Kiro Honjo

Kiro Honjo (本庄 季郎) is a secondary character of The Wind Rises film. He is a close friend of Jiro Horikoshi. His wife lives in Tokyo.

Personality
He is first seen as a student of where he and Jiro retrieve the books, because the library is burning down. The library was hit by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake which devastated Tokyo. He smokes a lot, even the last cigarette stub.

He criticizes Japan for being underdeveloped in regards of technology. He mentions for example the Japaneses need oxen to drag a plane instead using a wagon. In Germany he studies plane design at Junkers. He is overwhelmed by German technology like heating.

Sometimes Jiro feeling down, because his planes are used as weapon during the second World War. But still he motivates him to design planes to the best of one's knowledge and belief that they are just designing planes.

Fiction and Reality
Although in the film Honjo was portrayed as a colleague of Jiro Horikoshi, going back to their days at Tokyo Imperial University, in reality, Honjo was senior to Horikoshi.

Etymology

 * The name Kiro means "season" (季) (ki) and "son" (郎) (ro).
 * Kiro's surname Honjo means "base, root, origin, source" (本) (hon) and "level" (庄) (sho/jo).