The Wind Rises By Hayao Miyazaki First Subtitled Trailer Plus Huge Controversy In Japan

Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises has been at the top of the Japanese box-office for the past month, but not without its problems. The Wind Rises tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the man who design the Zero Fighter planes that flew in World War 2.

The controversy that surrounds the film is that film is set in a delicate time in Japanese history, one that director Hayao Miyazaki not only is not to found off, but puts him in direct line of fire of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Currently Abe “has tried to reframe Japan’s role in World War II: He’s questioned “whether it is proper to say that Japan ‘invaded’ its neighbors” and questioned the 1995 official apology to “comfort women,” the conscription prostitutes provided to Japanese troops during the war. Abe is currently pushing for a revision of the Japanese constitution that would not only ease the country’s prohibition on military aggression, but would also enshrine the Emperor as the head of state and compel “respect” for symbols of Japan’s pre-war heyday.”

Because Miyazaki doesn’t share the Prime Minister’s vision he says:

“If I had been born a bit earlier, I would have been a gunkoku shonen (Militarist Youth),” Miyazaki writes… But instead, he grew up in a family in which his father went from building airplane components during the war to opening a jazz club to cater to American soldiers during the postwar occupation. Removed from the “hysteria” of the war years, Miyazaki writes, he “had a strong feeling in my childhood that we had ‘fought a truly stupid war’.”

He then adds:

"It goes without saying that I am opposed to revising the constitution," he writes. "That is something that should never be done."

According to Ryusuke Hikawa, a film commentator;

“The time shown in the movie resembles the present,” referring to the 1923 earthquake that devastated Tokyo and the 1930s Depression – parallels to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and Japan’s long-stagnant economy.

“After the quake there was turmoil and Japan began heading towards war. It is possible to feel some similarities … The economy was bad and psychologically it was a situation of having to do something big, and that’s how things got nationalistic.”

Yuichi Maeda, a Japanese critic believes that anyone who saw or sees the movie, must read along Miyazaki’s essay, and more the movie was based on a manga that Miyazaki did in 2009, so of course the economic crises, which started in 2008, was probably floating around inside his head. 

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