The Wind Rises was directed by what critically-acclaimed Japanese director?

The Wind Rises was directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Released in 2013, the Japanese animated historical drama was written and directed by Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.

The film presents a fictionalized version of the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the Japanese aeronautical engineer who designed aircraft for Mitsubishi. It follows his ambitions from the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake through the development and testing of aircraft in the 1930s, while also weaving in an invented romantic storyline.

Miyazaki based the film partly on his own manga and on Tatsuo Hori’s 1937 semi-autobiographical novel The Wind Has Risen. The title also alludes to a line from French poet Paul Valéry’s poem “The Graveyard by the Sea.” Its Japanese title, Kaze Tachinu, can be translated more literally as “The Wind Has Risen.”

The film is often mistaken for a straightforward biography, but it deliberately blends documented history with fiction and dreamlike sequences. It was Miyazaki’s first feature after Ponyo and was initially announced as his final film before he later returned to direct The Boy and the Heron.