The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ, Kaze Tachinu) is a 2013 Japanese anime written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli for the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Walt Disney Japan, Mitsubishi, Toho and KDDI and distributed by Toho. It was released on July 20, 2013 in Japan and on February 21, 2014 in America.

It is based on the serialized manga of the same name, written and illustrated by Miyazaki on Model Graphix magazine and Tatsuo Hori's acclaimed 1936-37 novel Kaze Tachinu (風立ちぬ –, The Wind Has Risen). It traces the life of Jiro Horikoshi, an aircraft engineer who invented the famous "Zero" fighter, which was used by the Japanese navy during World War II. The film and the manga also chronicles the life of Jiro’s wife, Naoko, a fictional character from Hori's original novel. The story describes the tragic fate of the young couple in the maelstrom of prewar Japan, and depicts Taishô and Shôwa Japan from the economic hardships in the 1920's through the rise of militarism in the 1930's.

The film's theatrical poster contains the dedication, "In honor of Jiro Horikoshi and Tatsuo Hori".

Its production was chronicled in the 2013 documentary "The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness", released by Toho and the NHK feature "1,000 Days Record / Declaration of Retirement". It was Miyazaki's final film before his retirement in 2013. However, in 2017, Miyazaki announced he had come out of retirement to direct "How Do You Live?", which is expected to be released in 2023.

According to Miyazaki, the "wind" in the title is not "something that blows refreshingly, but a terrifying wind that roars and shakes trees after the nuclear power plant exploded, so I later spoke about having to try to live..."

Plot
""But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.""

- Caproni to Jiro

A Journey
In the movie, Jirō starts out as a young boy living in a provincial town in Japan, who dreams of a day when he could design and possibly fly airplanes. However, much to his dismay, his eye-sight deteriorates rapidly, preventing Jiro from ever piloting an aircraft. His hopeless longing even leads to dreams where he would fall from an airplane he was piloting, as his eyes could not withstand the pressure of high altitudes. Desperate to find a way to overcome his weakness and follow his goal, he seeks help and guidance from Giovanni Caproni, a famous Italian aircraft designer who appears to Jiro in his dreams. Caproni encourages Jiro to become an aeronautical engineer, as he could then follow his desire to design airplanes without actually having to fly one.

A Heart Aflutter
Determined to become an aeronautical engineer one day, Jiro studies the principles of aviation throughout his academic years, continuously seeking guidance and encouragement from Caproni along the way. By the time he is an adult, he is able to enter the University of Tokyo to study aeronautics. Boarding a train, he makes his way to the Kanto region of Japan. During the journey, he meets Naoko, a young girl traveling with her maid, for the first time. An unprecedented, deadly earthquake suddenly hits the Kanto region, leaving the city in devastation and fire. The passengers inside the train flee from the train, as the damaged boiler threatens to explode. As Jiro starts to leave, he notices that Naoko's maid had broken her leg during the commotion caused by the earthquake. Strapping his slide-ruler to the side of her leg, Jiro leads both Naoko and her maid to safety. Jiro's actions win affection and gratefulness from Naoko and her maid, but they can not express their thankfulness to him, as Jiro leaves without telling them who he is.

The Falcon Project
Years later, Jiro works as an aircraft manufacturer and designer for a company in Nagoya, Japan. His first assignment to build a fighter with a design team ends in failure, and the company is forced to give up its contract to a rival company. Redirecting its attention to the designing of a heavy bomber, the company sends Jiro to Germany to study the technical advances of the German Junker aircraft designs. Jiro, with difficulty, succeeds in procuring the necessary designs from the grudging Germans and returns to Japan. Some years later, Jiro is reassigned to a fighter project funded by the Imperial Japanese Navy as the design team's chief designer. This project also ends in failure, causing Jiro to fall into a state of severe disappointment. The company, anxious to have their chief designer back in form, sends Jiro away to a summer resort to recover. There, he meets Naoko once again, now grown into a beautiful young woman. The two soon fall in love, sharing a passionate romance. However, when Jiro proposes to Naoko, she refuses, saying that she was inflicted with tuberculosis. She earnestly entreats Jiro to wait for their marriage until she is cured, which Jiro gently accepts.

Jiro returns to the company after his vacation time expires. He is then assigned to another fighter project sponsored by the Navy as the chief aircraft designer. In order to avoid the attention of the Japanese secret police, the company sets Jiro's lodgings at one of his supervisor's residences. With the help of his design team, Jiro plans the construction of Japan's future naval fighter, regarding it as a revolutionary step in aeronautics.

A Parting
Meanwhile, Naoko's health deteriorates rapidly, eventually causing her to have a lung hemorrhage, much to Jiro's dismay. To receive treatment, she journeys to a sanatorium in the mountains where she stays for a long period of time. However, Naoko can not bear to be apart from Jiro. Furthermore, she senses that her end is near. Thus, she journeys to Nagoya to see Jiro one last time. The couple requests a traditional marriage from Jiro's host, and they spend a brief, yet happy time together despite the dire warnings given by Jiro's sister about Naoko's possibly horrific impending death.

Jiro eventually completes his fighter design, building the Mitsubishi A5M. Before he leaves to spend the next few nights at the site of the test flight, he and Naoko share their last moment together. While he is at the site, Naoko leaves Nagoya, intending to go back to the sanatorium. She knows that she is going to die, and does not wish Jiro to witness the last terrible moments of her life as she succumbs to the disease.

A Kingdom of Dreams
The test flight goes well. Jiro and his superiors watch as a naval pilot flies the new aircraft to astonishing speeds of 240 knots, a groundbreaking record in flight speeds during that time. As Jiro proudly watches his creation touch down onto the ground, he feels a strong gust of wind from the distant mountains. As he stands against the wind, he senses Naoko's death, leaving him in stunned, anxious silence.

After World War 2 is over, Jiro revisits his dreams as he did several times in his life, to meet Caproni for, possibly, the last time. Jiro expresses his regret and sorrow of the destruction and devastation his "Zero" fighter had caused during the war. Caproni comforts him, saying that "his dream was nonetheless realized" and that airplanes "are beautiful, cursed dreams". Caproni then directs Jiro's attention beyond the grassy hill they were standing on. Jiro, stunned with joy, sees Naoko coming towards him, holding a parasol in her hand. Waving to Jiro, she calls to him, "you must live, darling...you must live!" Jiro, barely able to speak, nods his head. Her last message complete, she rises with the wind, vanishing from sight. Continuing his walk with Caproni, Jiro looks to the sky and the wind, taking his wife's words deeply to heart.

Setting
""Le vent se lève!... Il faut tenter de vivre!" ("The wind is rising!... We must try to live!")" — Paul Valéry, "Le Cimetière Marin" (The Graveyard By The Sea)." The film is set in Tokyo before and after the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923, and several locations in Nagano Prefecture, namely in Karuizawa and the Fujimi Kogen Sanatorium . Unlike previous Ghibli works, "The Wind Rises" is based on the real-life experiences of author Tatsuo Hori and aviation engineer Jirô Horikoshi. Additionally in the film, Jirô speaks with Giovanni Gianni Caproni in his dreams. Caproni founded an aircraft manufacturing company called "Caproni" in Italy in 1908. Much of the film's setting was notably developed by Miyazaki while he was listening of the theme song "Hikōki-gumo" (Airplane Cloud) sung by Yumi Matsutoya.

The film's opening is set in the backyard of the birthplace of Jirô Horikoshi while the film's final scene is set in the forest of Karuizawa, where Tatsuo Hori died. The film ends with words "End", set against the background of the cloudy sky, and pays homage to both of them.

When speaking about Tatsuo Hori, Miyazaki recalls, "I read (his novels) when I was young, but it didn't really come to my mind. I found it at an antiquarian bookstore and happened to read it again. After reading it repeatedly, I realized that Utsukushii Mura (Beautiful Village, (美しい村), 1933) and Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Has Risen , (風立ちぬ), 1936–37) were wonderful. I was spending time in Oiwake (Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture). I think spending that cold winter in Oiwake was more than just for the body (of those who got sick)."

Issues with adaptation
""Why am I making a film about the inventor of the Zero fighter plane? That's the answer I need to find... One thing is for sure, I don't want to do the same as before. At my age, this is the moment when I want to do something more technically difficult, which may be less obvious for the public to accept. That's how old directors are.""

- Hayao Miyazaki According to French Ghibli fansite Buta Connection, the NHK documentary "1,000 Days Record / Declaration of Retirement" highlighted one fact: Never has Hayao Miyazaki been so unsure of himself in choosing to adapt this story.

Initially based on a forty page manga about Jirô Horikoshi's aeronautical engineering feats, the story seemed so interesting and so innovative to producer Toshio Suzuki that the latter kept pushing Hayao Miyazaki to develop it further into animation. When the decision was made to produce the film, Miyazaki himself constantly asks himself this question: 'how do you depict a character, admittedly passionate about aviation, but also indirectly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people during World War II?' Miyazaki's own wife also disagreed with him, suggesting instead suggesting working on something closer to "My Neighbor Totoro. "But Totoro is a film that has already been made,” protests the director.

The solution found by Miyazaki is simple: He would add in an emotional thread of the love story between Naoko and Jirô. However, he does not choose to show a fictitious love story, which would have watered down the historical reality and disempowered Jirô by making him more endearing. Instead, he weaved in the true love story of the author Tatsuo Hori with his wife who suffered from tuberculous.

Analysis
""The central question of our time is now 'How do we live in the face of the uncertainties of our time? The wind rises means 'How to live when there is wind blowing?' This is the real meaning of our film.""

- Hayao Miyazaki during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake This addition allowed the setting of Japan to be placed in a concrete reality: the disease was then wreaking havoc and those who were infected were condemned to an almost inevitable death. It also deepened the character of Jirô: cold in appearance, very stiff in stature, stingy in his words; he is nevertheless a passionate and whole character both professionally and in love. He knows full well that his planes will be used in war, just as he is aware that his affair with Naoko is doomed.

However, he decides to live his choices fully, to the end, despite the doubts, despite the weight of guilt and sadness. By wanting to achieve love in its purest form, by dreaming of seeing his perfect plane flying in the sky, Jirô also accepts to destroy what he holds most dear.

This film is not revisionist because it shows that Jirô is aware of the use of his planes. Through the German character Castorp, Miyazaki also condemns Japan's aggressive and murderous policy in Asia. Jirô himself recognizes his wrongs and his responsibility in the throes of war. By staging the fictionalized life of Jirô Horikoshi, Miyazaki quite simply portrays man in all his complexity and in all his nuances: passionate, destructive, amorous, imaginative, cruel, selfish and generous."

Development
""There are plenty of reasons not to make this movie. But the truth is, I want to do it...""

- Hayao Miyazaki

"The Wind Rises" was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and his first film since "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" in 2008. Prior to the film's production, the tireless director managed to produce two animated short films, "Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess" (2010) and "Treasure Hunting" (2011) and wrote the screenplay for a third short, "A Sumo Wrestler's Tail" (2010) for the Ghibli Museum. He also supervised and co-wrote the screenplay for "The Secret World of Arrietty" (2010) and "From Up on Poppy Hill" (2011).

Miyazaki began to conceive a story to illustrate the life of Jirô Horikoshi in 2008. He published the story as a manga series in the monthly magazine Model Graphix from April 2009 to January 2010 (with a break in October 2009), with the title borrowed from Tatsuo Hori's novel "The Wind Has Risen", whose title is taken from Le Cimetière Marin (Graveyard by the Sea, 1920) by French poet Paul Valéry. "I drew this manga as a hobby."

The story in the manga follows the historical account of Horikoshi's aircraft development up to 1935 (the year of the Mitsubishi A5M maiden flight), and intertwines with fictional encounters with Caproni and Naoko Satomi. The scenes with Naoko in the manga were adapted from the novel "The Wind Has Risen", in which Tatsuo Hori wrote about his life experience with his fiancée, Ayako Yano, before she died from tuberculosis. The name "Naoko Satomi" was borrowed from the female protagonist of another novel by Tatsuo Hori, "Naoko".

An obvious allusion to Naoko's tuberculosis, Miyazaki's mother also contracted the disease which he had previously portrayed in "My Neighbor Totoro". But his family past also resurfaces through the Zero plane itself: in an interview with Télérama (n° 3338, January 4, 2014), Miyazaki explained that this film was a way to reconcile with his own father. The latter had provided rudders for the Zero plane. Miyazaki, born in 1941 and anti-militarist, argued many times with his father over this. By staging Jirô, he wants to try to understand his father's motivations, without judging him, without condemning him.

Characters frequently discuss Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain", and, in a letter to Naoko, Jirô names his fleeing German friend "Mr. Castorp" after its protagonist. The character himself is a caricature of former Ghibli employee Steve Alpert who returned to Japan to voice the character.

After the release of "Ponyo", Miyazaki wanted his next film to be a sequel, "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea II", but producer Toshio Suzuki proposed to adapt the manga "The Wind Rises" instead. At first, Miyazaki rejected the proposal because he created the manga as a hobby and considered its subjects not suitable for children, the traditional audience of the feature animations from Studio Ghibli. According to Buta Connection, Miyazaki explained, "For me, drawing this manga is just a hobby. Making a movie about it is simply out of the question. Entertainment must be made for children. We must not make a film that is only intended for an adult audience."

However, Miyazaki changed his objection after a staff member suggested that "children should be allowed to be exposed to subjects they are not familiar with". Miyazaki was inspired to make the film after reading a quote from Horikoshi: "All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful". At the end of 2010, producer Toshio Suzuki said, “I made my initial suggestion to (Miya-san) in the summer of 2010. Miya-san and I continued to discuss this. I remember it was during fall when he gave me his approval and was going to try and see if he could make a movie of it. He then asked me to leave him until the end of the year."

In early 2011, the director decided to adopt the project as his new film. “I will never forget the day the decision was taken to move forward on this project,” Suzuki continues. “It was December 28, 2010. Miya-san immediately started drawing the e-konte (detailed storyboards) at the start of the new year. Very quickly, he finished the parts describing Jirô's childhood, until he met Naoko, right in the middle of the Great Kantô Earthquake in 1923." According to the NHK documentary, another factor that may have played into Miyazaki moving forward was when his longtime collaborator Isao Takahata announced the production of "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya".

Production
Production began in July 2011, a few months after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Two hundred staff were assigned to work on the two-hour animated film, which required 160,000 drawings, each checked and finalized by Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki was determined in depicting Japan during the Taishô era and the beginning of the Shôwa era as accurately as possible. The biggest challenge Miyazaki presented himself was the depiction of large crowd scenes, “The characters who make up the crowd around the main characters are not just anyone,” explains Miyazaki. “These are characters who have their own existence within the film. You should not animate them just any way, but really bring them to life." Thus, just for a four-second seconds, it took no less than 1 year and 3 months of work for a team of animators to come to the end. Miyazaki is happy with the result.

On February 18, 2012, an unexpected event delays the production of the film. Miyazaki remained locked in his private workshop only to come out two days later not feeling well. Suzuki advised him to go see a doctor out of caution, but the director refused, saying it was a waste of time. “Even if I die, I have to leave all my e-konte. Otherwise, it's a little shameful." His friend and director Hideaki Anno would have said to him: " If you disappear, at least finish your e-konte and I will finish the film."

Miyazaki refused to move away from production, because above all, he had Isao Takahata in mind. Takahata's project, which was being worked on twenty minutes away from Ghibli's main production studio, gave motivation to Miyazaki.

By October 2012, Miyazaki continued to struggled with the morality of the film, as well as its ending. Miyazaki had trouble finding Jirô's feelings in the face of the paradox of his dream of wanting to create a plane, which in the end will turn out to be a war plane. He also concluded that the Zero managing to fly is not necessarily an appropriate end for the film. And he always asks the same question: "Jirô is building a war plane." What final should we write? What satisfactory end should the film end with, beyond the completion of this plane?". Miyazaki struggled with creating a satisfying finale, "From the beginning, I knew it would not be easy. But this is really difficult."

During one weekend, Hayao Miyazaki went to see a photo exhibition at the Tama Zenshôen National Sanatorium. Leprosy could apparently not be transmitted to others. But at the time, he saw how the sick were kept away from society. Despite this forced isolation, the suffering tried to live with dignity. This visit knocked Miyazaki down a bit. On the way home, he and his wife didn't talk about the exhibit at all. But through it, the director draws the lesson that one should not live his life in half measures.

Suddenly, Miyazaki began to retouching Jirô's expressions on certain shots put aside by the animators. Miyazaki thought that Jirô must feel something stronger about his failures. He changes his face, including baring his teeth, to accentuate his determination to move forward. His face becomes more precise. “For the people of that time, war was not a choice,” he explains. “It was like that. In other words, it's like now. Every era knows upheavals, but even with that, one must live fully."

He also goes back to the film's intension note and writes: "With each upheaval in an era, everyone's dreams are perverted. The questions do not necessarily find answers. But despite life's obstacles, you still have to live with strength."

In time, Miyazaki shifted his focus on the love story between Jirô and Naoko, as Naoko's condition worsens at the sanatorium. With these romantic scenes, the director also hopes to give the film another direction and not just offer the story of a man who wants to create a plane in the context of war.

Release
According to Buta Connection, on December 12, 2012, Studio Ghibli formalized the two new feature films in production, "The Wind Rises" for Hayao Miyazaki and "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" for Isao Takahata, scheduled for a double release for summer 2013. This would have been the first time that the works of the two directors were released together since the release of the films My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies in 1988.

However, on February 4, 2013, less than two months after the official announcement of the two projects, Tôhô announced on their official website that the release of the "Tale of Princess Kaguya" would be delayed until November 23, 2013, due to Takahata failing to complete his storyboards. "The Wind Rises" was released in Japan on July 20, 2013 to 454 screens nationwide and in within two days, from July 20th and 21st, it earned 960,880,000 yen in the box office revenue. Its audience mobilization was 747,451, making it one of the most popular films of the year. As of January 28, 2014, its box office revenue has exceeded 12.20 billion yen.

The film played in competition at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. It had its official North American premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, although a sneak preview of the film was presented earlier at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival (the film screened outside the official program).

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributed the film in North America through its Touchstone Pictures banner. The film's English dubbing was directed by Gary Rydstrom. Disney held a one-week release window in the Los Angeles theatrical circuit for the film beginning on 8 November 2013, so that it could qualify for Academy Awards consideration. The film was released theatrically on 21 February 2014, in select cities, with wide release on February 28. The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 9 2014, with distribution by StudioCanal.

Home media
Walt Disney Studios Japan released the movie on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in Japan on June 18, 2014.

In the United States, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released The Wind Rises on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on November 18, 2014. "The Wind Rises" release includes supplement features with storyboards, the original Japanese trailers and TV spots, a "Behind the Microphone" featurette with members of the English voice cast and a video from when the film was announced to be completed. The audio format for both English and Japanese language are in mono (DTS-HD MA 1.0).

Even though Disney's North American rights to Studio Ghibli films they owned expired in 2017, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment continued to distribute "The Wind Rises" until 2020 when GKIDS re-released the film on DVD and Blu-ray on September 22, 2020 with distribution through Shout! Factory. The reason why it took longer for a re-release than other Studio Ghibli movies was due to the fact that it was still a fairly new film at the time, and that Disney still held the rights to the film in the United States.

Music

 * The film's score was composed and conducted by Joe Hisaishi, and performed by the.

The film also includes singer-songwriter 's 1973 song "Hikōki-gumo"(ひこうき雲). Matsutoya has collaborated with Studio Ghibli before in the production for Kiki's Delivery Service, which features her songs Rouge no Dengon(ルージュの伝言) and Yasashisa ni Tsutsumaretanara(やさしさに包まれたなら). Producer Suzuki recommended "Hikōki-gumo" to Miyazaki in December 2012, feeling the lyrics resembled the story of The Wind Rises.

The Wind Rises soundtrack was released in Japan on July 17, 2013, by Tokuma Japan Communications.

Das gibt's nur einmal (English: It only happens once) is the German song Hans Castorp sings while playing the piano at Hotel Kusakaru in the film. Jiro Horikoshi and Nahoko's father later join the singing. This song is composed by Werner Richard Heymann for the German movie Der Kongreß tanzt.

Additional English Voices

 * Matt Adler
 * David Cowgill (Fight Engineer)
 * Darren Criss (Katayama)
 * Holly Dorff Long
 * Moosie Drier
 * Ronan Farrow (Mitsubishi Employee)
 * Jackie Gonneau
 * Nicholas Guest
 * Richard Horvitz
 * Rif Hutton
 * Matthew Labyorteaux
 * Michelle Ruff
 * Byron Thames
 * Madeleine E. White
 * Mae Whitman (Kinu)
 * Elijah Wood (Sone)
 * David Zyler