The single greatest figure in making Japanese anime known to the world is, I'd say, probably Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli's films are held in extremely high regard not only in Japan but overseas, and their renown is exceptional. The animation—the artwork, the story, the worldview—is of course the core of that popularity, but isn't a large part of why they were so widely embraced abroad also owed to the power of the music?
Joe Hisaishi, who has handled Ghibli's music since the early days, first became known to the world through Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a work you could call Ghibli's starting point. The many pieces Hisaishi creates stoke Miyazaki's imagination and push his worlds wider in a Cinderella-perfect fit, and from there, as you all know, they went on to put out one masterpiece after another. To begin with, I think Hisaishi is extraordinarily skilled at writing music tuned to the Japanese sensibility (you might even call it the primal scenery within our hearts).
One of his signature pieces, “Summer,” makes images of your own personal summer day well up in your head one after another—a slightly rural sloping road, blue sky, trees swaying coolly, rice paddies, towering thunderheads. Because it uses the Canon chord progression that Japanese people love, it feels incredibly familiar, and yet it also expresses a touch of wistfulness—less this year's summer than a summer in your memories you can never return to (if I may add, it's almost as if you're watching your own child and recalling the summers of your own childhood). This is probably because the part where the main melody is chased—refrained—by various sounds can be read as “reminiscence.” Music has the power to evoke scenery, but his is on another dimension entirely. Miyazaki reportedly wasn't all that interested in music, but Isao Takahata, who was involved as a director at the time, fell in love with the music of the then-not-very-famous Hisaishi and pushed for him over other composers who were already famous back then—and that's said to be how it all began.
When you hear music that conjures the scenery of the heart like this, perhaps any creator would feel their pen come alive.
Nausicaä, Laputa, Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service… the List Goes On
The scores Hisaishi writes—expanding the worldview of each of Ghibli's early works to the fullest and conveying it to the audience in full, no, with a synergistic effect on top—were overwhelming from the very start, and have had an enormous influence not only on later score composers but on game music as well.
An orchestral performance of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is currently up on YouTube, and there the score is played continuously, like a story. A melody, sorrowful yet somehow beautiful, that conjures a ravaged world. The passage that enters on harp and touches the melody to the piano, then the chorus that follows before returning again to the harp, evokes quiet, gentle nature, eventually shifting into fierce music—as if a civilization once made to flourish by human hands is again being destroyed by human hands. It's hard to believe he wrote this in his thirties: weighty music every bit a match for the worldview.
With Castle in the Sky, I love it so much I could talk about the entire soundtrack, but “The Girl Who Fell from the Sky” is amazing precisely because it's short. With nothing but that refreshing trumpet sound, it's as if the sunrise scenery, the plaza, and Pazu's character are all packed inside.
As for Totoro, the anecdote that the melody was born lyrics-first is amazing too, but for me it has to be “The Path of the Wind.” Within its mystical, beautiful yet slightly frightening melody is an emotion that only a child's eyes can see and feel, which is exactly why the older you get, the more it strikes straight at your heart. The piano riff is so beautiful it brings me to tears.
With Kiki's Delivery Service, I'm filled with admiration every time I hear “A Town with an Ocean View.” A streetscape of Sweden—the model for the setting, one I've never seen and never lived in—somehow comes to mind together with a sense of nostalgia. It's exactly like that “memory that doesn't exist” Todo talks about in Jujutsu Kaisen, flooding into my mind.
And so, Hisaishi keeps producing masterpieces too numerous to fully discuss. Next time I'll write Part 2.
From UNIVERSAL MUSIC LLC
