The rise of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, whose popular animated films include Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and The Boy and the Heron, has been accompanied by a growing appreciation for the composer responsible for the scores of those and many other movies over the past 40 years: Joe Hisaishi (b. 1950).

Hisaishi’s enchanting, melodic accompaniments for these colorful hand-drawn, folk-inspired tales have catapulted him into the front ranks of the world’s film composers and won him eight Japanese Academy Awards as well as honors from the Annie Awards and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

He was born Mamoru Fujisawa in Nagano, Japan, studied both violin and piano as a youth, and was equally fascinated by jazz and contemporary classical music. He took up composition at the Kunitachi College of Music and has cited the avant-garde rock band Yellow Magic Orchestra (which included future film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto) as an early influence.

Beginning in the 1980s, he released albums that featured the eclectic sounds of gamelan orchestra, rock beats, and electronics. His stage name “Joe Hisaishi” is the Japanese equivalent of “Quincy Jones” (“Quincy,” pronounced “Kuinshī” in Japanese, can be written using the same kanji in “Hisaishi”; and “Joe” was derived from “Jones”). It was both an in-joke and a hint about his personal taste in music. His admiration for Gustav Mahler led him to build a replica of Mahler’s Austrian composition hut near his summer house in Japan.

Hisaishi’s initial score for filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki was Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), which launched a four-decade collaboration that has extended across 11 films including Ponyo, The Wind Rises, and Howl’s Moving Castle. Some observers consider their long professional relationship as the Japanese equivalent of the familiar partnership of John Williams and Steven Spielberg.

The evocative score for Nausicaä, about a pacifist teenage princess in a war-torn, post-apocalyptic world, led Miyazaki to commission additional scores from Hisaishi as he began working under the Studio Ghibli banner: the brass fanfares and wistful music for Castle in the Sky (1986), about a pair of orphans pursued by sky pirates seeking a mythical castle; and the alternately warm and jazzy sounds of My Neighbor Totoro (1988), about sisters who encounter friendly wood spirits in the Japanese countryside.

Their partnership continued with Hisaishi’s charming and playful music for Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), about a witch who doubles as a flying courier; the swashbuckling adventure score for Porco Rosso (1992), the tale of a World War I pilot transformed into a pig; and one of their most popular films, Princess Mononoke (1997), an environmental fantasy in medieval Japan featuring princes and princesses, spirits and demons set to one of Hisaishi’s most memorable themes.

With Spirited Away (2001), Miyazaki’s artistry was finally acknowledged by the Motion Picture Academy with an Oscar for best animated feature; it was the first hand-drawn, non-English-language animated film to win. His elaborate, sometimes bizarre fantasy centers on a girl named Chihiro whose parents stumble across an abandoned theme park that turns out to be haunted. “One Summer’s Day,” Chihiro’s poignant piano theme, ranks among Hisaishi’s most popular works. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), an anti-war tale whose magical waltz (“Merry-Go-Round of Life”) has become another Hisaishi favorite, was nominated for an Oscar.

Composer and director collaborated on three more films: Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008), about a goldfish-like creature befriended by a little boy, with an appropriately buoyant score; The Wind Rises (2013), about aircraft designers between the two World Wars, with a mandolin-flavored melody; and The Boy and the Heron (2023), about the adventures of a boy and his talking avian friend, with its plaintive, emotional accompaniment. The latter two films were nominated for Oscars for best animated feature. Meanwhile, in 2014, Miyazaki was presented an honorary Oscar as “a master storyteller whose animated artistry has inspired filmmakers and audiences around the world.”

Hisaishi has contributed music to the work of other filmmakers, including Samurai Kids (1993), a live-action adventure by Nobuhiko Obayashi from which “Water Traveller” derives; Le Petit Poucet (2001), French director Olivier Dahan’s lavish adaptation of the classic fairy tale Tom Thumb; and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), an animated historical fantasy by Isao Takahata, with its delicate theme for the tiny princess discovered in a bamboo shoot.

Another of Hisaishi’s regular film collaborators is Takeshi Kitano, the Japanese comedian, actor, and filmmaker. The composer created a catchy theme for Sonatine (1993), about an aging yakuza (Japanese gangster). He also scored Kids Return (1996), about high-school dropouts searching for direction; Hana-bi (1997, released as Fireworks in the US), the story of a retired police detective in debt to yakuza gangs, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival; and Brother (2000), a story about an experienced yakuza enforcer that features the powerful “Raging Men” theme.

Hisaishi went on to create a delightful new score for Buster Keaton’s classic 1926 silent film The General, which he conducted live at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2004. And he has scored other live-action films such as Dolls (2002), Departures (2008), and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025).

The composer’s film fame has, perhaps unfairly, tended to obscure his work for the concert hall, as he has composed numerous works for orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensembles during the past three decades. Three symphonies; concertos for harp (commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic), viola, contrabass, and horns; works for choir and chamber orchestra; and more, are among his non-film compositions.

As Hisaishi once told an interviewer: “I am a basic, simple composer. I only want to compose things I can easily play at home on my piano. I just want to make music that can make people happy and escape.”

—Jon Burlingame

Special Thanks: Obayashi Nobuhiko, Robster Films, T.N GON Co., Ltd., Studio Ghibli, Ayame Fujisawa (Wonder City)