Hayao Miyazaki's Daydream Data Notes

Hayao Miyazaki's Daydream Data Notes
Cover of the collected Hayao Miyazaki's Daydream Data Notes (1997 edition)
宮崎駿の雑想ノート (Miyazaki Hayao no Zassō nōto)
Manga
Written by	Hayao Miyazaki
Published by	Dainippon Kaiga
Magazine	Model Graphix
Original run	November 1984 – October 1994
Volumes	1

Hayao Miyazaki's Daydream Data Notes (Miyazaki Hayao no Zassō nōto) is the collective name for Hayao Miyazaki's annotated manga and illustrated essays he contributed, very sporadically, to the hobby magazine Model Graphix in the 1980s and early 90's. The name has also been translated into English as Hayao Miyazaki's Random Thoughts Notebook.

The Daydream Notes began as private sketches that can be traced back to Miyazaki's earliest childhood. Born in 1941 he, like war babies all over Europe, drew almost exclusively planes, tanks and battleships. As Helen McCarthy noted in her book Hayao Miyazaki Master of Japanese Animation.

In the Porco Rosso chapter of her book, McCarthy quotes the following remark made by Miyazaki: "... the truth is that I am happiest when I am writing about stupid airplanes and tanks in magazines like Model Graphix ... ".

Installments of Daydream Notes were irregularly printed. Episodes occasionally appeared in the November 1984 through May 1990 issues of the monthly magazine Model Graphix.

Selections from his Daydream Notes have been bundled in book form, published by Dainippon Kaiga in December 1992. In August 1997 a revised and expanded edition was released by the same publisher. The first edition does not contain Hikōtei Jidai.

The annotated manga The return of Hans (ハンスの帰還, Hans no kikan) is not included in either edition but appears in a different collection, Tigers covered with mud: Hayao Miyazaki's delusion notes (泥まみれの虎 宮崎駿の妄想ノート, doromamire no tora miyazaki hayao no mōsō nōto), published, by Dainippon Kaiga, in August 2002.

In 1995, Miyazaki's Daydream Notes was turned into a series of radio broadcasts for Nippon Broadcasting System. When commenting on this dramatisation in an interview for Tokuma Shoten's Animage magazine, Miyazaki explains his political stance as an opponent of Japan's rearmament and contrasts this with his lifelong interests in war, military affairs and military hardware. He explains that he expresses this fascination by drawing the fantastical craft, which are then published in Model Graphix, a magazine for scale model creation. He said that he did his best drawings when he was serializing his manga Nausicaä, "After staying up till dawn drawing the last manga pages to meet the printer's deadline, I would draw these models the next day; each would take a week." He went on to say "In essence it is my hobby to draw seemingly real vehicles, it works as my psychological release valve."