorous and interesting parts are his observations of Japanese office quirks. One example that stood out was nemawashi (“securing the roots”), where everything is decided before the meeting even happens. I see this a lot in management in 2025 too. It’s just called stakeholder management now, but doesn’t sound half as cool as nemawashi.
The process of visiting and obtaining the approval of all required persons in advance is called nemawashi (securing the roots). In this way the arguments for or against any proposal or new idea and the decision makers' positions on the proposal have all been fixed long before any formal meeting takes place. Once the nemawashi has occurred, a meeting is called to pretend to discuss the matter in question, and the attendees vote on the outcome in accordance with the positions they have previously (and privately) confirmed they would take. By the time the meeting has been called, everyone attending already knows what's been decided.
Alpert also gives a strong picture of Miyazaki’s temperament
and what drives him. Miyazaki is a genius, and like most geniuses, has his own unique
quirks. Working with him was tough:
Hayao Miyazaki's way of making a film was particularly stressful, and that was exactly how he thought it should be. He would often say that a person only does his best work when faced with the real possibility of failure and its real consequences.
But Alpert also shows how Miyazaki’s ideas took shape. Miyazaki was always drawing, and out of those loose sketches, something would take hold.
It was a long process of trial and error, where many ideas were percolated, thrown
away, resurfaced and slowly the one that stuck would emerge. Then, after more iterations
and more stress, about two years later, a finished film, a work of art, would emerge.
This reminded me of the classification I had read about how
creative people think and create. Some are experimental innovators, who iterate
and let ideas and trials percolate before it is finalized. Others are
conceptual innovators, whose ideas burst forth like a sudden fount. Miyazaki
was clearly the first kind.
Alpert also notes how Miyazaki treated a film once it was
done:
When Miyazaki signed off on one of his and it was officially done, he preferred to never think about that film again. It was done. There was nothing more he could do to improve or change it. He always wanted to be moving forward and thinking about the next film.
There’s also what I think is a glorious moment from the book when Miyazaki
visits the US for Princess Mononoke’s release. Hollywood royalty,
including Martin Scorsese, sends an invite to meet him for after-dinner drinks.
To the horror of the American studio executives, who think this is a great
honour, Miyazaki and Suzuki decline politely and go hang out with a Japanese
architect friend instead This prioritization of personal interests and artistic
integrity over commercial networking is a recurring theme in the book.
The book gives a window into a world that feels lost now. Before
the digital age flattened everything, and creative edges got smoothed out.
Alpert sees this too:
In a world where more and more of the little things that make one place different from the next are disappearing, it's somehow comforting to hold on to a few bits of the past.
This book was one of those bits. A reminder.
