by Aviation is one of the most striking passions of Hayao Miyazaki, who is probably the most famous creator of animes of all time. From Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) over Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) to Porco Rosso (1992) – almost all of his films have an element of flying in them. The appeal of overcoming the force of gravity is universal and works in fantasy anime films as much as it does in real world settings. It is this passion that propelled him and his sense of imagination in the making of his last film with Studio Ghibli before retirement. The Wind Rises is a factionalized account of the life of Jiro Hirokoshi, mastermind behind the design of the famous and feared WWII fighter from Japan, the Mitsubishi A6M, better known as Zero. Lightness is what Jiro considers essential to a successful design that meets the requirements, and lightness despite devastating events and calamity is what we feel the story communicates, probably one of its characteristics that made it vulnerable to accusations of whitewashing.
Jiro Hirokoshi dreams of becoming a pilot but being nearsighted, he has to acknowledge that his dream will never become true. But when he reads of Italian airplane designer and engineer Giovanni Battista Caproni, it is in his dreams that a new passion forms. Whenever Jiro dreams, we see the extent of his sense of imagination and that of Caproni. The skies are filled with the most beautiful airplanes, and even though Caproni never meets Jiro in person, he takes him under his wing. By telling him that nothing is impossible and that Italy was a poor country just like Japan, he instills in Jiro an unshakable confidence and attitude. As in Porco Rosso, Italy is ostensibly glorified as an ideal country, where aesthetics and technology are coming together instead or rivaling each other. Miyazaki focuses on nonpolitical engineers and dreamers like Caproni and Jiro, that want nothing else than see their dreams come true. Whether or not they truly take into consideration what their beautiful machines are meant for and where the money to build them is coming from is never thoroughly addressed, giving rise to accusations of whitewashing, particularly when an Italy under fascist reign serves as utopia.
It is an universal dilemma for all engineers. Advancement always comes at a price. Whether or not it is achieved while pursuing perfection is irrelevant. Most of the film is narrated from Jiro’s point of view and we have to take into consideration that he is a dreamer. Suddenly, The Wind Rises becomes a much more subtle and complex film. What we see is a Japan that is traditional and at the brink of becoming an industrial nation, battling with all problems a paradigm change carries along in its tide. If you look closer, you see that it is a very modernist world, leaving behind the Victorian age belief that technology can solve all problems, and that all mankind can be saved by enlightened people. It is a lot more complicated than that. When Jiro travels to Tokyo to study in 1923, the train is hit by the Great Kanto Earthquake that devastates the area. He meets Naoko Satomi, his future wife, and carries her wounded maid on his back all the way to Naoko’s house but leaves and they lose each other. Even the most advanced technology is powerless as compared to the force of mother nature and accepting this, Jiro can only help through character, not through education, a fact cleverly visualized when he stabilizes the maid’s leg using his slide rule. Time passes and one day during lunch, Jiro has mackerel and discovers its bones have the perfect shape for airplane wings, a clear hint that Jiro is a diverse and modern character.
After finishing his studies, Jiro starts work with Mitsubishi in Nagoya, together with his friend Kiro Honjo. Kiro is not so much a dreamer as Jiro. Caught somewhere between being an engineer and living up to the traditional way of life in Japan, Kiro is matter-of-factly rather than passionate about what they do. They both work on an airplane design for the military but it breaks apart during testing and Mitsubishi loses the assignment. When they are sent to Dessau in Germany in 1929 to study the airplane designs of Dr. Hugo Junkers and his crew, it is Kiro who baldly states that countries like Germany are decades ahead of Japan and that they will have to work faster and faster just to catch up with them in the future while Jiro believes they will eventually surpass them. They are astounded by the Junkers G.38, an aircraft with all the trimmings later produced by Mitsubishi under license, but the Japanese engineers are rebuffed by German personnel until Dr. Junkers himself approves them. While on a walk at night, Jiro witnesses locals allegedly hunting a Jewish person and is told to get back where he came from. Jiro is a bystander, witnessing how Germany epitomizes the disparity between education and moral beliefs. As a boy, he stood up to defend a kid from being bullied. Here, and further on, he pursues his dream without taking a clear political position or even taking actions. If anything, The Wind Rises doesn’t whitewash a legendary constructor but puts him in a world where it is difficult for him to make a difference in anything else other than building airplanes.
Yes. A good place for forgetting. Make a war in China? Forget it. Make a puppet state in Manchuria? Forget it. Quit the League of Nations? Forget it. Make the world your enemy? Forget it. Japan will blow up. Germany will blow up, too.
Castorp talking about German literature and the state of the world.
Despite his talent and overzealous work ethic, Jiro’s life and career is hampered by failure. His design for an airplane for the Imperial Navy fails in 1933 and he goes to a sanatorium up in the mountains. The question arises whether or not Jiro is close to having a nervous breakdown, but then he is a self-contained character of the highest order, emotionally introverted. He looks serene all the time when in reality he must be stressed out. This portion of the film is modeled after Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), a Bildungsroman that is complex, fascinating and, predominantly, tough to read. Jiro meets a German called Castorp, the name borrowed from Mann’s protagonist, who predicts Germany’s downfall and is critical of the Nazi-regime but persecuted by the Japanese secret police. Castorp is well-spirited, blonde and has sparkling blue eyes. What he embodies is an actively naive and fairy tale-like fantasy of Germany as nation of poets and thinkers, not an Übermensch. That he aides Jiro in his idealized romance with Naoko, who happens to stay at the same sanatorium to recuperate from tuberculosis, is evidence that Miyazaki never wanted to paint a grim picture that leaves no hope for anyone and tries to balance hope and desperation. At first glance, it may seem corny, though this is beautifully constructed and executed with a nod to a literary giant whose prose was just as overly descriptive and slow-paced.
Naoko suffers from tuberculosis, which is incurable, but still she completes Jiro. She paints and is joyful, making him forget the hard reality of being an airplane constructor and all the difficulties he has to overcome. But Naoko knows her fate and refuses to marry Jiro until she fully recovers. While he returns to Nagoya and resume work, soon wanted for having been in contact with Castorp and forced to hide at his supervisor’s home, Naoko’s health deteriorates and she has to stay in a sanatorium in the mountains. If it weren’t for her poor health, the fairy tale would end when she decides to join Jiro and marry him. But despite all that misery, they both live happily together while Jiro works on the Zero’s predecessor, the Mitsubishi A5M. It is tragic how pursuit and failure are intertwined in Jiro’s life because when he leaves to watch the A5M’s test flight, the airplane still drawn out to the airfield by oxen, Naoko leaves a letter and returns to the sanatorium, knowing her time is up. Jiro watches his airplane zip through the air, a beautiful machine, a success – and senses the death of his wife. After the Second World War is fought and lost for Japan, Jiro dreams again, seeing airplanes falling out of the skies, several Zeros, their pilots saluting the man who equipped them with the best possible airplane, but also Caproni, who knows failure himself, famously depicted in a previous dream when his airplane fell apart in the air and he himself ripped the film reel out of the camera to destroy all evidence. Jiro now regrets that his airplane was used in war, since all he wanted to do was build something beautiful. Caproni congratulates him instead, assuring him that he accomplished something wonderful, silently acknowledging that technology has and will always be used in wars. Then Jiro sees his wife again, still full of life and joy, urging him to live a full life according to the famous poetic phrase Jiro read briefly before the earthquake hit and they met for the first time: Le vent se lève!…Il faut tenter de vivre! (The wind rises!…We must try to live!)
The Wind Rises was supposed to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last film and like his protagonist, Jiro Hirokoshi, he tried to make some beautiful, or even perfect. The problem with perfection is that it’s unattainable, and when we try the hardest, we’re sentenced to failure. But then the film is only a failure if you compare it with its predecessors. At times, it is trying too hard, it is a bit too slow-paced, almost a bit too intellectual in its references, that require extensive knowledge of history, literature and technology. Accusations of whitewashing Japan’s involvement in the Second World War seem groundless if you take into consideration what the film implies along the way. It features breathtakingly beautiful depictions of airplanes and, as usual in a Ghibli film, background design. It’s biggest weakness is what was constructed to be its biggest strength: the love between Jiro and Naoko. As audience, we never truly relate to what they feel and their romance never develops into a serious relationship instead of a fairy tale plot element. Even though The Wind Rises is an astonishing film, it is far from being the best anime of all time and less fun to watch than Miyazaki’s previous films. Still, it is an important, wondrous film and earns its place in the Ghibli canon.
