Hattori

Hattori is a minor character appears in Hayao Miyazaki's film The Wind Rises. He is the design chief of, a company where Jiro Horikoshi and Kiro Honjo work.

Plot
He appears for the first time on Jiro's first day in the company. He and Mr. Kurokawa watch over Jiro's draft. Later on in the story he appears again in a cab beside Mr. Kurokawa and Jiro, because the Japanese secret police is looking for Jiro. Then Jiro notes he wants to go home to read the letter of his fiancé Naoko Satomi. Hattori and Mr. Kurokawa break out in laugh.

Hattori is seen again beside Mr. Kurokawa to listen to Jiro's presentation to make their plane lighter by using countersunk rivet. Katayama explains how the new technology is used.

Fiction and Reality
Hattori is based on the real person, Joji Hattori, who was a senior engineer in Mitsubishi's aircraft design division in Nagoya. He supported the radical reverse-gullwing idea by the young engineer Jiro Horikoshi, which ultimately resulted in the successful A5M fighter design. Under his leadership, Mitsubishi completed several more designs that would become iconic WW2-era aircraft, such as the Navy's Zero fighter (also by Horikoshi) and the Army's G4M bomber (by Kiro Honjo).

Etymology

 * The surname Hattori means "clothes/clothing, admit, obey, discharge" (服) (hat) and "part, department, category" (部) (tori).
 * Hattori (服部) is written in the same way as the famous ninja's, Hattori Hanzō's (服部 半蔵) last name.