If I mention the name Joe Hisaishi, you might be wondering who that is? However, if I start by mentioning the soundtracks of the movies My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle, you will probably be able to even hum the captative melodies.

Have you ever ask yourself: what is it that makes films like My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle so special?

For all the beautiful animation, heartwarming stories and singular characters, there is another facet of the Studio Ghibli machine that has been just as consistently spectacular: the music of Joe Hisaishi. He’s the master behind the magical sounds in all but one of Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films (his debut feature, 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro, which predated Studio Ghibli by six years), and his work is so influential to the overall picture that the studio requests early compositions during pre-production to help to shape the direction and writing.

Try to imagine Spirited Away without the twinkling piano melodies of “One Summer’s Day”, or Princess Mononoke without the swooping strings and swelling brass of “The Legend of Ashitaka”. It’s pieces like these, often drawing on the dynamic, orchestral flow of Impressionist composers like Claude Debussy, that supply some of the lingering emotions that Studio Ghibli is famed for. It’s Hisaishi that conjures up that feeling of being suspended in time, in a peaceful, magical place.

He is known as the “John Williams of Japan”, but he’s also known as the ‘Japanese Quincy Jones’. Joe Hisaishi is actually the stage name of one Mamoru Fujisawa, who decided early on in his career to adopt a moniker that would be more easily recognizable to international audiences. The name ‘Joe Hisaishi’ was inspired by revered African-American producer Quincy Jones, whose name becomes ‘Kuishi’ Jones ,or ‘Hisaishi’ Jones, when translated into Japanese kanji lettering.

In the west, Hisaishi is sometimes referred to as the ‘John Williams of Japan’ due to his long-running partnership with Hayao Miyazaki. Like Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams (who scored the likes of Jaws, Jurassic Park, and the Indiana Jones series), Miyazaki’s bond with Hisaishi remains strong to this day, with their most recent collaboration coming in 2018 for the Studio Ghibli Museum short Boro the Caterpillar.

While Joe Hisaishi is the main musical associate of Studio Ghibli, he’s only rarely scored films not directed by the studio’s co-founder. Notably, the films of Isao Takahata, which include wartime tragedy Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and Pom Poko, were each scored by different people. Hisaishi would eventually score Takahata’s final Studio Ghibli film, 2013’s The Tales of Princess Kaguya, though it was originally commissioned to a different composer. Of the other Studio Ghibli composers, only Yuji Nomi has scored more than one major release – he worked on both 1995’s Whisper of the Heart and 2002’s The Cat Returns.

Joe Hisaishi’s won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Music a whopping eight times in his career, and his music features in four of the top 11 all-time highest grossing films in Japan. He seemingly has a knack for working on films that go on to snap up top honours at international ceremonies, too. He provided the score for Takeshi Kitano’s violent yakuza drama Fireworks in 1997, which won the Golden Lion at Venice, while Spirited Away famously won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars in 2003. Departures, meanwhile, was the first Japanese film to win Best Foreign Film at the Oscars in 2008. His score was nominated at the Japanese Academy Awards that year, but he lost out to… himself, for his work on the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo.

Outside of film awards, Hisaishi was also awarded the Medal of Honour by the Government of Japan in 2009 for his services to the arts.

Hope you learned a bit more about music, and especially about the composer of that music you love!

Check out this Concert for the 25th anniversary of Studio Ghibli