In America, Hiyao Miyazaki is a cult hero. In Japan, he’s a minor deity.
The 61-year-old animator and comic-book artist directs thoughtful, gorgeous cartoon epics – movies packed with fantastic creatures and a love of nature, flight and adventure – that consistently break box-office records in his native Japan. At least three of his films – 1992’s “Porco Rosso (The Crimson Pig),” 1997’s “Princess Mononoke” and last year’s “Spirited Away” – enjoy the distinction of having been the biggest-grossing domestic hits of their respective years in Japan.

Even Steven Spielberg has gone on the record as a fan – praising Miyazaki’s debut feature, 1979’s rollicking “Castle of Cagliostro,” as one of his favorite adventure movies. (Imagine “Cagliostro” as the greatest episode of “Speed Racer” you’ve never seen – a violent, cleverly plotted heist comedy starring a thief, a princess, a samurai, a count and a gangster.)

But will Miyazaki’s particular brand of visual poetry play to American audiences? Miramax bet it would in 1999, bringing “Princess Mononoke” to America – and hiring Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver and Billy Crudup to dub dialogue translated by acclaimed fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. But the dense, morally complex environmental allegory – which won Japan’s equivalent of a best picture Oscar in 1997 – grossed only $2.3 million stateside.

Now Disney – led by Miyazaki’s friend of two decades, “Toy Story” director John Lasseter – is taking another stab at selling Miyazaki to Joe and Jane Sixpack. Under Lasseter’s guiding hand, The House of Walt is bringing “Spirited Away” to these shores. An even bigger hit in Japan than “Mononoke,” it’s the story of a spoiled 10-year-old girl who stumbles onto a ghost town/bathhouse run by gods and monsters while on a road trip with her parents – who are, incidentally, turned into pigs. It’s been described as “Alice and Wonderland” filtered through Japanese mythology, and it stands a chance at scoring with audiences turned off by the somber, adult tones of “Mononoke.”

In Focus scored an e-mail interview with the mildly reclusive director, who spends much of his time in a mountain cabin between projects for Studio Ghibli, the animation house he helped found in 1985. Here’s what he had to say about making films for 10-year-olds, working without a script, and the differences between American and Japanese animation.

Your producer Toshio Suzuki said during the San Francisco International Film Festival (SIFF) that “Spirited Away” is for “the people who used to be 10 years old and the people who are going to be 10 years old.” You’ve said in interviews that “there are no films made for that age group of 10-year-old girls.” What’s important to you about that particular age group?
There are five young girls, daughters of friends of mine, and every summer they visit me at my cabin in the mountains. This is a film I made for them.

Up to now, we have made a film for very young children, “My Neighbor Totoro.” We have made a film in which a boy sets out on a journey to find a lost city, “Laputa: Castle in the Sky.” We have made a film in which a teen girl learns to be herself, “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” However, we had not yet made a film for girls around the age of 10 years old.

So I read some girls’ comics such as “Ribbon” or “Nakayoshi” that the girls left behind at my mountain cabin. To my surprise, those comics seem to contain only a certain kind of love story. It seemed to me that we have been providing them with nothing but a certain kind of cheap romance. What passed through my mind was that the actual things that 10-year-old girls really dream about are not those kinds of things at all. Why can’t we make a more interesting kind of story where a 10-year-old girl can actually play the leading role?

I had been creating the leading roles in my films the way I thought they should be to please myself. But this time I wanted to have the leading role be a more typical girl where a 10-year-old girl could actually recognize herself in that role. It would be really important that the leading role not be someone extraordinary, but more like an everyday real person, though this kind of character is actually more difficult to create.

These girls are now 13 years old. They saw the film and liked the film. I hope they told me the truth.

I’ve read that you start with sketches and storyboards instead of a script – building the story after you’ve decided on visuals, creatures and characters. Have you always worked that way?
Yes, I have. First I draw image sketches of the main character or characters as well as the backgrounds and any buildings that will feature in the film. Then I start working on the storyboards, which I do by myself. Our storyboards contain series of scenes done in drawings which are called “cuts,” and they include all of the necessary information to turn each cut into a sequence of film, including camera “placement,” dialogue, timing, sound effects and special notes to the animators and “cinematographers.” Because everything necessary is included, they are regarded as the blueprint for the film.

On a related note: You’ve also said that you “find” rather than “tell” the story. Do you see what you do primarily as an act of discovery or as an act of creation?
Once you create characters, these characters tell me what they want to do or how they feel. I just follow their wishes. I just follow their feelings and behavior and write the story.

How did you and John Lasseter meet? How has he helped you in America?
I met him about 20 years ago in L.A. at Disney. He was all by himself quietly working on the development of a 3D animation project. I was very fond of him because he was very much devoted to something he believed in at a studio where 2D animation was “it.” Since then, he has been a good friend of mine.

In “Princess Mononoke,” there were no clear heroes or villains. The viewer could understand each character’s point of view. Is “Spirited Away” similar in that respect?
In a real society, human beings are complex, and nobody is just good or bad. I try to create stories which reflect that reality.

What’s next for you? You occasionally threaten to retire, but do you have any new film ideas you’re considering?
I am currently working on several short animated films as well as a special exhibition for the Ghibli Museum, which opened last October. One of the short films we have just about finished is about the character Mei from “My Neighbor Totoro” and her encounter with a baby “cat bus.” The new exhibition has to do with imagined flying machines from 19th-century works of science fiction in the style of “Laputa: Castle in the Sky.” I have also just begun to work on another feature-length animated film, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you at this moment any details about it, except that I am working on it.

Most Japanese animation that makes its way to America is obsessed with technology and issues related to technology. “Akira” is perhaps the best example, I think, of that sort of film. But your work is striking for being equally obsessed with the natural world. Even in such early work as “Castle of Cagliostro,” there are moments in your films where the characters pause and contemplate nature – just before that movie’s famous opening car chase, for example. How did your fascination with nature develop?
Industry and nature have coexisted ever since the human race came into being – so to me, it is a natural relationship, and natural to want to illustrate both aspects in a film.

I am not exactly an environmentalist or a nature-lover, and I do not deliberately seek to make nature a central theme in my films. If I have to draw a building, I prefer to draw a building made of natural materials like wood rather than one made of concrete. And I would rather have trees surrounding it, than other buildings. That’s all.

In America, animated features are strongly targeted toward a young audience – with simple moral structures and uncomplicated jokes. In Japan, comics and cartoons are targeted at all age groups, and don’t necessarily have to be “funny”; in “Princess Mononoke,” for example, there are adult themes, scenes of violence and no singing animals. Why do you think the Japanese are more accepting of emotionally “mature” cartoons?
Animated films and manga (comics) were regarded as “for children” for a long time here in Japan. As for animated films, I think that the background, the history and the fundamental concept of animated films are all very different in Japan than they are in the U.S.

In the U.S., an animated film is an offshoot of the musical genre of film. But Japanese animation has largely been created under the influence of European animation, and made to be essentially narrative theater in which straightforward story-telling and theme are important elements – much more like live-action films. This tendency applies not only to feature-length animation, but also to animated TV series, and has even influenced manga, as well.

What’s the difference between making a movie for children and making a movie for adults?
In my opinion, animation is the most appropriate medium for entertaining as well as communicating ideas to children, and I have always wanted to make films for children. However, if a film is really appealing to children – if it doesn’t underestimate what they are able to take in and appreciate – it will probably also be appealing to adults as well.

Who do you feel are the new “rising stars” of animation?
Studio Ghibli just released a new animated film “The Cat Returns” (“Neko no Ongaeshi”). It is directed by a young man named Hiroyuki Morita. I chose him to direct the film when this project came up. He did a good job.

For the English translation of “Spirited Away,” will you be working with the same team that translated “Princess Mononoke”?
I don’t really have much involvement with the process of translating or making the foreign-language versions of our films. We have a few people here in the studio who do that, one foreigner who can speak English pretty well, I hear. They meet with me at the beginning, and I give them any instructions or advice about the translation I can think of. But this time John Lasseter was kind enough to help us with the English version of the film, and I think he appreciates and understands what I mean to do in my films – so probably he has gotten the kind of English words and voices into it that will be right for the film.