By: Mark Hue
Introduction
Following the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito finally decided to capitulate to Allied forces, stating
The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable […] Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Hirohito’s sentiments, contrary to the nationalist ideology perpetuated by the Japanese government and by Japanese media, signaled a cultural overhaul headed for the country as a result of their involvement in World War II. The following post-war decades, fueled by economic and technological prosperity, saw the rise of Japanese cinema as both an international force and a medium to reflect on Japan’s experience in World War II following the United States’ nuclear assault on the country and Hirohito’s surrender. This cultural and historical reflection spanned the remainder of the twentieth century and has continued into the new millennium, with many Japanese filmmakers, working in both live-action and anime, still addressing both the polar effects World War II and its ensuing technological developments had on Japan.
Even with a long lineage of prestigious filmmakers using their medium to comment on these issues, one director who has been particularly pronounced in continuously calling attention to these issues is Oscar-winning animator and co-founder of the famous animation studio Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki. Though mostly known for targeting adolescent audiences and families, Miyazaki has shown his diverse abilities as a filmmaker to also cover both mature subject matter and themes of war and technology that relate to Japan’s historical position. Two of his films in particular that show Miyazaki’s skills, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and The Wind Rises (2013), tread on these thematic grounds, even while, as if pulling from the diverse Japanese filmic tradition, each takes a varied approach in their overall sentiments and styles used to convey similar themes. Nausicaä illustrates a clearly critical stance on war and weaponized technology through allegorical imagery that uses both historical and fantastical imagery. The Wind Rise, on the other hand,shows Miyazaki altering his critical stance found in Nausicaä by presenting more ambiguous stances on war and technology through a realist lens in a piece of historical fiction.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
While Nausicaä serves as a prime example of Miyazaki’s particular allegorical style, the film is only one of several other Japanese films using allegorical imagery to express the effects of war and technology in Japan, with the atomic bomb becoming a prevalent allegorical focus of many filmmakers. Ishirō Honda’s 1954 film Godzilla, for example, uses the kaiju genre to further allegorical themes of nuclear destruction. In the film, the titular creature is disturbed by the testing of hydrogen bombs which leads Godzilla to rampage through Tokyo, visually invoking the devastation seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ironically, the only way to kill Godzilla seems to be by using a fictional device known as the “Oxygen Destroyer” whose creator in the film, Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), laments that “If used as a weapon, it “could lead humanity to extinction, just like the H-bomb.” Before the doctor can divulge how to manufacture the weapon, Serizawa dies using the Oxygen Destroyer to kill Godzilla. Following the monster’s death, Dr. Kyohei Yamane (Akihiko Hirata) forewarns that “If nuclear testing continues, then someday, somewhere in the world, another Godzilla may appear,” directly tying Godzilla’s rampage to nuclear destruction and leaving the viewer with the growing sentiment of nuclear anxiety which is compounded by the idea of technological advancements represented by the Oxygen Destroyer. The film’s producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka, furthered such readings of the film when he stated in an interview, “The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind” (VQR Online).
Another prominent film that uses allegory to convey antiwar sentiments and suspicions of militarized technology is Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988). Adapted from Otomo’s own manga series, Akira presents its setting of Neo-Tokyo as a city that has been reborn after its destruction caused by the being Akira during World War III, represented by the first shot of the film which shows the city being blown away by a large explosion reminiscent of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Like the historical fate of Japan, Neo-Tokyo morphed into a technologically-advanced metropolis, but Otomo presents this influx of technology as grotesque and perverse and the city plagued by gang violence and political unrest. Much of these trends become embodied by the character of Tetsuo, a young gang member who becomes mutilated following contact with an “esper,” a being like Akira with psychic powers that escaped a governmental laboratory, which results in a fusion of flesh and mechanical appendages. Tetsuo ultimately repeats the pattern set before by, after his confinement and escape from the militaristic government, causing Neo-Tokyo’s subsequent re-destruction at the end of the film. Like Godzilla before it, Akira’s endingseems to suggest war and technology create a self-destructive cycle; though while Godzilla sees this cycle as possibly escapable, Akira seemingly doubles down on the inevitability of war and its subsequent destruction.
Though working in this similar allegorical framework as Godzilla and Akira, Miyazaki devotes Nausicaä’s aesthetic entirely to allegory through a mixture of relatively contemporary but mostly otherworldly imagery, leaving Earth entirely for a completely fictitious setting. The main narrative revolves around Princess Nausicaä, soon-to-be leader of the pastoral Valley of the Wind, and her struggle to maintain peace between her kingdom, the warring nations of Tolmekia and Pejite that wish to control an ancient humanoid biological weapon known as the “Great Warrior,” and the natural world as the surrounding Toxic Jungle threatens to engulf all unaffected land and wipe out humanity. Further background context is given in the film’s opening credits, where tapestries tell the history of how mankind created many Giant Warriors that were then used on enemy factions during the Seven Days of Fire, an apocalyptic event that created the wasteland of the Toxic Jungle which has grown in the thousand years since the incident. In what has become common in Miyazaki’s work, much of the allegory here can be read through an environmentalist lens, with the natural world, here represented by the Toxic Jungle and the inhabiting giant insects called Ohms, caught in the crossfire of humanity’s war and destructive technology. Princess Mononoke (1997), which portrays an ecological conflict between factions of humans trying to survive against anthropomorphic animals, is another example of a Miyazaki film that has been particularly lauded for its fantastical yet nuanced take on environmentalism. Dr. Peter Paik, in his book From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe Godzilla, describes Mononoke and Nausicaä’s conflict as “defenders of the forest [being pitted against] a community of the oppressed and outcast that is intent on exploiting its resources to safeguard its destiny” (95). Godzilla also provides a favorable comparison on this front, with the creature’s destruction also representing nature’s reaction to military and technological might. Nausicaä, however significantlyups the scale of the allegorical imagery when compared to Godzilla and even Akira, putting the film in a closer relationship with fantasy epics like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings which also has a large-scale narrative with antiwar (Tolkien was a World War I veteran) and anti-industrial themes. The comparison between the texts goes even further when considering narrative similarities with both opening with an elderly warrior (swordsman Lord Yupa and wizard Gandalf respectively) returning to a pastoral community (The Valley of the Wind and The Shire) now endangered by a long-dormant threat (Giant Warrior and Sauron/the One Ring) who is opposed by is an eager adolescent (Nausicaä and Frodo).
Despite these fantasy connections, Nausicaä’s art direction and technology on display in the film push the viewer to make more historical connections. The film’s familiar fantasy imagery calls back to the aesthetics of Medieval Europe, with the people of the Valley resembling stereotypical farmers/surfs of the feudal system and the Tolmekian army wearing armor reminiscent of the knights of the Middle Ages. There are also the desert-dwelling Pejite people whose tan-colored clothing and domed buildings resemble the aesthetics and designs commonly found in Middle Eastern territories. While some of this imagery recalls pre-modern civilizations, the kingdoms are seen using modern weaponry. The people of the Valley carry rifles and flamethrowers that they initially use to wipe out spores from the Toxic Jungle that threaten to pollute their land, while the more advanced Tolmekians have access to large airships, tanks, and machine guns that bear resemblance to the German StG-44 and the American Thompson machine gun used in World War II. Asbel, a Pejite boy who befriends Nausicaä, is also seen using a pistol that resembles the German Luger pistol commonly used during the two World Wars. With these cultural signifiers, Miyazaki’s historical allegory begins to become clearer. For instance, the Tolmekians, a supreme military force attempting to utilize the Great Warrior, can be read as the United States or Russia of the Cold War era in their quest for nuclear supremacy. The original use of the Great Warriors during the Seven Days of Fire can be linked to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with Miyazaki showing in the opening credits the warriors walking through burning cities and decimated landscapes covered in fire. The aftermath of these attacks, which created a wasteland of toxic remains, can be likened to the Japanese cities rendered uninhabitable by nuclear fallout. The destructive force unleashed by the revived Great Warrior near the film’s end also resembles the explosions of the nuclear bombs and the explosions seen later in Akira with large explosions filling the frame and dwarfing subjects in the foreground. While Miyazaki has never come out and expressly confirmed these connections, he has said, in an interview regarding the Nausicaä manga, that he is “fascinated by wars” and that he “read a lot about them” (Yomu). He also in that same interview talks about the more recent Yugoslavian Wars, the Cold War, and the Gulf War that took place while he was finishing the manga. Miyazaki goes as far as to compare the Iraqi government during the Gulf War to the “military clique” that ruled Japan during World War II, hinting that Nausicaä’s allegorical imagery and narrative may relate to both historical and contemporary conflicts.
In terms of the film’s message, Nausicaä falls much in line with both Godzilla and Akira in showing how war and weaponized technology create an unrelenting cycle of violence that repeats no matter how devastating previous conflicts were. Godzilla emphasizes these notions through Dr. Yamane’s warning against nuclear testing and Dr. Serizawa’s fear that his Oxygen Destroyer will not be used to benefit society even after Godzilla’s destruction, while Akira shows the second destruction of Neo-Tokyo even after the city was once already destroyed due to war and technological advancements. Similarly, Nausicaä shows the Tolmekians and Pejites both threaten to recreate the destruction of the Seven Days of Fire that created the uninhabitable wasteland as a result of further human conflict and greed. The Tolmekian Princess Kushana and her subordinate Tolmekian commander Kurotowa, for example, violently invade the Valley with orders to reclaim the Warrior from their crashed ship and bring it back to Tolmekia; however, the two conspire to create a “new kingdom” instead of bringing “that monster as a toy for those fools [the Tolmekians].” Kushana and Kurotowa here express similar power-hungry sentiments of some of the researchers in Godzilla who want to ignore the monster’s potential threat in order to study it for military purposes, even to the point of abandoning their national identity. The Pejites, though initially victims of the Tolmekians who invaded their lands in search of the Warrior’s remains, plan on using similar violent tactics as the Tolmekians by forcing a stampede of Ohms into the Valley to destroy the occupying Tolmekian forces with the Valley and its people in the crossfire. Their goal, like the Tolmekians, is to reclaim the Great Warrior and wield its power so they are no longer “Subject [themselves] to Tolmekian rule.” These notions of conquest and invasion further the World War II allegory as well as relate to the events leading up to that conflict. Like the Tolmekian commanders striving to create “a new kingdom” in the Valley, both Japan and Nazi Germany invaded nearby nations to create a “New Order” to quote Hitler and Tōa shin chitsujo (“new order in East Asia”) for Japan. Ultimately, both the Tolmekians and the Pejites incur only self-harm and needless collateral damage. Kushana’s reviving the Great Warrior too quickly causes it to decay as the Ohm herd triggered by the Pejites continues their march towards both the people of the Valley and the Tolmekians. With seemingly no one able to stop the Ohms, it is left to Nausicaä to reconcile the situation and save both kingdoms.
Using their agricultural and pastoral lifestyle, Miyazaki presents Nausicaä, the Valley of the Wind, as counterpoints in the film to the militaristic kingdoms and industrial/militaristic technology. In her chapter written for the book Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function (2015), Melanie Chan, a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, explores the animated landscapes of Nausicaä andargues that the art style of the film invokes the qualities of “eighteenth and nineteenth century European landscape painting,” or works likely out of the Romantic period of art that pushed for detailed and idealized natural landscapes. Chan views the Valley, for example, as this idealized environmentalist society “where humans utilize technology in a way that does not unduly disrupt natural processes” (Chan). Both of Chan’s statements, though mostly read through an environmentalist lens, are still relevant to how Miyazaki contrasts the Valley and its people with the Tolmekians and Pejite and specifically how each represents different philosophical approaches to conflict. The Valley’s inhabitants’ approach to living in harmony with nature and being mostly pacifist is placed as being morally superior to the Tolmekians and the Pejites who, like the Germans and the Japanese during World War II, use violent tactics and advanced weaponry to force the people of the Valley to be at their mercy. Even Nausicaä, who is shown to be a skilled combatant when fighting the Tolmekian invaders who killed her father, chooses to surrender to the Tolmekians because she “can’t bear to have anyone else die.” She later tells her mentor Lord Yupa that she is afraid of herself and her ability to kill, proclaiming “No more killing. It has to stop.” This pacifist philosophy Nausicaä adopts is what saves both her people and the Tolmekian military at the end of the film, as she returns a baby Ohm that Pejites were using to drive the Ohm herd towards the Valley, quelling the Ohms’ violent march. Her actions are put into subsequent contrast with Kushana using the Great Warrior to try and stop the Ohm herd to no avail, showing the triumph of a peaceful and rudimentary society over an aggressive and advanced society.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is an exercise in allegory and moral/ethical binaries for Miyazaki. By presenting the viewer with a world mixed with both fantastical and naturalistic elements for a modern audience, Miyazaki is inviting historical comparisons to make further points about the dangers of war and technology. He specifically points to World War II in his visuals that recall the nuclear attacks on Japan, other weaponry from the period, and the incorporation of different philosophies that correlate to certain nations during that war. Environmental readings of this film like Paik and Chan’s are also highly relevant when analyzing how Miyazaki uses this setting and his characters to represent different views towards conflict. These historical connections to the war have been hinted at elsewhere, as the film was screened at a film festival hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Thematically, Miyazaki has said that Nausicaä deals with how “people with differences can coexist” and that “there’s no purpose in magnifying people’s differences” (“Roman Album”), yet the film does seem to constantly emphasize the dichotomy between the Valley of the Wind’s morally superior pacifism/simple nature and the Tolmekians and Pejites’ damming militarism and faith in militaristic technology. Following Nausicaä, Miyazaki has garnered a reputation for the continued use of allegorical imagery, antiwar themes, and cautionary tales about the negative uses of technology; however, Miyazaki seemingly decided to challenge his repeated themes with his latest and possibly last film, The Wind Rises.
The Wind Rises
Like with Nausicaa, Miyazaki’s style in The Wind Rises places the film in a particular cinematic tradition of portraying the effects of war and technology, that is using a realist aesthetic in conjuncture with direct historical representations and/or adaptations in the place of pure allegory. This thematic approach has changed over time and varies depending on the regions in which these films were produced. For example, World War II films made for Western audiences tend to vilify Japan, including films like Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor (2001) and Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken (2014) with few exceptions like Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) being released. Films produced within Japan about World War II have often been more ambivalent about the country’s experience during the war; though many, like Miyazaki’s films, are still thematically antiwar and critical of technology’s role in the war. One famous example of this type of film comes from Miyazaki’s fellow Studio Ghibli co-founder, Isao Takahata’s 1988 anime film Grave of the Fireflies which follows an orphaned brother, Seita, and his younger sister, Setsuko, as they try to survive on their own in Japan on the brink of losing World War II. In conjunction with the film’s focus on direct historical references, the siblings are shown being present for the 1945 firebombing of the city of Kobe and witnessing the destruction that military machinery brought onto Japan. Seita continues to helplessly cling to Japan’s nationalistic identity as he and his sister Setsuko are pushed to their physical limits and ultimately die of starvation. It is when Seita hears of Japan’s surrender, however, that he, like Japan as a whole, loses much of his hope and nationalistic sentiments, a phenomenon alluded to in Hirohito’s “cruel bomb” quote.
While these complex messages are relevant to The Wind Rises, the film also has possible controversial connections to Japanese propaganda films during World War II. According to film critic David Desser, these films “were crucial both to a government attempting to extort its citizenry in support of the war and to an industry attempting to please a militaristic government” (Film History 36). While Desser’s main example of a Japanese propaganda film is Ahen senso (“The Opium War”), a 1943 film dealing with the First Opium War that Desser argues is relevant to Japan’s World War II aims, Akira Kurosawa’s The Most Beautiful(1944), revolving around a group of Japanese women working in a factory who try to up their production target to support their country during World War II, is arguably a more direct example of the kind of pro-military and industry film to which Desser broadly refers. Though The Wind Rises is certainly not taking a pro-military or industry stance, the ways Miyazaki uses historical fiction and idealistic characters facilitate these comparisons and contrast Nausicaä’s clear stances on war and technology.
To convey a more ambiguous look at war and technology, The Wind Rises sees Miyazaki follow a historical figure that seemingly embodies a complex perspective on the subject: Japanese aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi. The filmfollows Jiro from his childhood when he dreams about aircraft and hopes one day to be an aircraft engineer, leading to him eventually designing aircraft for the Imperial Army of Japan. Working closely with his peer Kiro Honjo and his supervisor Kurokawa, Jiro is ultimately successful in designing and testing the Mitsubishi A5M fighter plane but begins to draw the unwanted attention of the Japanese secret police as the country moves closer to war. Jiro also begins a relationship with a woman named Nahoko Satomi whom he once helped during the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and who has contracted Tuberculosis. Being a work of historical fiction, the film is not entirely accurate to Jiro’s life, with one major change to Jiro’s biography being the relationship he has with Nahoko. Miyazaki based this relationship on the Japanese novel The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori which also follows a romance between a man and a woman with tuberculosis who is eventually sent to a sanitarium. The film is also based on a manga Miyazaki wrote and illustrated that was released between April 2009 to January 2010 and is more in line with the film’s narrative. Most of the changes made to Jiro’s life, however, are seemingly in service of furthering Miyazaki’s philosophical themes, even as the film’s historical connections and their relationship to his themes are what set this film apart from the fantastical allegories and binaries of Nausicaä as well as propaganda films like The Most Beautiful.
Throughout The Wind Rises, Miyazaki does employ allegory and tempered fantastical imagery to convey his themes, but it is all done through direct historical connections, unlike Nausicaä which delves more completely into the fantastical. One example is the portrayal of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and its effects on Tokyo. Initially, as Jiro helps Nahoko and her servant get off a train they were riding when the earthquake begins, Tokyo seems largely undamaged. As time goes on, however, the city begins to burn. Miyazaki then turns to focus on the billowing smoke clouds rising from the city as people run in panic. The sequence ends in a wide shot showing what seems like the complete eradication of Tokyo, with a charred landscape stretching for miles as the fires continue to burn on the horizon. The devastation to Tokyo shown here can be read as an allegory for nuclear destruction, as the desolate landscape is similar to that seen in the destroyed kingdoms of Nausicaä and Neo-Tokyo in Akira. One could also, as Jiro does, imagine the city under attack by enemy aircraft. For a brief moment, Jiro is shown looking into the clouds and seeing Italian bombers flying over Tokyo, only to disappear in subsequent shots. The earthquake could then be read as a foreshadowing of the general destruction of World War II on Japan, as this scene also resembles the firebombing shown in Grave of the Fireflies. As the film proceeds, the foreshadowing of war becomes more direct and prevalent. When Jiro and Kiro visit Germany to observe the aircraft designs of Hugo Junkers, the duo encounters German secret police who are in pursuit of an unknown individual. Later, Jiro encounters a German at Nahoko’s father’s hotel who tells Jiro that Junkers “fights the hand that feeds him,” meaning “Mr. Hitler’s government.” Jiro and the man then begin to speculate that Germany will again go to war and that “Japan will blow up” because of its militaristic activities. Miyazaki, in highlighting these historical events and figures, is directly referring to how the war will negatively affect Japan.
Using similar filmmaking techniques as observed by Melanie Chan in her writingss on Nausicaä, Miyazaki in The Wind Rises uses the natural settings and rustic practices of Japan as a preferable counterpoint to the technologically advanced Germany and the Japanese government’s pre-war industrial dream for the country. Part of Jiro and the other Japanese aviation engineers’ mission is to “catch up” technologically to the rest of the world, leading Jiro and Kiro to Germany to observe Junkers’ aircraft. The duo notes how German aircraft are all made of metal, as Japanese planes are still using wood. The Japanese also use oxen to bring their planes out to the test runway, while the Germans built their runway next to the engineering plant. To improve their fleet, the Japanese begin to buy Junkers’ planes and convert them to bombers, showing the country’s shift to a more militaristic perspective. Still, Miyazaki and Jiro continue to idealize natural resources over advanced technology. Jiro notes that he “like[s]” the oxen even when Kiro is shown to want upgrades. Miyazaki emphasizes Jiro’s positive perspective on the oxen by romanticizing their appearance, with one particular wide shot showing the animals pulling a fighter across a grassy field in the early hours of the morning. The director further positively portrays the oxen in a moment of triumph when they used to transport Jiro’s final successful test plane at the end of the film. This motif of romanticizing nature continues when Jiro spends time at Nahoko’s father’s hotel after the test flight of one of his designed planes fails. In this section of the film, Miyazaki treats the setting as he does the Valley in Nausicaä by focusing heavily on pastoral qualities. He focuses on the settings of sloped grassy fields, small streams, and lush forests set against a bright blue sky, all of which contrast the imagined future of an industrial Japan. Jiro’s stay at the hotel is also when he pushes engineering and war to the side the most and begins his romance with Nahoko. Through this lens, the natural world becomes an allegory for pacifism in contrast with the aesthetically fantastical allegory of the Valley in Nausicaä.
Even the more fantastical elements of the film, such as Jiro’s multiple dream sequences, are based on Jiro’s knowledge and love of aviation and its history, employing historical rather than fantastical imagery. Jiro’s dreams revolve around conversations with his idol, Italian aircraft engineer Giovanni Battista Caproni, aboard the engineer’s many different aircraft, mostly passenger vessels. While certain fantastical elements are included in the dreamscape, like showing wide shots of Jiro and Caproni safely walking on the tops of aircrafts midflight and the clouds in the sky persistently having a rainbow tint, the topics of their discussions are exclusively based on the realities of war and the moral dilemma faced by military engineers. During Jiro’s first dream of Caproni, the two observe a group of Italian fighters taking off. Caproni elaborates saying that these fighters “will bomb an enemy city” and “Most of them will never return.” This moment gives context as to why Jiro imagines Italian fighters during the earthquake, as he is conflating the destruction of Tokyo with the destructive force of fighter planes. The fighters, while Italian, also serve as an allegory foreshadowing World War II fighters in general and their inevitable role in violence and self-destruction. Most of his dreams, however, see Jiro and Caproni romanticize aircraft and their craft. As Caproni states, “Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.” This line of thought eventually leads the two to discuss the inevitable effects the planes they design will likely have during the proceeding war, a conversation that can also extend to technological development in general during this period. In a later dream, Caproni asks Jiro, “Which would you choose, a world with pyramids or without?” Elaborating further, Caproni argues that “Humanity has always dreamt of flight, but the dream is cursed. My aircrafts are destined to become tools for slaughter and destruction […] But still, I choose a world with pyramids in it.” As these conversations are part of Jiro’s dreams, Caproni’s argument is likely Jiro working through his internal conflict over whether being a military engineer is morally sound. While Jiro’s dreams express ambivalence over the fact that his work will lead to destruction, he still chooses to adopt a romantic vision of aircraft and the benevolence and beauty that can come from technology.
The complex nature of Jiro’s views on technology and war drew criticism for Miyazaki upon the film’s release. As reported by The Guardian in 2013, Miyazaki received flak from both sides of the political spectrum. South Koreans argued the director was “lionising the creator of one of the most potent symbols of Japanese militarism” as glorifying the fighters that were completed by Koreans through forced labor. Right-wing pundits in Japan, on the other hand, were not happy with Miyazaki’s portrayal of “the futility of war” (McCurry), especially at a time when the current prime minister of Japan was calling for a reformed military and changes to Japan’s pacifist constitution. In response to these claims, in an interview with the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, Miyazaki takes much of the same position as Jiro does in the film. While Miyazaki stated that he has “complex feelings” about World War II and that the Japanese military acted in “foolish arrogance,” he does not deny that Jiro’s Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane, the successor to the fighter Jiro successfully tests at the end of the film, “represented one of the few things we Japanese could be proud of – they were a truly formidable presence, and so were the pilots who flew them.” Like Jiro’s ambivalent stance toward militaristic technology, Miyazaki, who has constantly shown his love of aircraft and flight in other films like Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) and Porco Rosso (1992), here both reverse technology and its specific cultural impact on Japan while condemning its use to propagate violence. Interestingly, Miyazaki’s father was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, a company that built aircraft parts for World War II aircraft including the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, so Miyazaki could be using Jiro and his story as an allegory for his own experiences with his father and the ambivalent feelings towards war and technology that relationship likely fostered for Miyazaki.
Regardless of Jiro or Miyazaki’s complicated view of aviation and his duty to the Japanese war effort, Jiro is still shown prioritizing his interpersonal relationships which further distances him from the surrounding militaristic sentiments. Particularly, Jiro’s relationship with Nahoko is shown to transcend his devotion to the Japanese military. Though Jiro is under the pressure of the Japanese secret police, he and Nahoko, herself trying to reconcile their relationship with her Tuberculosis diagnosis, decide to get married with Kurokawa and his wife serving as witnesses. Kurokawa, who is already at risk by hiding Jiro at his house, expresses his reservation to Jiro about the marriage. Jiro reassures him of his love for Nahoko, saying that he is even willing to “give up the fighter project” to be with her. Jiro’s willingness to abandon his engineering career for Nahoko, as well as Kurokawa sheltering Jiro and his eventual support of Jiro’s marriage, further the film’s antiwar themes by showing these two characters put their relationships about their nationalistic duties. Like Nausicaä’s proclamation that there will be “No more killing” out of a desire to protect her people, Jiro and Kurokawa take quasi-pacifistic paths that signify their shift from militaristic loyalty to the loyalty found in their relationships.
The film’s conclusion sees Jiro’s complex perspective culminate in a dream sequence showing him finally faced with the full reality of war and the consequences of his actions. The dream opens with the same images of the smoke clouds and burning horizon as shown during the earthquake sequence, but now present are Japanese fighter planes overhead, suggesting that Jiro’s earlier assumption that “Japan will blow up” and the allegorical image of the Italian fighters in the earlier dream sequence have come to fruition. Jiro is then seen walking through a green field of destroyed fighter planes, countless reminders of how the aviation technology he saw beauty in was used for violent militaristic pursuits. Jiro eventually meets Caproni and suggests that Japan is now “the land of the dead” and reveals that none of his fighters returned from the war. Caproni counters by saying, “There was nothing to return to” and that Jiro should be happy with his time “in the sun.” Again, Miyazaki invokes the notion that Jiro’s passion and romanticization of aviation trump the resulting violence of his technological creations, referring back to Kiro’s statement earlier in the film that “We [engineers] are not arms merchants. We just want to make good aircraft.” Jiro and Caproni then see Nahoko, now dead from her disease, coming toward them. Nahoko, the film’s embodiment of emotional connections over violence, tells Jiro that he “must live” even after things “fell apart” for Jiro after the war. Through this sequence, Miyazaki is affirming life and love over any guilt or defeat Jiro may be feeling after Japan’s surrender, ending his film with Jiro and Caproni joining Nahoko in celebration.
While the dream sequences may lean more into fantastical allegorical imagery seen more prevalently in Nausicaä, The Wind Rises overall sees Miyazaki delve more into a realist aesthetic to comment on Japan’s existence post-World War II. Unlike films like Akira, Godzilla, and Nausicaä which suggest an inevitable cycle of violence wrought by weaponized technology, Miyazakichooses here to acknowledge both an idealized view of technology as well as its capabilities for violence. Though Jiro’s stance on technology is more ambivalent than the characters in Nausicaä, his relationship with Nahoko shows that he can grow beyond his passion for aviation, and subsequently his devotion to the Japanese war effort, and embrace a pacifist philosophy in line with Nausicaä and Miyazaki’s other films.
Conclusion
Through Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki utilizes two contrasting film lineages to convey his own ambivalent feelings about war and technology, particularly in relation to Japanese history. Using both fantastical and realist allegories, Miyazaki comments on Japanese history and shows how the country can and has partially moved on in the ensuing decades following World War II and Hirohito’s surrender. These films also emphasize Miyazaki as a political pundit on both Japanese and world politics as well as a prolific filmmaker. Nausicaä, the release of which coincided with military conflicts of the 1980s, including the Iran–Iraq War, and The Wind Rises, a film set in World War II and the contemporary Japanese government inching towards its militaristic past, are examples of how Miyazaki uses World War II allegories and historical adaptations to springboards to inserts himself and his films into the realm of public interest to present his ideas about war and technology. Seeing how critically acclaimed and world-renowned his films have become, it is hard to deny that Miyazaki’s ideas and the unique way he presents them have resonated with both its targeted audience in Japan and internationally.
Works Cited
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