Studio Ghibli’s obsession with food: Preparing and tasting every bite before drawing it

Studio Ghibli took shape in 1984 when Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata made the film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, based on a manga by Miyazaki. A year later, they founded the studio with the support of producer Toshio Suzuki, and in early 2026 the Princess of Asturias Foundation announced it had awarded Studio Ghibli the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. The jury justified the award thus: “Employing a highly imaginative artisanal process, they have created universal stories brimming with sensitivity and humanistic values: friendship, empathy and tolerance, as well as respect for people and nature. The studio’s films transcend generations and borders, and serve as a reference for the challenges of globalized society and the protection of the environment.”

Over more than four decades, Studio Ghibli has made and produced memorable films such as Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron. The last two movies won the Oscar for best animated feature in 2001 and 2023, respectively. In these films, the images that recreate food make viewers’ mouths water: the dishes seem to give off an implied, delicious aroma and look appetizing, flavorful and nourishing. They show animated still lifes made from a diverse array of Eastern and Western ingredients: from chiko seeds, berries, pancetta and edamame to red bean paste, tomatoes, okra, seaweed, black sesame, dashi (a very light fish stock), soy sauce and rice.

Food is an expression of identity and, for Studio Ghibli, a means of connecting characters to one another. Its role transcends the screen to the extent that books have been written studying and analyzing the role of all that food, such as The Recipes of Studio Ghibli Films by Minh-Tri Vo, Claire-France Thévenon and Apolline Cartier, and The Illustrated Enchanted Kitchen: Recipes Taken From All of Hayao Miyazaki’s Films by Silvia Casini, Rafaella Fenoglio and Francesco Pasqua.

Producer Toshio Suzuki revealed in Susan Napier’s Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art that Miyazaki himself prepares and tastes every breakfast, bowl of ramen or whatever morsel he is about to draw. A dish may take him half an hour to cook, an hour to draw, and a year to bring it to life through animation. In some images, the level of detail is such that the steam rising from the pot signals that the pasta boiling inside is ready. He even recreates scenes in which characters buy fresh produce at the market and others in which they cook in the kitchen.

In Kiki’s Delivery Service, there is a scene in which the young protagonist is in a supermarket turned into a hedge maze with shelves full of products: packages of cookies, canned goods, flour packets, cartons of milk, pots, pans, teapots and coffee makers. The same young woman helps an older woman bake a herring-and-pumpkin cake for her granddaughter’s birthday. That is a nod to the association often made between witches and pumpkins.

In My Neighbor Totoro, the eldest daughter in a family whose mother is away in hospital prepares a bentō box every morning for her younger sister and father. That lacquered box with compartments for food has been elevated by the Japanese to the status of edible art. The person who prepares it early, carefully and lovingly packs rice, edamame, an umeboshi plum, a shishamo fish, chopsticks and a bamboo spoon. It bears no resemblance to the ready-made bentō sold in Japanese convenience stores called konbini, such as 7-Eleven or Lawson. As Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham note in Ghibliverse: Studio Ghibli Beyond The Films, there is a shop near the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo that sells Totoro cream puffs filled with chocolate, vanilla, hazelnut, cheesecake and strawberry.

In Spirited Away, Chihiro must rescue her parents after they turn into pigs having gorged on rice cakes, sausages and various roasted meats in an empty, mysterious tavern. On that adventure, Chihiro is helped by the young Haku, who first offers her an edible red bead to give her strength so she will not become a pig and, later, to comfort her, gives her an onigiri (a rice ball triangular in shape, wrapped at the base with a small strip of nori and filled with various ingredients). This film is where food is most present, both physically and symbolically. Besides that red bead and the onigiri, which are sustenance and a means of calming, there are exaggerated feasts that incite gluttony, eating to excess. That greed is punished and is Miyazaki’s way of condemning consumerism.

In his works, eating is more than a necessity: it is an individual and collective act of joy, even amid the sadness of certain situations, and it has the same effect as walking: it helps clear the mind and lets ideas simmer. In Howl’s Moving Castle, the scene in which the protagonist takes charge and prepares a breakfast of fried eggs with bacon, accompanied by rye bread and cheese, serves to show the young woman’s determination and to express her love and care for others.

But beyond communion, food is also salvation. In Princess Mononoke, there is a scene in which a monk serves okayu, a kind of rice porridge with chopped onion, enriched with umeboshi plums, sesame seeds, eggs, soy sauce and chicken, fish or tofu, believed to have healing properties, especially for stomach ailments, as Laura Montero Plata explains in the book Princess Mononoke.

Watching Miyazaki’s films, one gets a sense of the role women were expected to play in society when he was a child. To the works already mentioned, one could add Porco Rosso, set in 1920s Italy and starring a pilot who is a pig because of a curse. A mechanical failure forces him to stop to repair his seaplane, and the workshop he visits is staffed only by women. They repair aircraft and cook, and among the dishes they make are spaghetti all’amatriciana with bacon instead of guanciale, served with red wine.

In another aviation-themed film, The Wind Rises, a sweet called Siberia is featured, made from a type of Genoese sponge cake known as kasutera or castella (introduced by the Portuguese via Nagasaki in the 16th century), filled with a red bean paste (anko). In The Illustrated Enchanted Kitchen, the authors say it is called Siberia because the dark strip of anko down the middle of the cake reminded them of the Trans-Siberian Railway crossing the Russian countryside.

And for those with a sweet tooth, Kyoto is home to Castella do Paulo, a shop run by a Portuguese baker where they make castella. Thus, food is history, movement, and it jumps from screen to real life and back again, just as it does in the world of Studio Ghibli.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition