Jimmy T. Murakami
Born in California in 1933 as a second-generation Japanese American (Nisei), he was incarcerated for four years in a Japanese American internment camp beginning at the age of eight during World War II. He also lost relatives in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It was while in the camp that he saw Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, an experience that sparked his interest in animation.
After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he joined UPA’s Burbank studio in 1956. The following year, he moved to New York to work at Pintoff Studio, where he contributed to The Violinist, which received an Academy Award nomination. After spending a year working at Toei Doga (now Toei Animation) in Japan, he relocated to London in 1960 and worked as a producer and director for TV Cartoons, directing shorts such as The Insects, which was nominated for a BAFTA Award.
In 1965, he returned to Los Angeles and co-founded Murakami-Wolf with Fred Wolf. His film Breath won the Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and he produced The Magic Pear Tree, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
In 1970, while in Dublin working as associate producer and aerial photography director on the live-action feature Red Baron, he met the woman he would marry and decided to base his career in Ireland. In 1980, he directed the live-action science-fiction feature Battle Beyond the Stars for producer Roger Corman, a space adaptation of Seven Samurai.
In 1982, at TVC London, he served as supervising director of the animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman, which won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1986, he adapted and directed When the Wind Blows, which won the Feature Film Grand Prix at the 1987 Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
In 1989, he established a Dublin branch of Murakami-Wolf, where he produced the long-running television series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The studio employed more than 100 artists. Murakami also contributed significantly to the development of the Irish animation industry by teaching at institutions such as the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) and Ballyfermot College.
Through Murakami’s recommendation, Cartoon Saloon founders including Tomm Moore became members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, later earning five Academy Award nominations to date.
In his later years, he returned to his first love, painting, creating oil paintings, watercolors, figurative works, and landscapes. He passed away in Dublin on February 16, 2014, at the age of 80.
In 2013, the Dingle International Film Festival established the “Murakami Award,” honoring contributors to the animation industry, and selected him as its inaugural recipient.
