Animation legend Hayao Miyazaki under attack in Japan for anti-war film
Japanese director's new film is a box office success but its themes, and his outspokenness, have drawn fierce criticism from nationalists
Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki has always loved planes.
They’re featured prominently in the 72-year-old’s impressive catalogue of animated films, which include classics like My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away. Fantasy-themed aircraft were a major element in Miyazaki’s earlier films, including 1984’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and 1986’s Castle in the Sky. And then there’s 1992’s Porco Rosso, a film about a pig “air pirate,” who flies a plane across the Adriatic Sea.
But Miyazaki’s latest film harnesses the famous director’s adoration of aircraft a little differently. For one, it’s a far cry from his usual fantasy-themed, family-friendly work. And secondly, it’s a film about the man who designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, an aircraft widely known for kamikaze missions and the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
Kaze Tachinu, known in English as The Wind Rises, opened on July 20 in Japan. It is the first Miyazaki film based on the life of a historical figure – Horikoshi Jiro, who designed the Zero planes shortly before the onset of World War II. Despite the film’s subject matter, however, Kaze Tachinu carries a quiet anti-war message.
“My wife and staff would ask me, ‘Why make a story about a man who made weapons of war?’” Miyazaki said in a 2011 interview with Japan’s Cut magazine. “And I thought they were right. But one day, I heard that Horikoshi had once murmured, ‘All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.’ And then I knew I’d found my subject… Horikoshi was the most gifted man of his time in Japan. He wasn’t thinking about weapons… Really all he desired was to make exquisite planes.”