Art of the Wind Rises
/The Wind Rises is an animation movie produced by Studio Ghibli and directed by Hayao Miyazaki in 2013. Miyazaki began to conceive a story to illustrate the life of Jiro Horikoshi in 2008. He published the story as a manga series in the monthly magazine Model Graphix from April 2009 to January 2010, with the title borrowed from Tatsuo Hori's novel The Wind Has Risen. The story in the manga follows the historical account of Horikoshi's aircraft development up to 1935 (the year of the Mitsubishi A5M's maiden flight), and intertwines with fictional encounters with Caproni and Nahoko Satomi. The scenes with Nahoko 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 Nahoko Satomi was borrowed from the female protagonist of another novel by Tatsuo Hori, Nahoko. In real life, however, Horikoshi's wife was called Sumako; she was not sickly, and their marriage produced six children.
Characters frequently discuss Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain, and, in a letter to Nahoko, Jiro names his fleeing German friend "Mr. Castorp" after its protagonist. The character himself is a caricature of Stephen Alpert, who was once the executive director of Ghibli's international division. He left the company in 2011 for personal reasons but was instrumental in Ghibli's overseas expansion. He was asked to return to Japan to model for the character's appearance and a suitable voice. 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 adopt the manga The Wind Has Risen 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 Studio Ghibli's features. However, he changed his mind when a staff member suggested that "children should be allowed to be exposed to subjects they are not familiar with". He was also inspired to make the film after reading a quote from Horikoshi: "All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful".
The pictures on this page are a collection of artworks created for this movie.
THE STORY
In 1916, a young Jiro Horikoshi longs to become a pilot, but his nearsightedness prevents it. One night, he dreams of his idol, the Italian aircraft designer Giovanni Battista Caproni, who tells him that he has never flown a plane in his life, and that building planes is better than flying them. Seven years later after World War I ended, Jiro is traveling by train to study aeronautical engineering at Tokyo Imperial University and meets a young girl, Naoko Satomi, traveling with her maid. When suddenly, the Great Kantō earthquake hits, Naoko's maid's leg is broken and Jiro carries her to Naoko's family, leaving without giving his name.
In 1925, Jiro graduates with his friend Kiro Honjo and both are employed at aircraft manufacturer Mitsubishi, assigned to design a fighter plane, the Mitsubishi 1MF9, for the Imperial Army. During a test, it breaks apart mid-air and is thus rejected. Dispirited about the seeming backwardness of Japanese technology, Jiro and Honjo are sent to the Weimar Republic in 1929 to carry out technical research and obtain a production license for a Junkers G.38 aircraft. Jiro dreams again of Caproni, who tells him that the world is better for the beauty of planes, even if humankind might put them to terrible purposes. In early 1932, Jiro is promoted to chief designer for a fighter plane competition sponsored by the Imperial Navy, but his design, the Mitsubishi 1MF10, fails testing in 1933 and is rejected. Disappointed, he goes to a summer resort in Karuizawa to rest, where he meets Naoko again. Hans Castorp, a German visitor privately critical of the Nazi regime, tells Jiro, who intends to visit Dessau, that Hugo Junkers is in trouble for fighting Nazism, and that Germany will go to war again…
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