Hayao Miyazaki
Born 1941, Tokyo. In 1963 he graduated in Political Science and Economics and joined Toei Animation, where he worked until 1971. He directed in 1978 the TV series FUTURE BOY CONAN and in 1979 his first feature, LUPIN III: THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO. In the 1980s he created the serialized graphic novel NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, that in 1984 he adapted in a feature. in 1985 he founded the studio Ghibli. Then he directed the feature films CASTLE IN THE SKY (1986), MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989), THE CRIMSON PIG (1992), PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997), SPIRITED AWAY (2001, Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin Festival and 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film), HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), PONYO (2008).
Director’s statement
“Zero plane designer Jiro Horikoshi and his Italian forerunner Gianni Caproni are two men pursuing a common aspiration, bonded by friendship across time and space. The two overcome numerous failures, devoting themselves to realizing their boyhood dreams”.
“In Japan’s Taisho Era (1912-1926), a country boy decides to become an aircraft designer. He dreams of building a plane that flies like the beautiful wind. As a young man he goes off to college in Tokyo, becoming an elite engineer in the huge defence industry. His talent blooms and he ultimately creates a beautiful airplane, one that will leave its mark on aviation history - the Mitsubishi A6M1, later to become the Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter, better known as the Zero fighter. For three years from 1940, the Zero fighter was the world’s finest warplane”.
“From his boyhood to his youth, the years during which our main character lives are weighed down by a sense of stagnation more intense than the one hanging over Japan today: The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, The Great Depression, unemployment, poverty and tuberculosis, revolutions and fascism, suppression of free speech, one war after another. Meanwhile, popular culture flowered; modernism and nihilism, as well as hedonism, were prevalent. Poets fell prey to illness and death in their journeys”.
“Our protagonist Jiro engaged in airplane design at a time when the Empire of Japan was heading to its destruction and ultimate fall”.
“I want to portray a devoted individual who pursued his dream head on. Dreams possess an element of madness, and such poison must not be concealed. Yearning for something too beautiful can ruin you. Swaying towards beauty may come at a price. Jiro will be battered and defeated, his design career cut short. Nonetheless, Jiro was an individual of preeminent originality and talent”.
“The title THE WIND RISES comes from a novel of the same name, written by Tatsuo Hori. Hori took a line from Paul Valéry’s poem, ‘Le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre’, and translated it into Japanese: ‘Kaze tachinu, iza ikimeyamo’ (‘The wind is rising! We must try to live’). Our film combines Jiro Horikoshi and writer Tatsuo Hori, two actual people of the same era, into one person as “Jiro”, our central character. It will be an unusual work of complete fiction that depicts the youth of the 1930s. Our story will be woven using the birth of the later-mythicized Zero fighter as our warp, and the meeting and parting of a young engineer Jiro and the beautiful, ill-fated girl Nahoko as our weft. Our good ol’ Caproni, transcending time and place, will be there to add some colour to the story’s fabric”.