The respect that animators the world over have for Hayao Miyazaki is hard to overstate. Pixar chief John Lasseter claims he’s “one of the greatest filmmakers of our time”, and the fact that Lasseter now oversees all Miyazaki’s English dubs, attracting such talent as Billy Bob Thornton, Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall and Liam Neeson to voice them, should suggest he’s not exaggerating. Miyazaki is a high fantasist as comfortable dreaming up steampunk action-adventures as he is intimate child dramas, inter-war aerial romps, post-apocalyptic wastescapes, monster-populated spirit worlds, or the deep, violent past of his own homeland, Japan. His own producer, Toshio Suzuki, also a Ghibli board-member, simply describes him as “a genius”. And when Empire meets the 68 year-old director for a rare interview, we suspect he may just qualify as an eccentric one.

Studio Ghibli consists of three unassuming buildings located in the quiet suburb of Koganei in western Tokyo. We’ve arrived at Miyazaki’s private office building, a few streets down from the studio proper, where we find the man himself in his central office, a large but welcoming space whose two salient features are a grand piano and a wood-burning stove, which Miyazaki keeps topping up with timber during our near-two-hour discussion of his work...