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Studio Ghibli co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki will be producing a manga for Model Graphix hobby magazine. The two-part series will be called "Kaze Tachinu" (The Wind Rises). The focus will be Jirō Horikoshi, the famed inventor of the notorious Mitsubishi A6M Zero, Japan's signature fighter plane of World War II.

This is a inflammatory topic for a studio best known for touching stories of childhood ([amazon B0001XAQ0A inline]), cautionary tales against war ([amazon B0001XAPZ6 inline]), and impossible love ([amazon B0018QT94I inline]).

At face value, it is easy to take this as a yet another nationalistic period piece that attempts to cast a warm rose-tinted light over Japan's imperialist past. To put this in perspective, how could a studio known as the Walt Disney of Asia make comic about the inventor of the kamikaze fighter plane?

Japan still struggles every year with rewrites of history textbooks that alter the interpretation of Japan's part in WWII, specifically the existence of the Nanking Massacre. Successive prime ministers have been lambasted by China and Korea for their annual visits to a shrine to war criminals on the anniversary of the country's surrender in the Second World War. Last year, Yasuo Fukuda became the first prime minister to avoid Yasukuni shrine and attend a separate ceremony honouring the 2.5 million Japanese who died during the conflict.

How would Germany react to a comic based on Joseph Goebbels? I am not going to cast Jirō Horikoshi as a war criminal. As with everyone following orders during a time of war, his work, however inspired, contributed to uncountable deaths with the creation of kamikaze suicide squads. It will be interesting to see whether or not Jirō Horikoshi is protrayed as a patriot and defender of his country. To be fair, Einstein regretted his participation in the Manhattan project that produced the atom bomb that ultimately leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The issue here is not how can we run biographies on Einstein instead of Jirō Horikoshi. The problem is that Miyazaki has chosen the channel of his beloved studio to push what appears to be nationalistic propaganda.

However, in light of all this, it may be prudent to wait until the manga arrives in Japan on before passing judgement. Previous Ghibli works have not shied away from controversy and an unblinking look at war. [amazon B00006HAWP inline] chronicles the story of two siblings orphaned and starving after the end of World War II.

Personally, I am all for continued discussion of the past. However, I would have preferred to keep my memory of Miyazaki and Ghibli as pure as that of a unhurried childhood.

Please leave comments to let me know what you think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Horikoshi