Review of “Recalling the Days of My Youth” (1998)
Miyazaki Hayao (writer).
Read in 2021.
Read in Turning Point.
The first issue is about “children who are unable to start living”, with the example of Miyazaki himself. He ends it by suggesting a hard line on reforming lower education:
I would have the children also understand their dark sides. They need to be allowed to get into fights. They need to experience humiliation.
The other three articles contain some of the man’s most detailed accounts of going to see Hakujaden (1958) and The Snow Queen (1957), and his meeting Takahata Isao in the Toei labour union.
Like “On the Periphery of the Work” (1987), this is a series of short articles originally published in a newspaper. Unlike the former, these are autobiographical sketches like “My Old Man’s Back” (1995), and heavy stuff for such a venue.
The man proposes running three schools, somewhat in the manner of Montessori schools or even especially bad Waldorf schools, without mentioning any of those names; yikes. He also doesn’t mention his old art teacher, Mr. Satō, who did something similar according to “My Teacher and I” (1990), nor the self-criticism about himself as a caretaker of children that he expressed in “What Is Important for Children” (1996).
References here: “What Grown-ups Can Tell Children So That They Can Live in a Happy Time” (1998), “To Energize People, Towns and the Land” (1998), “Snezhnaya Koroleva (The Snow Queen): A Film That Made Me Think Animation Was Worthy Work” (2007), Turning Point: 1997–2008 (2008/2014).