Hayao Miyazaki starts with the end. "It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization in my lifetime," he responds with debatable playfulness to one of moderator Roland Kelts' first questions, "but it doesn't look like it's going to happen, so I have to use my imagination."

Part of the audience laughs. The rest listens in suspense as interpreter Beth Carey translates the world-renowned animator's rumbling Japanese into English. Then they laugh, too, creating a somewhat disconcerting reverb that sounds throughout Zellerbach Hall.

Miyazaki, whose works have enchanted and challenged viewers everywhere, is visiting the United States for the first time since 1999 and is here in Berkeley to receive the Center for Japanese Studies' Berkeley Japan Prize. The award honors Miyazaki's lifetime achievement of bringing Japanese culture to a more global consciousness. In conjunction with his acceptance of the prize, the Pacific Film Archive screened Miyazaki's latest film "Ponyo," in Wheeler Hall, and he is participating in a rare public question-and-answer session on this Saturday night.

The crowd's diverse members-who range from older scholars to fidgety five-year-olds who somehow managed to create hats from plush Totoros, the titular forest creatures from Miyazaki's 1988 film-are equally captivated by the white-haired, gray-suited little man.

The topic of conversation at the moment is the apocalyptic subtext that underlies many of the director's films-something other filmmakers might explain methodically, solemnly weighing their worldview and its grim implications for humanity. Miyazaki talks about doomsday like a child gearing up for a fireworks display.

"In the town where I live, when there is a hard rain, it almost floods. It's those times when the old people get excited."

Those who have seen Miyazaki's latest film, "Ponyo," are reminded of the scene in which the elderly residents of the seaside town's senior center look out with wonder at a roiling ocean that threatens to engulf the whole island.

As he continues, he sounds more and more like a biblical prophet, or maybe a Zen master. Or, perhaps, a "villain" from one of his films.

"Disasters make people nicer to each other. There's a lot of junk in the forest after the flood, but there is also a lot of life that comes from it. We don't equate natural disasters with a disaster, but as something we live with," he says bluntly.

He expresses hope in the cleansing power of nature but also admits to mischievousness. "I have kind of an evil side as well. When I go into those high rises in Tokyo, sometimes I think it would be good for the sea to come a little closer, that it would be good if there were fewer buildings below." He laughs.

Miyazaki is notorious for the ambiguous philosophies his films espouse. As panelist Thomas LaMarre, author of "Miyazaki's Philosophy of Technology," explained at The Hayao Miyazaki Symposium this morning, Miyazaki is often fascinated by the things he cautions against. "It seems his view is to get rid of technology and get back to nature, (but he's also got) a sort of delight in technology."

In Miyazaki's films, for every happy ending contingent on making peace with the natural world, there is a lovingly rendered depiction of a fantastical flying machine. For every creeping, amorphous menace, there is a very real character who, according to Kelts, is "troubled rather than evil."

When Kelts asks him about this peculiar characteristic of his ostensible villains, though, Miyazaki doesn't quite take the bait. The question is thoughtful and precise. Kelts brings up Fujimoto, the eponymous young goldfish's sea sorcerer father in "Ponyo," and likens him to the character of Prospero in Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

Miyazaki thinks for a moment and blithely responds. "To have a film where there's an evil figure and a good figure, and they fight and the good figure wins and there's a happy ending, would mean the animator has to draw an evil figure, and it's very unpleasant to draw evil figures. That's why I don't have them in my films."

The answer seems simple enough. He is primarily an animator, after all. But you sense that he's really saying more. It's something in how his answers never exactly address the questions or how he speaks mostly in anecdotes-he's miles ahead and you have to either trust that you'll get there eventually, or give up and take him at face value. It's of no consequence to Miyazaki.

That same sage quality was also evident in the short speech he gave earlier today at the official award ceremony, which took place in a cozy reception room in the Women's Faculty Club. The couple dozen attendees, mostly faculty or press, had milled around, eating classy finger food and drinking wine waiting for Miyazaki's arrival. His plane had been delayed in San Diego on the way up from a stop at Comic Con.

Then, nearly an hour after his scheduled arrival time, he appeared in the room. As the conversation died down, he surveyed the scene, expressionless and silent. The fact that the transition lenses of his big, round glasses were still dark only added to his enigmatic aura.

After a welcome from Executive Dean Janet Broughton and an introduction from Center for Japanese Studies Chair Duncan Williams, Miyazaki took the podium. He wasn't standing more than 20 feet from the formerly chatting group, who waited, motionless.

"Thank you," he said. "We work in the entertainment field, which is full of numbers. All those numbers are always in our heads. And as we look at all those numbers on the paper-crawl through those numbers-it seems as though we are part of those numbers." It was an odd way to begin an award acceptance speech, but as he went on, his meaning became a little clearer, if not totally comprehensible on a surface level.

"The paper of culture is full of numbers that appear and disappear, appear and disappear. Economics, ecology, politics are (all on) paper," he said urgently, as if he were warning his audience, rather than thanking them for a prize.

"Those of us in the field of entertainment have to take a pipe and go through the economics and the politics paper, way down below where there is no paper. The only way we can justify our presence is to continue to go deeper through this hole."

Onstage at Zellerbach, his tone is less dire. He makes wry jokes and growls pensively before answering tough questions. Yet beyond the humor, his message fits with his previous speech.

When Kelts asks him about the Japanese animation industry-its use of CGI, its outsourcing to Korea and China-Miyazaki, whose Studio Ghibli is "still doing drawings with pencil," compares what he does to "rowing a bark in a sea full of speed boats." It may be a bleak image, but he insists, "I think we're freer when we can draw by hand."

It's this fierce dedication to what, in other countries, might be a dying craft, coupled with an unapologetic complexity of vision, that sets Miyazaki on a plane above and keeps Japanese animation at the forefront of popular art.

But in the end, Miyazaki resists talking about the bigger picture. He doesn't reiterate the importance of imagination, nor does he caution against living in virtual reality as he's done in the past. On the subject of what we "can hope for from Hayao Miyazaki," he doesn't talk about future plans as a director. He goes back to his roots-what he started out doing almost 50 years ago.

"People say I'm very lively and energetic for my age, but I often feel tired. So I guess what it comes down to is whether I want to keep drawing or if I want to flop down dead in the midst of drawing. That wouldn't be a very cool way to go," he says. You can't help but wonder what he thinks would be.

Tags: ZELLERBACH HALL, HAYAO MIYAZAKI, BERKELEY JAPAN PRIZE, CENTER FOR JAPANESE STUDIES, PONYO