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Yoshiyuki Tomino Shares His Appreciation for The Wind Rises

An old interview with anime director Yoshiyuki Tomino recently came to light again, and it's from a rather unlikely place. In September 2013, Tomino (Mobile Suit Gundam) held an interview with Tetsuya Ishikawa, head of the SPring-8 Center , which studies synchrotron radiation at the Japanese research institute RIKEN. The interview focused on Tomino's feelings about the applied sciences, but they included his thoughts on The Wind Rises, which Tomino felt a personal connection with.

Regarding the film and its focus on engineering:

Tomino: Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises is a good example of the problems of engineering. It's the story of Jirō Horikoshi, maker of the Zero, but at the same time it becomes a history of the development of airplanes. It shows the state of engineering in the 20th century. Airplanes aren't as dangerous as atomic power, so they followed the process of "manufacturing, failure, improvement" over and over again, evolving along the way. [...] My father was involved in researching and making rubber products. During the war, he also made parts for fighter planes and bombers, and I think he also was involved in researching suicide weaponry...

...When I visited my dad's factory at age 5, I said something like, "It's great that you get to play with these big machines." From that story you can see how engineers are people forced in war to do things they don't like.

Tomino had words of praise, for the film, saying:

Tomino: It's a really wonderful film. This is what Miyazaki is showing: Technicians have dreams. Beautiful things that fly through the sky with great forms. But because they're involved in aviation, they could only realize their talents through military applications. It's a story of that sort of despair.

Upon Ishikawa's reply that the film was advertised as a romance movie, Tomino answered:

Tomino: That's the appeal for ordinary audiences, but it's not the main element. This is the first film in history to show the early modern history of aviation and the anguish of technicians front and center. At first I thought of Hayao Miyazaki as a rival to conquer. But this work is totally different; the whole movie really struck a chord with me. If you want to know why I know so much about aviation engineering, it's because my dad worked for a subcontractor of Nakajima Aircraft...

...So Miyazaki and I were raised in the same environment. The detail in the movie's reproduction of the design rooms was especially impressive. The most important point of The Wind Rises is that ever since the days of biplanes, airplanes were made at an individual level, but as they developed, more and more capital became necessary, so they had to be made for military use.

Regarding Miyazaki, his stance on technology, and his portrayal of the Zero:

Tomino: Miyazaki's trying hard to show the positives and negatives of the Zero, and the positives and negatives of technicians. The first time I saw The Wind Rises, I understood that he wasn't just a mecha otaku. He's made his stance on modern productions clear in some places, but here he's trying to take back the Zero from the military otaku. I think he's been hammered online — "What's he saying now?" But if you don't like it, and don't understand mecha, you can't accurately portray the relationship between men and machine...

...I think we need to rethink 20th-century engineering, which tried to overcome evolution, in order to avoid repeating the tragedy of technicians like Horikoshi. The new work I'm making also reflects these thoughts.

[Source: Ghibli-no Sekai via Yaraon; Image from RIKEN]