As Studio Ghibli turns 40, fans worry about its future once Hayao Miyazaki retires
Japan's Studio Ghibli turns 40 this month with two Oscars and legions of fans young and old won over by its films' complex plots and hand-drawn animation.
The studio behind the Oscar-winning Spirited Away has become a cultural phenomenon since Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata established it in 1985.
Its popularity has been fuelled recently by
a second Academy Award in 2024 for The Boy and the Heron, with a voice cast including Robert Pattinson, and by Netflix streaming Ghibli films around the world.
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In March, the internet was
flooded with pictures in its distinctively nostalgic style after the release of OpenAI's newest image generator – raising questions over copyright.
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I WAS BORN IN 1963. When I was six years old, Dr Yip Wai-hong (the late composer and music educator) asked me to join the Hong Kong Children's Choir. It was the first children's choir in Hong Kong and at the beginning there were 20 kids. But they rehearsed on a Sunday, so I had to choose between going to choir rehearsal or joining my dad, Calvin Wong, when he did his television programme for kids on Rediffusion. (Wong opted to join his father.) It was called Happy Birthday and he was 'Uncle Calvin'. A lot of poor kids would be invited. And whoever was having a birthday, the (Russian bakery) Cherikoff would sponsor a little cake or a little toy for those children. His co-host, Lai Yuen-ling, would arrive in her high heels just before the show went live. She was one of the 'Three Blossoms of Rediffusion'. My dad would wear white trousers and very colourful shirts, very contrasting, you see, it was black and white TV. I would be in the 'cave', right in the middle of the set, and I'd watch my dad through a slit in the curtain as he entertained the children with puppets, and sometimes I would pass him things. Harry Wong with his father, Calvin, who provided the first generation of children's TV shows in Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy Harry Wong I WENT TO ST PAUL'S Co-educational College for a few years. I was often in detention. The teachers liked me but I was way too naughty. One day, my music teacher, Miss Chan, asked us all to bring an item – a favourite toy – to share with the class. I brought in a few puppets and did a show and everyone was laughing. Miss Chan loved that and she asked the principal if I could perform for the whole school at our morning assembly. Miss Chan had long hair and was basically a goddess I worshipped. She put me on stage. Up until that point I had been a loser. That was the moment I found myself and I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I was eight years old. Harry Wong studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and his son followed suit. Photo: Jocelyn Tam MY FIRST INSTRUMENT was the recorder and it is still the one I love the most. I always return to it. After the recorder, I learned the clarinet, the flute and then the oboe – it looks like a Chinese instrument, I love the sound. I borrowed an oboe and spent good money on a very expensive reed. You need a different embouchure for these different woodwind instruments but I was able to do it. In England, I first went to study in a small place called Leek, near Stoke-on-Trent, to do my O-levels. I studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and also music education and commercial music at the University of Liverpool. I joined the Society of Recorder Players and they told me they had never had a Chinese player before. Then the French International School here invited me to be a music teacher. Harry Wong with FM Select host Teresa Norton in 1993. Photo: SCMP Archives My son, (pianist) Chiyan, also later studied at the Royal Northern College of Music. I got married when I was 24. My ex was a ballet teacher who became an examiner for the Royal Academy of Dance. We established the Hong Kong Children's Arts Academy in 1986, the same year we got married. It is now the Agnes Huang School of Ballet. ON THE RECORDER I play Renaissance and Baroque music. I created a series of textbooks called 'Music Today' for primary school children that shows them my recorder method. In 1986, I had my first children's TV programme with RTHK. Then in 1991, when Metro (radio station) started, (radio personality and playwright) Teresa Norton invited me to join for the morning show, and I would be bilingual on it. We ended up being the first programme on air for FM Select and the first song I chose was Alan Tam's 朋友, 'Friends'. Harry Wong and DJ Steve James when they had their first collaboration at Metro Radio. Photo: courtesy Harry Wong DJ Steve James then came across the road from Commercial Radio and worked with Sandra Lang, and then we created 'Steve and Harry'. (James) has such a great sense of humour, he and I are very different, and there's a lot of energy to it, you never know what to expect. In 2006, one week after my (second) marriage, I joined Steve again. And we still do it. He likes to control the buttons (in the studio) and I just walk in and out and talk! Harry Wong with his long-time collaborator DJ Steve James. Photo: courtesy Harry Wong THERE ARE ONLY THREE THINGS I embrace: peace, love and happiness. I've started a thing called the 3M. It's got nothing to do with Scotch tape, it's music therapy, magic therapy and mindfulness. I work with music therapists and also a lady who has been working with children for 20 years. She's a beautiful person who knows exactly how to tell stories and communicate with children with respect and bring out the best in them. We do this 'play shop' with schools, kids, teachers, parents, educators. So, I teach the kids breathing exercises, meditation, magic tricks. But at the heart of it is only one purpose – to bring out that person inside everyone, because a lot of us are a bit lost now and we all have questions we try to seek answers to. I started meditating in 2013 with Brahma Kumaris (a spiritual movement). I began to get up at 4am to meditate. Now I just naturally get up. Maybe it's my age. Harry Wong at the sixth anniversary celebrations of Metro Broadcast Corporation at Queen Elizabeth Stadium, Wan Chai, in 1997. Photo: SCMP Archives I'VE DONE A LOT of concerts with symphony orchestras and there's loads of mayhem when I introduce a piece inspired by Danny Kaye and Victor Borge – it's that kind of comedy. We'll do 'Flight of the Bumblebee' and I'll conduct with a fly swat and suddenly all the people on double bass stand up and sing and dance. And then I do 'The Dying Swan' (from Swan Lake). Suddenly I take off my T-shirt and put on a tutu and a straitjacket, and I'll try to get out of that straitjacket during the dying of the swan. I don't know where that idea came from, it's not particularly family material. I think it was The Rocky Horror Show that gave me some ideas. But anyway, I do a lot of really crazy stuff. A young Harry Wong sitting on his father's lap outside HSBC in Central. Photo: courtesy Harry Wong WHEN I WAS VERY LITTLE, I used to study all my magic tricks from a Japanese magic book. I didn't understand the words but I somehow got through and knew the secret, don't ask me how. I got married for the second time (to Japanese violinist Ayako Ichimaru). We have a son, Yuji, who is 16. In 2022, we moved to Japan and eventually we bought a piece of land and a farm in Tsukuba. I work three days a week here (in Hong Kong) on Radio 5, so I go to Japan once a month. My daughter Joelle (a lawyer, from his first marriage) is working in Hong Kong now. I can go to her place and cook her salmon and she makes salad. And then on a Friday night, we go and listen to jazz together. Advertisement
