is a 2013 Japanese

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

historical drama film A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romances, adventure films, and swa ...

written and directed by

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widel ...

, animated by

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio headquartered in Koganei, Tokyo."Studio Ghibli Collection - Madman Entertainment". ''Studio Ghibli Collection - Madman Entertainment''. Retrieved 2020-12-14. It is best known for its animated feature films, and h ...

for the

Nippon Television Network JOAX-DTV (channel 4), branded as , is the flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System, owned-and-operated by the which is a subsidiary of the certified broadcasting holding company , itself a listed sub ...

Dentsu Dentsu Inc. ( ja, 株式会社電通 ''Kabushiki-gaisha Dentsū'' or 電通 ''Dentsū'' for short) is a Japanese international advertising and public relations joint stock company headquartered in Tokyo. Dentsu is currently the largest advertis ...

Hakuhodo DY Media Partners is a Japanese advertising and public relations company. It is headquartered at Akasaka Biz Tower in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo. History Hakuhodo is one of the oldest advertising agencies in Japan and was founded by Hironao Seki at Nihonbashi-H ...

, Walt Disney Japan,

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...

Toho is a Japanese film, theatre production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside of Japan, it is best known as the producer ...

and

KDDI () is a Japanese telecommunications operator formed on October 1, 2000 through the merger of DDI Corp. (Daini-Denden Inc.), KDD (Kokusai Denshin Denwa) Corp. (itself a former listed state-owned enterprise privatized in 1998), and IDO Corp. It ...

. It was released in Japan on 20 July 2013 by Toho, and in North America by

Touchstone Pictures Touchstone Pictures, Inc. was an American film production label of Walt Disney Studios, founded and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Feature films released under the Touchstone label were produced and financed by Walt Disney Studios, and featu ...

on 21 February 2014. ''The Wind Rises'' is a fictionalised

biographical film A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudra ...

Jiro Horikoshi was the chief engineer of many Japanese fighter designs of World War II, including the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter. Early life Jiro Horikoshi was born near the city of Fujioka, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, in 1903. Horikoshi graduated from the new ...

(1903–1982), designer of the

Mitsubishi A5M The Mitsubishi A5M, formal Japanese Navy designation , experimental Navy designation Mitsubishi Navy Experimental 9-''Shi'' Carrier Fighter, company designation Mitsubishi ''Ka''-14, was a Japanese carrier-based fighter aircraft. It was the world ...

fighter aircraft and its successor, the

Mitsubishi A6M Zero The Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" is a long-range carrier-based fighter aircraft formerly manufactured by Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and was operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M w ...

, used by the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent form ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The film was adapted from Miyazaki's

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

of the same name, which itself combines elements from two unrelated sources; Tatsuo Hori's 1937 semi-autobiographical novel ''

The Wind Has Risen ''The Wind Has Risen'' (風立ちぬ, ''Kaze tachinu'') is a Japanese novel by Tatsuo Hori, published between 1936 and 1938, and is regarded as his most acknowledged work. The story is set in a sanitarium in Nagano, Japan, where the nameless pro ...

'' and the life of Jiro Horikoshi. It was supposed to be the final film directed by Miyazaki, released just before the public announcement of his intention to retire in September 2013. ''The Wind Rises'' was the highest-grossing Japanese film in Japan in 2013. It received critical acclaim, with praise for its animation, music, screenplay and emotional weight. It was nominated for several awards, including the

Academy Award for Best Animated Feature The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for animated films. An animated feature is defined by the Academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by- ...

, the

Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film is a Golden Globe Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Until 1986, it was known as the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, meaning that any non-American film coul ...

, and the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year.

Plot

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Oe Factory Tokei-dai 20150517

In 1916, a young

longs to become a pilot, but his nearsightedness prevents it. One night, he dreams of his idol, the Italian aircraft designer

Giovanni Battista Caproni Giovanni Battista Caproni, 1st Count of Taliedo (July 3, 1886 – October 27, 1957), known as "Gianni" Caproni, was an Italian aeronautical engineer, civil engineer, electrical engineer, and aircraft designer who founded the Caproni aircraft-manu ...

, 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 World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

ended, Jiro is traveling by train to study aeronautical engineering at

Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

and meets a young girl, Nahoko Satomi, traveling with her maid. When the

Great Kantō earthquake Great may refer to: Descriptions or measurements * Great, a relative measurement in physical space, see Size * Greatness, being divine, majestic, superior, majestic, or transcendent People * List of people known as "the Great" *Artel Great (born ...

hits, Nahoko's maid's leg is broken and Jiro helps Nahoko carry her to Nahoko's family home, leaving without giving his name. In 1925, Jiro graduates with his friend

Kiro Honjo (1901–1990) was a Japanese aircraft designer who worked for Mitsubishi and designed aircraft used in World War II such as the Mitsubishi G3M (Nell) and the Mitsubishi G4M (Betty). During the American occupation of Japan following the end of ...

and both are employed at aircraft manufacturer

, assigned to design a fighter plane, the Mitsubishi 1MF9, for the Imperial Army. During a test, it breaks apart in midair and is rejected. Dispirited about what he perceives as the backwardness of Japanese aircraft technology, Jiro is sent with Honjo to the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a Constitutional republic, constitutional federal republic for the first time in ...

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 The Mitsubishi 1MF10 or Mitsubishi Experimental ''7-Shi'' Carrier Fighter (七試艦上戦闘機) was a prototype Japanese monoplane single-seat carrier-based fighter aircraft of the 1930s. Two were built for the Imperial Japanese Navy, but both ...

, fails testing in 1933 and is rejected. Disappointed, he goes to a summer resort in

Karuizawa is a resort town located in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 20,323 in 9897 households, and a population density of 130 persons per km². The total area of the town is . Karuizawa is one of the oldest and most ...

to rest, where he meets Nahoko again. Hans Castorp, a German visitor privately critical of the Nazi regime, tells Jiro, who intends to visit

Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßl ...

, that

Hugo Junkers Hugo Junkers (3 February 1859 – 3 February 1935) was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (Junkers Aircraft and ...

is in trouble for fighting

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

and that Germany will go to war again and must be stopped. Later, Jiro asks Nahoko's father for his blessing to marry her, and the two are engaged. However, Nahoko has

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...

and wants to wait until she recovers to marry. Castorp assists in the romance before fleeing arrest by the Japanese

secret police Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic ...

. Wanted in connection with Castorp, Jiro hides at his supervisor's home while he works on a new fighter aircraft project for the Imperial Navy. Following a lung hemorrhage, Nahoko recovers in a mountain

sanatorium A sanatorium (from Latin '' sānāre'' 'to heal, make healthy'), also sanitarium or sanitorium, are antiquated names for specialised hospitals, for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments and convalescence. Sanatoriums are often ...

but cannot bear being apart from Jiro and returns to marry him. Jiro's sister Kayo, a doctor, warns Jiro that his marriage to Nahoko will end tragically as tuberculosis is incurable. Though Nahoko's health deteriorates, she and Jiro enjoy their time together. Jiro leaves for the test flight of his new prototype aircraft, the

. Knowing that she will die soon, Nahoko returns to the sanatorium, leaving letters for Jiro, her family, and friends. At the test site, Jiro is distracted from his success by a gust of wind, suggesting Nahoko's passing. In the summer of 1945, after Japan

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography * Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland *Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

, Jiro dreams of Caproni again, regretting that his aircraft was used for war. Caproni comforts him, saying that Jiro's dream of building beautiful aircraft was nonetheless realized. Nahoko appears, encouraging her husband to live his life to the fullest. Jiro and Caproni walk together into their shared kingdom of dreams.

Voice cast

Production

Development

''The Wind Rises'' was directed by

, whose previous films include ''

My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. The film—which stars the voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi—tells the story o ...

'', ''

Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese animated epic historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Dentsu. The film stars the voices of Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida ...

'' and ''

Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film, and Mitsubishi and distrib ...

''. It was the first film Miyazaki solely directed since ''

Ponyo is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Mitsubishi, and distribute ...

'' in 2008. 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 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 adopted 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 Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

's novel ''

The Magic Mountain ''The Magic Mountain'' (german: Der Zauberberg, links=no, ) is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature. Mann s ...

'', 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".

Music

The film's score was composed and conducted by

Joe Hisaishi , known professionally as , is a Japanese composer, musical director, conductor and pianist, known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. He is also known for his piano scores. Hisaishi's music has been known to explore ...

, and performed by the

Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra The is a Japanese symphony orchestra administratively based in Tokyo. The orchestra primarily performs concerts in Tokyo at the Suntory Hall, but also gives concerts at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. The orchestra also performs in Yokohama ...

. The film also includes singer-songwriter

Yumi Matsutoya , nicknamed , is a Japanese singer, composer, lyricist and pianist. Generally the writer of both the lyrics and the music in her songs, she is renowned for her idiosyncratic voice and live performances, and is one of the most prominent figures ...

's 1973 song . Matsutoya had collaborated with Studio Ghibli on ''Kiki's Delivery Service'', which features her songs and . Producer Suzuki recommended "Hikōki-gumo" to Miyazaki in December 2012, feeling the lyrics resembled the story of ''The Wind Rises''. The film's soundtrack was released in Japan on 17 July 2013 by

Tokuma Japan Communications is a publisher in Japan, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The company was established in 1954 by Yasuyoshi Tokuma in Minato, Tokyo. The company’s product portfolio includes music publishing, video game publishing, movies, anime, magazines, m ...

. ''Das gibt's nur einmal'' (English: ''It only happens once'') is the German song Hans Castorp sings while playing the piano at Hotel Kusakaru in the film. Jiro Horikoshi and Nahoko's father later join the singing. The song was composed by

Werner Richard Heymann Werner Richard Heymann (14 February 1896 – 30 May 1961), also known as Werner R. Heymann, was a German-Jewish composer active in Germany and in Hollywood. Early life and education He was the younger of 4 boys born to a corn merchant. His olde ...

for the German movie Der Kongreß tanzt.

Release

''The Wind Rises'' was to have been released simultaneously with '' The Tale of the Princess Kaguya'', another Ghibli film by

Isao Takahata was a Japanese director, screenwriter and producer. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of Japanese animated feature films. Born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Takahata joined Toe ...

, in Japan in mid-2013. It would have been the first time the two directors' works were released together since the release of ''

'' and ''

Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 Japanese animated war tragedy film based on a 1967 short story by Akiyuki Nosaka. It was written and directed by Isao Takahata, and animated by Studio Ghibli for Shinchosha Publishing. The film stars , , and . Set in the city ...

'' in 1988. However, ''Princess Kaguya'' was delayed until 23 November 2013, and ''The Wind Rises'' was released on 20 July 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 The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

, although a sneak preview was presented earlier at the 2013

Telluride Film Festival The Telluride Film Festival (TFF) is a film festival held annually in Telluride, Colorado during Labor Day weekend (the first Monday in September). The 49th edition took place on September 2 -6, 2022. History First held on 30 August 1974, t ...

, outside of the official program.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, formerly known as Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. until 2007, is an American film distribution studio within the Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. It h ...

distributed the film in North America through its

banner. English dubbing was directed by Gary Rydstrom. Disney held a one-week release window in the

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

theatrical circuit beginning on 8 November 2013, so that it could qualify for

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

s consideration. It was released theatrically on 21 February 2014 in select cities, with

wide release In the American motion picture industry, a wide release (short for nationwide release) is a film playing at the same time at cinemas in most markets across the country. This is in contrast to the formerly common practice of a roadshow theatrical r ...

on 28 February. It was released in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2014 by

StudioCanal StudioCanal S.A.S. (formerly known as Le Studio Canal+, Canal Plus, Canal+ Distribution, Canal+ D.A., Canal+ Production, and Canal+ Image and also known as StudioCanal International) is a French film production and distribution company that owns ...

Home media

Walt Disney Studios Japan Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, is the home entertainment distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company. The division handles the distribution of Disney's films, television series, an ...

released the movie on

Blu-ray Disc The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

and DVD in Japan on 18 June 2014. The Japanese DVD release sold 128,784 units until 7 December 2014 and a further 6,735 units between 8 December 2014 and 7 June 2015, for a combined DVD units . In the United States,

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, is the home entertainment distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company. The division handles the distribution of Disney's films, television series, a ...

released the film on

and DVD on 18 November 2014. The release includes supplement features with storyboards, the original Japanese trailers and TV spots, a "Behind the Microphone" featurette with members of the English voice cast, and a video from when the film was announced to be completed. The audio for both English and Japanese language is monophonic (DTS-HD MA 1.0). Even though the North American rights Disney owned on Studio Ghibli films expired in 2017, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment continued to distribute ''The Wind Rises'' until 2020, when GKIDS re-released it on DVD and Blu-ray on 22 September 2020 with distribution through

Shout! Factory Shout! Factory is an American home video and music company founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases include previously released feature films, classic and contemporary television series, animation, live music, and comedy ...

(and, later,

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (formerly Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Video, MCA/Universal Home Video, MCA Home Video, MCA Videodisc and MCA Videocassette, Inc.) is the home video distribution division of Am ...

). The re-release took longer than with other Studio Ghibli titles as it was still a fairly new film, and Disney still held the US rights. The film has grossed over from physical DVD and Blu-ray sales in the US . In the United Kingdom, it was 2015's fifth best-selling foreign-language film on

home video Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...

, and third best-selling Asian film (below '' The Raid 2'' and ''The Tale of the Princess Kaguya'').

Reception

Box office

The film grossed () at the Japanese box office, the highest-grossing film in Japan in 2013.

Critical response

Review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

sampled 179 reviews and judged 88% of them positive, giving the film a "Certified Fresh" rating, with an average score of 7.91/10. The consensus states: "''The Wind Rises'' is a fittingly bittersweet swan song for director Hayao Miyazaki".

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score, rated the film an 83/100 based on 41 reviews, citing "universal acclaim". Critic David Ehrlich rated the film 9.7/10 and called it "perhaps the greatest animated film ever made." He wrote: "While initially jarring, Miyazaki's unapologetic deviations from fact help ''The Wind Rises'' to transcend the linearity of its expected structure, the film eventually revealing itself to be less of a biopic than it is a devastatingly honest lament for the corruption of beauty, and how invariably pathetic the human response to that loss must be. Miyazaki’s films are often preoccupied with absence, the value of things left behind and how the ghosts of beautiful things are traced onto our memories like the shadows of objects outlined by a nuclear flash. ''The Wind Rises'' looks back as only a culminating work can."

Peter Bradshaw Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''. Early life and education Bradshaw was educated at Haberdasher ...

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

called the film "visually exquisite and emotionally charged". Film critic

Mark Kermode Mark James Patrick Kermode (, ; ; born 2 July 1963) is an English film critic, musician, radio presenter, television presenter and podcaster. He is the chief film critic for ''The Observer'', contributes to the magazine '' Sight & Sound'', pr ...

called it "a rich treat for the eye and soul alike.". ''

The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched b ...

'' gave the film 3 stars out of 5, and stated, "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 that it was "one of Miyazaki's most ambitious and thought-provoking visions as well as one of his most beautifully realized visual projects".

Controversy

In Japan, ''The Wind Rises'' received criticism from both the political right and from the Japan Society for Tobacco Control. Miyazaki added to the controversy by publishing an essay in which he criticized the proposal by Japan's right-wing Liberal Democratic Party to change Article 9 of the

Japanese Constitution The Constitution of Japan (Shinjitai: , Kyūjitai: , Hepburn: ) is the constitution of Japan and the supreme law in the state. Written primarily by American civilian officials working under the Allied occupation of Japan, the constitution ...

to allow Japan to remilitarize. In an interview with the ''

Asahi Shimbun is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition a ...

'', he said he had "very complex feelings" about World War II since, as a

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campai ...

, he felt militarist Japan had acted out of "foolish arrogance". However, he also said that the Zero plane "represented one of the few things we Japanese could be proud of—

hey Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title ...

were a truly formidable presence, and so were the pilots who flew them".

Accolades

''The Wind Rises'' received 13 nominations and 17 awards for "Best Animated Feature", including one Academy Award nomination. Hayao Miyazaki won the award for Writing in an Animated Feature Production at the

41st Annie Awards The 41st Annual Annie Awards honoring excellence in the field of animation of 2013 were held on February 1, 2014 at the University of California, Los Angeles's Royce Hall in Los Angeles, California, presenting in 35 categories. On December 2, 201 ...

. The film's musical composer,

, received the Japan Academy Prize for Best Music Score. The film was also selected as "Audience Favorite – Animation" at the

Mill Valley Film Festival The Mill Valley Film Festival is an annual American film festival founded in 1977. History In October 1977, Mark Fishkin, Rita Cahill and Lois Cole organized a three-day film festival. It featured three film tributes, Francis Ford Coppola's ''T ...

References

External links

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