The 2023 Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron marks director Hayao Miyazaki and composer Joe Hisaishi’s eleventh film together. The pair have become an iconic cinema duo since their first project Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984. In the almost fifty years since, Miyazaki and Hisaishi have respectively directed and scored some of the most acclaimed animated feature films of all time.
While Miyazaki’s films are highly praised for their powerfully evocative themes, whimsical and nostalgic animation, and eloquent storytelling, their scores are doubtlessly a central point of celebration. Hisaishi’s compositions are deeply expressive and elicit powerful emotional responses; they are playful and buoyant yet profoundly nostalgic and reflective. It can be difficult to pin down exactly why his songs are so captivating, they seemingly just are. While the mechanics of Hisaishi’s music are largely beyond me, there are a few attributes, particularly within the process itself, that are very interesting.
In Miyazaki and Hisaishi’s collaborations, the filmmaking and scoring processes are highly communicative and interdependent. Traditionally, films are scored during the editing process i.e. long after the film was written and created. As a result, the score accompanies an already solidified film. However, with Studio Ghibli films, the score is developed side-by-side as an integral part of the process. In the first stages of a film, Miyazaki provides Hisaishi with basic imagery, character descriptions, or even a few early frames. From these, Hisaishi creates an ‘image album’–essentially a baseline for both the score and the film itself to grow out of. The music is intimately considered during the filmmaking process, and Hisaishi’s image album is used by Miyazaki to guide the very direction of the film. As such, the score is situated in an exceptionally influential role; its compositions are infused into the very core of the film, helping to guide and shape its principles and emotions. This unique approach to scoring provides a lot of insight into the elevated nature of Studio Ghibli soundtracks.
Perhaps because of the heightened value of Hisaishi’s scoring in the filmmaking process, the songs are individually moving and evocative. Hisaishi uses a unique method of blending opposing notions, as his scores are submerged in a whirlpool of influences, Eastern and Western, fantasy and reality, reminiscent and futuristic, hopeless and hopeful. From a theoretical perspective, Hisaishi’s scores tend to draw from a distinctly Impressionist mode, as many have compared his works to those of 19th-century French composer Claude Debussy–the artist of the famed “Clair de Lune” who is also widely regarded as the first Impressionist composer. Impressionist compositions are defined by their departure from tradition and convention. Rather than following marked tension and release models, Impressionist music refuses to follow a definitive path. Instead, it is known for its lack of resolutions, opting for a meandering, sauntering sound. Impressionist sound is often described as suspending a moment in time, gently floating, disinterested in regulation and restriction.
In musical notation, impressionism is characterized by pentatonic scales, extended harmonies, and parallel motion. Pentatonic scales are often referred to as incomplete major scales due to the absence of two notes, extended harmonies take traditional chords and extend them by adding extra notes, while parallel motion is where two or more melodic lines move with respect to each other. All of these hallmarks of impressionist music contribute to its overall atmospheric effect; they give a sense of fragmentation, roaming, and flowing. These characteristics–and their feelings of wandering–are strongly associated with Hisaishi’s Studio Ghibli scores. Princess Mononoke’s primary melody uses pentatonic scales, while the intro to “One Summer’s Day” and “The Sixth Station” from Spirited Away use extended harmonies. One of the most famous Studio Ghibli songs, “Merry-Go-Round of Life” from Howl’s Moving Castle is also characterized by extended harmonies. Hisaishi’s music is not strictly harmonically regulated, and it often engages with exploratory and eccentric modes. Many of his scores seem to indescribably capture the feelings of nostalgia, youth, and wistful thinking.
While Hisaishi’s music sounds characteristically Impressionist, I would consider it reductive to consider it so. Though it does feature Impressionist themes, it also distinctively draws from traditional Japanese folk music. Hisaishi employs ancient Chinese scales that were adopted by Japan during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), and these scales primarily differ from Western scales by featuring five notes rather than seven. While similarities can be drawn between these scales and Western pentatonic scales, they aren’t entirely synonymous. Hisaishi often uses Japanese music theory in his scores, and as a result, his compositions embody Impressionist themes while maintaining a distinctly unique sound, especially to Western audiences. Through synchronizing seemingly asynchronous concepts, Hisaishi’s scores are exceptionally immersive.
It is hard to definitively state how Hisaishi captures such moving and evocative feelings in his music, but he has undoubtedly created a profoundly rich catalog for us to try. His complex and enveloping compositions are deeply emotional and expressive, and each new score joins the ranks of his more than 100 esteemed albums.
“Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo at the Walt Disney/Pixar Animation Studios Presentation at San Diego Comic-Con International” by Castles, Capes & Clones is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.