In Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rises, what is the profession of protagonist Jirō Horikoshi?

In Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rises, protagonist Jirō Horikoshi is an aircraft designer.

The 2013 film presents a fictionalized version of the life of Jirō Horikoshi, the Japanese engineer who designed the Mitsubishi A5M fighter and helped develop the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. Jirō’s passion for aviation is shown through dreams involving the Italian aircraft designer Giovanni Battista Caproni, who becomes an imaginative mentor.

Hayao Miyazaki directed and wrote the film, adapting elements from Horikoshi’s biography and Tatsuo Hori’s 1937 novella The Wind Has Risen. The film combines engineering ambition with a love story and the difficult moral context of aircraft design during wartime.

Jirō is sometimes described simply as a pilot because the story contains many aircraft scenes. He does not primarily fly the machines; his role is designing them. That distinction is central to the film’s title and themes.