The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ) is a 2013 Japanese animated historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The film is based on the manga of the same name, which is in turn based on a short story by Tatsuo Hori, a writer, poet and translator from mid-20th century (Showa period) Japan. Kaze Tachinu is a fictionalised biography of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A5M (featured in the movie) and its famous successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. Both were fighter aircraft that the Empire of Japan used in World War II. Miyazaki said this will be his final film.

Plot
Jiro Horikoshi, a young boy living in a provincial town, has a dream about climbing up onto his roof and flying away in a bird-like airplane, while wearing aviator goggles. After a while, a large, monstrous ship emerges from the clouds, and drops some anthropomorphic bombs on him. His plane is destroyed, and he plummets to the ground, then wakes up. Borrowing an English-language aviation magazine, he diligently studies it with an English dictionary, then has another dream where he meets Caproni, an Italian plane designer. Caproni is surprised that a Japanese boy has intruded in what he thought was his own dream, then realizes that airplanes are a shared dream they both have. Caproni tells Jiro that he can't fly a plane with glasses, but that building planes is better than flying them. Jiro wakes up and decides he will build planes.

Years later, Jiro is at university to study engineering. On traveling back to Tokyo from a holiday, he meets a young girl named Naoko, who is traveling with her maid. At this time, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 hits, which stops the train and causes Naoko's maid to break her leg. Jiro delivers Naoko and her maid to Naoko's family, then walks away without giving his name. He arrives at his university and fights to save engineering books as Caproni's voice cheers him on.

Jiro begins working at an airplane manufacturer, assigned to a fighter design team. Their project ends in failure, with the company losing the design contract to a rival company. With no immediate projects to take on, he is sent to Germany to do technical research and to obtain a production license for a Junkers aircraft. During the journey, he dreams of Caproni, who asks him, "Do you prefer a world with pyramids, or with no pyramids?"

Some years later, he is promoted to chief designer for a fighter plane competition sponsored by the Navy, which ends in a failure. Disappointed, Jiro visits a summer resort where he runs into Naoko again; they are engaged soon after. However, Naoko is afflicted with tuberculosis, and refuses to marry until she recovers.

After some months, Jiro is assigned again as chief designer for another Navy competition. At the same time, Naoko is recuperating in an alpine sanatorium, but she cannot bear being apart from Jiro and resolves to move to the company housing. Jiro's boss performs a traditional wedding. Jiro's sister complains that his marriage to Naoko will end badly, as, having become a doctor, she is well aware of the incurable nature of tuberculosis. Jiro counters with the argument that every day is precious to Naoko and that what he does, he does for her.

Even though Naoko's health continues to deteriorate, she and Jiro enjoy their life together, the one lending strength to the other, right up to the day of the test flight of the prototype of what would become his first successful aircraft, the Mitsubishi A5M. On that day, after Jiro leaves for the factory, Naoko informs the company housing manager's wife that she feels strong enough to take a walk. Her departure is witnessed by Jiro's sister, who fears that this represents a desire on Naoko's part to spare Jiro the horror of her final dissolution in the coils of the disease — a fear which is borne out in three letters which Naoko leaves for her husband, family, and friends. At the test site, Jiro is interrupted by a burst of wind — seemingly implying that his wife has died.

The film ends in a dream sequence with Jiro emerging from the horror of war, feeling regret for his inventions and the deaths they caused. Caproni tells him his dreams were nonetheless realized. Naoko appears in this dream one last time, exhorting her husband to live on in the trust she has in him.

Cast

 * Hideaki Anno as Jiro Horikoshi
 * Miori Takimoto as Naoko Satomi
 * Hidetoshi Nishijima as Honjo
 * Masahiko Nishimura as Kurokawa
 * Steve Alpert as Castorp
 * Morio Kazama as Satomi
 * Keiko Takeshita as Jiro's mother
 * Mirai Shida as Kayo Horikoshi
 * Jun Kunimura as Hattori
 * Shinobu Otake as Mrs. Kurokawa
 * Nomura Mansai as Giovanni Battista Caproni

Production
The Wind Rises is directed by Hayao Miyazaki, whose previous works include notable films such as My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. It is the first film that Miyazaki has solely directed in five years; his last work was the 2008 film Ponyo. This film is based on a manga by Hayao Miyazaki, which was serialized in the monthly magazine Model Graphix in 2009. The story of the manga is in turn loosely based on Tatsuo Hori's short novel "The Wind Has Risen", written in 1936–1937. Although the story in the film follows the historical account of Horikoshi's aircraft development chronologically, the rendition of his private life is entirely fictional.

Miyazaki was inspired to make the film after reading this quote from Horikoshi: "All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.

The singer-songwriter Yumi Matsutoya's 1973 song "Hikōki-gumo" (ひこうき雲) is used as the film's theme song. The protagonist Jirō Horikoshi is voiced by Hideaki Anno.

Release
The Wind Rises was to be released simultaneously with Kaguya-hime no Monogatari, another Studio Ghibli film by Isao Takahata in Japan in the Summer of 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, Kaguya-hime has been delayed until Q3 2013. The Wind Rises was released on July 20, 2013.

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 will distribute the film in North America through its Touchstone Pictures label. Disney will have a one-week release window in the Los Angeles theatrical circuit for the film beginning on November 8, 2013, so that it can qualify for Academy Awards consideration. The film will then have an expanded release on February 21, 2014.

Reception
On release in Japan, the film received criticism from both the political left and right, as well as from an anti-smoking group. Miyazaki himself added to the controversy by publishing an article in which he criticized Japan's conservative party's proposed changes to the constitution, which irritated nationalists. Leftists were unhappy that a war-plane designer was the film's protagonist. Some questioned why Miyazaki would make a film about a man who "built killing machines", and others pointed out that some of the laborers who built the planes were Korean and Chinese people who were forced into labor. The film has also received criticism from the South Korean public.

In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun, Miyazaki said he had "very complex feelings" about the war, but regarding the Zero, he said it "represented one of the few things we Japanese could be proud of – they were a truly formidable presence, and so were the pilots who flew them."

The Japan Times gave the film a 3 1/2 stars out of 5, and states "So, yes, The Wind Rises is an old-fashioned tearjerker, but it is also a visually sumptuous celebration of an unspoiled prewar Japan." In a review for The Asia-Pacific Journal, Matthew Penney wrote "What Miyazaki offers is a layered look at how Horikoshi's passion for flight was captured by capital and militarism," and "(the film) is one of Miyazaki's most ambitious and thought-provoking visions as well as one of his most beautifully realized visual projects."

A common misconception (as evident in the aforementioned review by Matthew Penney) is to think that the prototype Jiro is developing in the latter half of film is for the Zero, when it is actually a prototype of the Type 96 Fighter, the predecessor of the Zero.