Born in 1935 in Mie Prefecture, Japan. After graduating from The University of Tokyo with a degree in French literature, he joined Toei Animation Company. He debuted as a director with the animated TV series Ken, The Wild Boy (1963 – 1965), and directed his first animated feature film, The Little Norse Prince Valiant (1968). He left Toei in 1971 and worked at various studios such as A Production, Zuiyo Eizo and Nippon Animation, and directed many popular TV series including Lupin the Third (first series, 1971 – 1972), Heidi, A Girl of the Alps (1974), From the Apennines to the Andes (1976), and Anne of Green Gables (1979), and feature films such as Panda! Go Panda! (1972), Jarinko Chie (1981) and Gauche The Cellist (1981).
Takahata co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985 with Hayao Miyazaki, and has directed five feature films since: Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), Pom Poko (1994), which received the Feature Film Prize at Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 1995, My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999), which was chosen by The Museum of Modern Art in New York for its film collection, the first Japanese animated feature film to be so honored, and his new film, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, released in November 2013 in Japan. He served as producer for Hayao Miyazaki’s films Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986). He also directed the live action documentary The Story of Yanagawa Waterways (1987).
He has been involved in a variety of other projects. To name but a few, he has participated in the creation of the Japanese versions of foreign animated films such as Paul Grimault’s Le Roi et L’Oiseau and Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou et la Sorcière and Azur et Asmar. He has also published a number of books including “Jyu-ni Seiki no Animation (12th Century Animation – Film and Animation Techniques as Seen in Kokuho Emaki Scrolls, 1999)”, “Ichimai no E kara (From One Piece of Art, 2009)”; essays on Japanese and foreign fine art; and the Japanese edition of “Paroles” (2004) by Jacques Prévert. He has also served as a professor at Nihon University College of Art. In 1998, Takahata received Japan’s Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon. He was awarded with the Honor-ific Leopard at Locarno International Film Festival in 2009.