Studio Ghibli president Kenichi Yoda on AI, war and the studio’s next chapter

As a young culture journalist at the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, Kenichi Yoda covered the animation studio that would later become Studio Ghibli. It seemed unlikely at the time that he would one day lead the company he had reported on from the outside.

His rise to the top of one of animation’s most celebrated studios came on 22 June, when he succeeded Hiroyuki Fukuda as president. This interview takes place 48 hours before Yoda is due to accept the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities on behalf of Studio Ghibli.

The ideas of its founding filmmakers, the late Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, together with the work of the company’s roughly 200 employees, have made Ghibli one of the principal gateways to Japanese culture for millions of people worldwide.

That influence was especially strong in Spain, where Marco and Heidi aired during the final years of the Franco regime and the transition to democracy. Studio Ghibli did not yet exist when Takahata and Miyazaki met as union members at Toei Animation in the 1960s. Along with landmark films by Akira Kurosawa, those television series offered a generation of Spaniards one of their first substantial encounters with Japanese culture.

Yoda laughs when asked whether Ghibli considers itself an instrument of soft power. “Every work exists because its directors and animators devoted themselves to it with care. We are very happy that people around the world watch what we create. But we are not doing it for diplomacy,” he says.

War, beauty and the ethics of animation

In 2026, it is natural to ask Yoda about one of the subjects that repeatedly appears in his studio’s films, alongside environmental protection, friendship and the resilience of female characters: armed conflict.

Takahata, a communist sympathiser, was a committed defender of Article 9 of Japan’s constitution and an outspoken pacifist. Miyazaki, by contrast, grew up surrounded by the war: his family’s aircraft company supplied parts for military aircraft during the Second World War.

Their enduring engagement with conflict can be seen in works ranging from Grave of the Fireflies and Princess Mononoke to Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises. As Japan commits an unprecedented share of its GDP to its Self-Defence Forces under a defence policy championed by Sanae Takaichi, can a studio rooted in pacifism continue making films about war?

Yoda sidesteps the question. “How to address war is a very important topic for Studio Ghibli. Of course, it is better if there are no wars. But what I find admirable about Miyazaki as a director is that he too has been fascinated by the weapons used in war, or by fighter planes, by their beauty as objects, as forms. Of course, he has not the slightest sympathy for war. But there is in him a feeling he cannot resist: the attraction of those things as objects. And that is, in a way, something very human,” he says.

We also ask about one of Ghibli’s most frequently quoted lines, spoken by the protagonist of Porco Rosso in 1992, who declares in a cinema that he would rather be a pig than a fascist. Would such a statement be welcome in a contemporary writers’ room, at Ghibli or elsewhere?

Once again, Yoda declines to answer directly. He says he is delighted that Emmanuel Macron has cited Porco Rosso as one of his favourite films, a reference the French president made during an official visit to Japan.

The question of artificial intelligence also looms over the Covadonga room at the Reconquista Hotel, where the Princess of Asturias Foundation traditionally hosts its laureates. It arises in connection with a viral 2016 clip in which Miyazaki (source in Spanish) criticises two developers attempting to sell him an early form of AI intended for use in his drawings.

“It is an insult to life itself,” he tells them.

“Ten years on, in every interview without fail I am asked what Studio Ghibli thinks about AI,” Yoda explains with resignation. “It is very difficult to predict how it will evolve, and I think we are all living in that uncertainty. But if there is something we can say right now, and I say this also in a personal capacity, it is this. Imagine two restaurants: one where the food is made by an AI and another where it is made by people. I would undoubtedly choose the second.”

His team signals that the interview is over, but the former journalist asks to add one final point.

“Listening to your questions, I have realised that Ghibli is very closely bound up with its time. We debate every day what the studio can do in this era and what kind of era we are living in. In that sense, I have the feeling that we are creating something with restraint,” he says.

“There is great honesty towards the act of artistic creation,” he continues. “It is not a business plan: it is about thinking seriously about what response the studio gives to its time. That is now the studio’s day-to-day reality. And it has probably always been that way.”

The next decade will reveal whether Studio Ghibli can preserve its creative independence and guiding ideals as Miyazaki, still active at 85, gradually hands over leadership to a new generation. For now, the studio remains an unlikely bridge between Japanese culture and audiences of every age far beyond its home islands.

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