The Wind Rises (2013) on Netflix
PG-1320132h 6mAnimationBiographyDramaHistoryRomanceWar
Nearsighted Jiro Horikoshi cannot fly, so he dreams of building airplanes, guided by the Italian designer Giovanni Battista Caproni. At Mitsubishi he designs fighters and meets Nahoko Satomi.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.8/10115,289 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1918, Jiro Horikoshi wants to be a pilot, but his nearsightedness rules that out; a magazine leads him to dream of Giovanni Battista Caproni, an Italian aircraft designer who tells him that building planes is finer than flying them. Years later, traveling home from a family visit as an engineering student, Jiro meets Nahoko Satomi and her maid Kinu on a train when the Great Kantō earthquake strikes, and he helps carry the injured Kinu to the Satomi home before leaving without giving his name. In 1925 he graduates alongside his friend Honjo, and the two join Mitsubishi during the Great Depression, where their fighter design for the Imperial Army fails its test. Mitsubishi then sends them to Germany to obtain a license for the Junkers G.38.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Wind Rises (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In Japan the film drew criticism from the political right and from the Japan Society for Tobacco Control, and Hayao Miyazaki added to the controversy with an essay opposing the Liberal Democratic Party's proposal to change Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution so Japan could remilitarise.
- The German character Castorp, Jiro's fleeing friend, is a caricature of Stephen Alpert, once executive director of Studio Ghibli's international division, who was asked to return to Japan to model for the character's appearance and voice.
- After Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki wanted his next film to be a sequel, but producer Toshio Suzuki proposed adapting Miyazaki's own manga The Wind Has Risen instead; Miyazaki first refused, thinking the subject unsuited to Studio Ghibli's usual child audience, then changed his mind.
- South Korean internet users attacked the film over the Zero fighter, arguing it stood for Japanese military aggression and that many of the planes were assembled by Korean forced labour; Miyazaki replied that Horikoshi resisted military demands and asked whether he should be blamed just for the era he lived in.
- Producer Toshio Suzuki recommended Yumi Matsutoya's 1973 song "Hikō-ki Gumo" to Hayao Miyazaki in December 2012, feeling its lyrics resembled the film's story; Matsutoya had earlier written songs for Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service.
- The Nahoko scenes drew on Tatsuo Hori's semi-autobiographical novel The Wind Has Risen, in which Hori wrote about his life with his fiancée before she died from tuberculosis.
