It's pretty clear to me that this biased article was written by the Chinese press because they call "the Senkaku islands" "the Diaoyu islands".

Miyazaki may be a great anime creator, but he is NOT an expert on historical and political issues. Some Japanese people criticize Miyazaki's comments because Japan have already apologized over 20 times about its imperial and wartime aggression and those past apologies and the compensation paid to other countries have been ignored. In general, Japanese people think that Japanese invasions to Asian countries were wrong, Perl Harbor attack was wrong. Some Japanese right wingers think Japanese invasions were no different from Western Imperialists invasion over Asian and African countries. They are annoyed by the blatant double standards. Western countries like Britain and France never said "sorry" about their wartime past, and China never demand an apology and the compensation from Britain for the Opium Wars. It's amazing and ironic that the Japan haters themselves are engaging in the very behavior that they accuse Japan of doing, which is ignoring the past. If you think that sorry state of historical reflection is bad, you need to see how the other countries have reflected on their past.

As for the territorial dispute, the US should stick up for Japan because of the fact that it was the US that returned the Senkaku islands to Japan in 1972 along with Okinawa. In 1971, the US President Richard Nixon confirmed Japan's "residual sovereignty" over the Senkaku Islands just before a deal to return Okinawa Prefecture to Japan, according to recordings and other materials kept at the Nixon Library in California. Nixon made the confirmation in a conversation with his national security adviser Henry Kissinger. The CIA also stated in related documents that the Japanese claim to sovereignty over the Senkakus is strong and that any dispute over the islands would not have arisen had it not been for the discovery of potential oil reserves on the nearby continental shelf in the late 1960s.

At the end of the day, Japanese people are fortunate to have freedom of speech and freedom of choice. You can't expect any famous person in China to officially make comments like ""Chinese government should apologize to Tibetan people" . It's silly to me that a country like China that is a dictatorship with a history of brutal repression and human-rights abuse taking place NOW, have the hypocrisy to criticize the actions of a present-day democracy. In truly civilized countries, media is free and protected under the constitution, and people can express their own views. Under the CCP, it is controlled and used only to promote propaganda.

From the themes of many of his other movies, it should be easy to put together (although less so, because the movies are so strong on their own merits that one feel the themes being thrust at them) that Miyazaki is a hard leftist, environmentalist/collectivist, much like Osamu Tezuka, much of who's later works had a strong message (like Bagi: The Monster of Mighty Nature).

The only bright spot of Japan's demographic crisis is that it is going to wipe out most of the nationalist thugs.

The nationalist thugs? I haven't seen a bunch of Japanese people rioting against China or any other country. If you are worried about extreme nationalism, then look at China. There is a slogan in China that a patriotic act should not be considered a crime. This is why the destruction of Japanese cars, restaurants, etc by anti-Japan demonstrators is virtually permitted in that nation. Also an opinion survey conducted by a Chinese portal site showed that 80 percent of respondents supported the attack on the Japanese ambassador's car. It is alarming that many people praised the attack, calling the suspects "heroes". I must point out that the strong effects on Chinese people of the patriotic education by Chinese authorities are behind the radicalization of their extreme nationalistic/anti-Japanese sentiments. In the 1990s, the Chinese government under Jiang Zemin introduced new guidelines of “patriotic education” that included anti-Japanese lessons for primary, middle and high school students. They wanted to prevent a recurrence of the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, which was triggered by young people seeking greater democratization.

Nowhere did i suggest that China was better. Its ultra-nationalism needs to be quenched much the same as Japan's does, though China has got a harder road to get there (with Japan we just have to wait a couple decades..)

Ultra-nationalism is everwhere. Take a look at neo-nazis in Germany, the US, Russia etc. 

Again, nowhere did I say it was not. And such zealous, chest-beating nationalism does need to be eliminated the world over, being a contributing factor to so much evil in the world (now, a healthy dose of patriotism is a good thing, as it gets people caring about their nation and, presumably, caring about the people therein, but that is another matter).

The statement regarding the Island disputes is rather romantic, he must know that those things are more complex than just divide them between two.

But, I'm looking forward for this film.

Sharing would work in this case because the islands are uninhabited. Divide the revenue from oil exploration rights and everyone goes home, at least not happy, but satisfied. So there's no-one there to say "okay, because you live on *this* side of the line, you're Chinese now. If you don't like it, there's the door."

Yeah. The guy makes good movies but like most artistic types he's a bit of a naif.

I never liked Miyasaki. Always the same themes, always the same nationalism, always the same cultural inspiration.

He could have been better if he once left japan.

I prefer Makoto Shinkai (5cm per second) and Mamoru Hosoda (Wolf children Ame and Yuki).

Plus they are both announced to become the successors of Miyasaki (culturally, not director of ghibli).