Yoshifumi Kondou // Who's Who // Nausicaa.net

Yoshifumi Kondou (sometimes spelled "Kondo") was born on March 31, 1950, and has worked with Miyazaki and Takahata for many years, starting when all three worked together at A Pro. He was the animation supervisor for Anne of Green Gables, Grave of the Fireflies, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Only Yesterday. He also created the character designs for Grave, worked as a technical director for the animated short The Sky-Colored Seed, as well as working as a supervising animator on the 1997 hit movie Princess Mononoke.

Kondou made his directing debut in 1995 with Whisper of the Heart. Miyazaki was planning to "retire" and leave the directing to others at Studio Ghibli, such as Kondou, but all of those plans changed abruptly in January 1998 when Kondou passed away. You can read more here.

Kondou's work (as well as his name) is sometimes confused with that of Katsuya Kondou, who also worked as an animation director on Kiki and Only Yesterday. They are not related.

Shizuku, the main character from Whisper of the Heart, Kondou's directorial debut film.

Yoshifumi Kondou passed away at 4:25am on 21 January 1998 in the Tokyo Tachikawa City Hospital, victim of an aneurysm. His funeral service, led by his wife, Hiroko, took place at 1:00pm on 23 January 1998 at the Buddhist temple in Kiyose. Kondou was 47 years of age.

"Tsuyu to kie maboroshi to kie inazuma no kage no gotoku ni mi wa omou beshi"	A tanka poem by -Ikkyu Sojun- (1394-1481)	"Like vanishing dew, a passing apparition or sudden flash of lightning - already gone - thus should one regard one's self."
Poem submitted by Mark Vallen in response to Kondou's passing.

Related Items:

An obituary on the Studio Ghibli site (in Japanese)
A heartfelt eulogy by Miyazaki (in Japanese or in English)
Comments by Takahata (in Japanese or in English)
An English transcript of the Sankei Sports news report
A poem by Miyazaki to Kondou (on a picture of Anne from Anne of Green Gables)