The Wind RisesEdit

The Wind Rises, released in 2013, is an animated biographical drama from Studio Ghibli and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It tells a stylized life story of Jiro Horikoshi, the aerospace engineer whose designs helped shape Japan’s aircraft program in the years leading up to and during World War II. The film is renowned for its exquisite animation, its contemplative mood, and its refusal to reduce a complex historical moment to simple good guys or bad guys. It spans the late 1920s through the early 1940s, placing Horikoshi’s pursuit of elegant, efficient flight against the broader pressures of a nation facing economic hardship, technical ambition, and wartime demands.

From its opening, The Wind Rises signals that it is more than a straight biography. It blends historical atmosphere with dreamlike sequences and intimate personal drama, inviting viewers to reflect on the moral dimensions of technological progress. The film frames Horikoshi’s work as a craft—an art of function and beauty—while also acknowledging that the airplanes he designed would go on to serve in a military capacity. This tension between innovation for peaceful or aesthetic ends and the uses to which technology is put is a core throughline of the work, and it anchors the conversations that followed its release.

The Wind Rises engages with broader questions about memory, responsibility, and the role of the engineer in society. By weaving in historical episodes—economic turmoil, industrial competition, and the rising pressures of a militarizing state—Miyazaki presents a portrait of a generation of designers who believed in the value of precise, well-made machines even as those machines were deployed within a frame of national conflict. The film’s aesthetic choices—its meticulous attention to engineering detail, its aerodynamic imagery, and its recurring motifs of wind and flight—underscore a respect for craftsmanship and the discipline required to bring complex projects to life. Within this framing, the relationship between Jiro Horikoshi and Naoko Satomi, a woman he loves who suffers from illness, adds a humanizing counterpoint to the public stakes of Horikoshi’s work. The film’s historical touches are complemented by flights of imagination, including sequences in which Horikoshi encounters the Italian aircraft designer Caproni and contends with the pursuit of perfection as a personal ideal.

The film and its themes

Craft, beauty, and responsibility

The Wind Rises centers on the idea that engineering is a form of art. Horikoshi’s quest for “beautiful airplanes” is treated with reverence: the film dwells on the elegance of form, the elegance of aerodynamics, and the discipline required to translate a concept into a working machine. Yet the same screen that celebrates craftsmanship also reminders the viewer that such machines can be enlisted to kill. The tension between beauty and consequence is a deliberate feature, not a misstep, allowing the audience to weigh the moral responsibilities that accompany technical mastery.

Historical framing

Miyazaki places Horikoshi within a Japan that is industrializing rapidly, grappling with economic crunch, and increasingly intertwined with military expansion. The film does not present a simple political sermon; it shows individuals making choices within a system that imposes constraints and opportunities alike. The portrayal invites viewers to consider how a society’s ambitions—technological prowess, national pride, and economic survival—can intersect with human costs. In this light, The Wind Rises becomes less about casting blame and more about understanding the complexities that arise when innovation is yoked to state power.

The personal dimension

Central to the film is the intimate story of Jiro’s relationship with Naoko and the personal sacrifices that accompany a life devoted to invention. The narrative uses this relationship to remind viewers that technical ambition is inseparable from human vulnerability. The romance and the illness that shapes Naoko’s life provide emotional texture to the broader questions of risk, resilience, and responsibility.

Controversies and debates

From a critical vantage, The Wind Rises sparked debate about how it handles military history and culpability. Critics who argue that it soft-pedals Japan’s militarist past contend that the film risks normalizing or glamorizing the period’s opportunistic use of technology. A traditional, craft-focused reading counters that Miyazaki’s work aims to portray the complexity of a life dedicated to invention, not to sanitize or excuse the use of aircraft in war. Proponents of this view emphasize that art can illuminate tradeoffs without serving as a policy blueprint, and they caution against reducing a nuanced portrait of a real engineer to a single moral verdict.

Wider cultural conversations around the film also touched on how Western and non-Japanese audiences interpret national memory and the portrayal of history. Some critics framed the movie as a pacifist or antiwar statement; others argued that it foregrounds the agency of craftsmen who operate within flawed political systems. A common-sense reading from a tradition that prizes innovation and personal responsibility holds that the film avoids any easy absolution of past actions while still insisting that the human capacity to dream, design, and build remains a source of possibility—and a test of character.

Critics who describe such conversations as “woke” or overly political often miss the film’s intent to depict moral ambiguity without transforming the engineer’s story into a political defense of particular state actions. The Wind Rises treats its subject as a composite of aspiration and consequence: a reminder that scientific and artistic achievement flourishes best when informed by humility about the real-world outcomes of one’s work.

Reception and legacy

The Wind Rises received widespread critical praise for its artistry, narrative restraint, and emotional depth. It was lauded as a testament to Miyazaki’s craft and to the enduring strength of Studio Ghibli’s storytelling approach. Debates about its historical framing continued in scholarly and popular circles, reflecting ongoing discussions about how societies remember difficult chapters of their past and how to balance admiration for ingenuity with accountability for its uses.

Within Japan and among international audiences, the film contributed to a broader discourse about the role of engineers and designers in national projects—how individual talent intersects with collective ambition, and how memory should acknowledge both achievement and harm. The Wind Rises remains a focal point for conversations about the responsibilities that come with technological progress and the responsibilities of artists who portray those responsibilities on screen.

See also - Hayao Miyazaki - Studio Ghibli - Jiro Horikoshi - Mitsubishi A6M Zero - Caproni - World War II - pacifism - militarism - Animation - Japan