There’s trouble in anime paradise, as reports from Japanese gossip and entertainment magazine Shukan Josei has confirmed Studio Ghibli President Koji Hoshino is leaving the iconic animation house. His exit seems to be tied to an unfolding scandal involving studio co-founder Toshio Suzuki (Spirited Away, The Wind Rises).
As summarized in a series of Tweets by French anime journalist Ludovic Gottigny, the producer has stirred discontent at Ghibli for allegedly bestowing professional favors on a younger Thai woman. The chastisements against Suzuki say that he met the woman in 2013 and thereafter gifted her “large sums of money” to open a spa and restaurant, both of which have since liquidated. In 2018, Suzuki allegedly put her in charge of a Ghibli-backed Bangkok restaurant. Later, he hired her as an official photographer for the studio, despite employee complaints about her lack of experience.
According to Shukan Josei, Hoshino attempted to reprimand Suzuki for his favors to the woman, and hints that the founding exec pressured his successor to resign. Hoshino took over for Suzuki as President in 2008, having previously served as President and then Chairman of Walt Disney Japan for the last seven of his 17-year career with the company.
This potentially risqué scandal for the family-focused anime studio follows social media uproar earlier this month, when concerned fans flagged photos shared by guests at the recently opened Ghibli Park in Japan posing in an inappropriate, sexually aggressive manner with statues of underage characters Marnie (When Marnie Was There) and Therru (Tales from Earthsea).
Similarly to the much-criticized lack of response from Bob Chapek’s Disney during the “Don’t Say Gay” bill campaign in Florida, Ghibli’s lack of response to the issue sparked further condemnation and even earned a rebuke from the governor of Aichi prefecture, Hideaki Omura. “Ghibli Park is a place for adults and children to have fun while experiencing Ghibli films,” Omura said in a mid-March press conference. “I don’t want people who do things that many find offensive to come to the park.”
Studio Ghibli is busily anticipating the July 14 Japanese release of its latest feature, How Do You Live?, written and directed by Oscar-winning studio co-founder Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Suzuki. The film is an adaptation of the 1937 novel How Do You Live? (Kimi-tachi wa Dou Ikuru ka), which relates the up and downs of growing up for a high school boy called “Koperu” (after the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus), chronicled in his uncle’s diary.
[Source: Shukan Josei via ComicBook.com]
