Joe Hisaishi:

Emotion, Minimalism, and the Art of Leitmotif in Film Scoring

Isabella Brundage

Music History 212

Dr. Timothy Noonan

April 14, 2023

In the realm of Japanese animation, Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away, Ponyo, or

Princess Mononoke would be incompletely defined without the music that is woven into them

and the composer that brought Hayao Miyazaki’s worlds to life: Joe Hisaishi. He is often

compared to the American composer John Williams for his film scores’ international recognition

and his national importance in Japan as a multi-award-winning composer1. What makes his

music memorable, however, is not simply because of the films his works are tied to, but because

of the immense emotional impact he develops through it which extends farther than the screen.

This begins in his creative process and his ultimate goal of planting melodies, emotions, and

memories in the hearts of all who get the chance to hear it. But what truly makes his music so

memorable and impactful to such a widespread audience? How does his work within Studio

Ghibli demonstrate his style and intentions as a composer? Through the use of leitmotivs,

minimalism, and favoring emotional impact over technicality, Hisaishi brings the films of Studio

Ghibli to life.

Mamorou Fujisawa, professionally known as Joe Hisaishi, was born in 1950 in Nakano,

Nagano, Japan to a family that encouraged his musical talents. He took an interest from a young

age in violin and brass and took lessons for violin while spending his free time highly engrossed

in film and anime which prepared him for his time in college. He attended the Kunitachi College

of Music where he “studied with esteemed anime composer Takeo Watanabe” and developed his

unique style and artistic process that honors both the Eastern and Western tradition2. Hisaishi had

a few early successes working with his colleague Masaru Sato on live action films before truly

1
Vincentelli, Elisabeth. “The Composer Who Turns Hayao Miyazaki's Humane Touch Into Music.” The New York
Times. The New York Times, August 12, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/movies/studio-ghibli-
composer-joe-hisaishi.html.
2
Beek, Michael. “Biography.” Joe Hisaishi, 2022. https://www.joehisaishi.com/biography.
 3

hitting his stride within the realm of animation. The true beginning of Hisaishi’s career in scoring

animated films is when he was hired to score the anime TV show “Hajime Ningen Gyatoruzu”

(Giatrus, The Dawn of Mankind, Osamu Dezaki…)” in 1974 which catapulted him into the

spheres of television animators3. By the 80s, he was scoring multiple series per year4. His

growing reputation in the scoring community prompted him to develop a “stage name” and all

works written after his first album’s debut began to feature the name Joe Hisaishi in place of his

birth name5. It was around this time that the relationship between him and budding director

Hayao Miyazaki began as Miyazaki hired Hisaishi to score Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind which

would lead to the birth of Studio Ghibli. Since their first collaboration, Hisaishi has scored all of

Miyazaki’s films and has won seven Japanese Academy Awards for Best Music for music done

outside of the Ghibli world6. Their collaborative efforts greatly impacted his compositional style

and can perhaps be attributed to his wealth of success in Japan and on the international stage.

Unlike American and most other Western methods of film composing, the score for

Japanese film and anime is written before any or much of the accompanying visuals have been

seen. The traditional structure of scoring Japanese animated films is starting with an image

album for the show or film and then “de-composing” from there to fit the scene lengths or to

meet certain cues. Image albums started off as ways to promote manga but became a pre-

production method for film and television scoring. The relationship between the image album,

the film, and the final soundtrack was thus a reciprocal one where the music was not merely a

3
Bellano, Marco. “The Parts and the Whole. Audiovisual Strategies in the Cinema of Hayao Miyazaki and Joe
Hisaishi.” Edited by Maureen Furniss. Animation Journal 18 (2010): 9.
4
Bellano, “The Parts and the Whole. Audiovisual Strategies in the Cinema of Hayao Miyazaki and Joe Hisaishi,” 9
5
Bellano, “The Parts and the Whole. Audiovisual Strategies in the Cinema of Hayao Miyazaki and Joe Hisaishi,” 9
6
Roedder, Alexandra Christina. ""Japanamerica" Or "Amerijapan"? Globalization, Localization, and the Film
Scoring Practices of Joe Hisaishi." Order No. 3604685, University of California, Los Angeles, 2013.
https://ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/japanamerica-amerijapan-
globalization/docview/1476396384/se-2.
 4

last-minute addition to the work but an integral part of it. This is evident in Miyazaki and

Hisaishi’s specific process where “Hisaishi wrote music based on Miyazaki’s text and

descriptions, and Miyazaki then drew the film listening to Hisaishi’s image album, parts of

which wound up arranged into the film’s soundtrack: a kind of audible concept art”7. This lends

itself to Hisaishi’s compositional style which focuses more on emotion and atmosphere than

action cues or the “Mickey-Mousing” that American audiences are used to. This led to some

dissatisfaction in American critics, with one specifically complaining that “Hisaishi scored the

film with repeated renditions of the main theme and very little action-specific cues, making the

album somewhat of a redundant listen” in regard to the score of Princess Mononoke8. However,

at his core, Hisaishi is a minimalist like that of Philip Glass and the soul of his sound does not lie

in overly-complex compositions or introducing new ideas whenever possible. His roots in

minimalism help to achieve a unique cohesiveness to the films he scores largely due to a specific

technique that he did not invent but that is largely associated with him: leitmotif.

“Leitmotifs,” defined as “[a] musical idea associated with a person, thing, mood, or idea,

which returns in original or altered form throughout [the film]” guide Hisaishi’s compositional

style and the cohesiveness of his film scores9. In the instance of Princess Mononoke which I will

further examine later, the theme presented in “Departure to the West” reoccurs during moments

of discovery and important story developments, and more specifically, developments in the

relationship between the main characters Ashitaka and San. The effectiveness of these leitmotifs

7
Roedder, ""Japanamerica" Or "Amerijapan"? Globalization, Localization, and the Film Scoring Practices of Joe
Hisaishi," 39-40
8
Bond, Jeff. “Princess Mononoke.” Film Score Monthly 4, no. 10, (December 1999): 44.
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/backissues/viewissue.cfm?issueID=35.
9
Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 2019.
 5

can be partially attributed to their simplicity which has garnered them the name “Hisaishi-

merodii” in Japan for being so immediately recognizable as specific melodies or just as

something in his style10. This technique occurs in nearly every Studio Ghibli film he scored

Nausicaa (1985) to Ponyo (2009) whether it is attributed to a character, story development,

theme, or event. Oftentimes, Hisaishi ties them to characters like, for example, Nausicaa’s

relationship to the Ohmu insects in Nausicaa is represented by the motivic use of a synthesized

choral “la la la” or the main theme from Howl’s Moving Castle (2005) which is associated with

the main character Sophie11. In addition to leitmotivs, Hisaishi also employs unique orchestration

that fuses both electronic and acoustic sounds.

For example, his early work leading up to and through his score for Nausicaa: Valley of

the Wind was largely minimalistic and electronically based, focusing on ostinatos from synths

and bass guitar as seen in the image album and partially in the final score for Nausicaa and in his

first album, MKWAJU12. His focus on electronics and minimalism was in effort to make a name

for himself as a professional art music composer of his time, and while he had some success with

his second album, Information, his true more polished sound would not come out until after

Nausicaa where he began to branch out more into the acoustic realm and focus on emotional

impact over complexity (Bellano). He still incorporated synthesizers into Ghibli scores through

10
Roedder, ""Japanamerica" Or "Amerijapan"? Globalization, Localization, and the Film Scoring Practices of Joe
Hisaishi," 44
11
Roedder, ""Japanamerica" Or "Amerijapan"? Globalization, Localization, and the Film Scoring Practices of Joe
Hisaishi," 104
12
Roedder, ""Japanamerica" Or "Amerijapan"? Globalization, Localization, and the Film Scoring Practices of Joe
Hisaishi," 72, 82
 6

the development of Porco Rosso (1992) This development was fully fleshed out by the time of

“Departure to the West,” the piece I will be analyzing in context.

“束だし 西へ (Tabidashi Nishi e),” or “Departure to the West” features one of

Hisaishi’s most instantly recognizable melodies as part of the film Princess Mononoke. The

overall score for the film was Hisaishi’s most lengthy and elaborate project up until that point,

with the film itself having an extensive production time but also the availability of a full-scale

orchestra at Hisaishi’s hands. The first occurrence of the theme from this piece occurs as part of

this piece as Ashitaka is banished from his village and tasked with traveling to the “land to the

West” to fight and find the origins of the curse that was bestowed upon him by the boar god,

Nago. It features a gradual build, much like the opening piece of Nausicaa, to ease the audience

into the scene, making the later visuals and larger moments even larger and more thrilling. This

slow entrance of the strings from mm. 1-5 sets the mood for the scene and the piece itself,

ominous and dark, hinting at the arduous journey to come. The strings notably begin by playing

open fifths which is a technique outside of the Western school that Hisaishi often employs to

achieve a sense of intentional openness and a grandiose sound. However, the entrance is not

overbearing, in fact it’s marked as pianissimo creating further tension leading up to Ashitaka’s

inevitable banishment in the film. The “Hisaishi-merodii” of this piece does not appear for

roughly eleven measures allowing plenty of set-up for its entry. The melody is as follows13:

13
This excerpt is from the piano reduction of “Departure to the West” and not the symphonic score which I
reference here. The reason for this is to capture it in a condensed form to note the harmony and avoid distracting
notations.
 7

The flutes carry the melody in soft a legato gesture in a combination of thirds, fourths,

and fifths which give the subject and its harmony a unique sense of individualism and

independency from one another. This simple first statement of the main theme, accompanied

only by arpeggiated chords on harp provides a sense of mystery and spaciousness, allowing room

for its climatic restatement once the full orchestra enters. The piece is largely comprised of

restatements and new configurations of this melody which hails back to Hisaishi’s roots in

minimalism—especially the art within minimalism of using small ideas in new and interesting

ways to extract their full potential. This is demonstrated at the exuberant climax of m. 34 at the

second full entrance and repetition of the main theme by the orchestra, prepared by a swell in

dynamics and a slight ritard in the brass from mm. 32-33 and a repetition of the theme before

that at m. 28. It is important to note the nature of the scenes this piece accompanies as it

demonstrates Hisaishi’s ability to enhance and expand upon Miyazaki’s visual art.

As the theme is restated in increasingly more grand fashions, the vastness of the land

Ashitaka traverses expands as well. The first occurrence of the theme, notably the simplest

occurrence of the enters as Ashitaka prepares to leave his home after he has bid farewell to the

village elders and is formally pronounced “dead” to the tribe by the wise woman, formally

known as Hii-Sama. It is signaling the beginning of the growing distance between Ashitaka and

his home, and more metaphorically, his past and his future and the known and unknown. At the

second and third reoccurrences of the theme, Ashitaka is depicted traveling over a mountain side

and an expansive lush valley void of the dense forests that surrounded his village respectively.

Not only does the camera move farther away from Ashitaka at every occurrence of the theme,

but the landscape Ashitaka moves through becomes emptier and broader showing the ever-

growing distance from his roots that he will never be able to make up. As I mentioned
 8

previously, this theme becomes a cue for the developments Ashitaka’s external and internal

journey, appearing when he meets new people or when his relationship with San, the titular

Princess Mononoke, develops.

Although the score I analyzed is purely how it appears in the film, the symphonic suite

version provides some additional insight to Hisaishi’s Western influence that peaked during the

composition of this piece that are worth noting. Beginning after m. 38 of the film score version,

Hisaishi implements a fugue of the main theme in traditional Baroque style with the theme

entering a fifth below at the second and fourth entries but with a hint of modern flare through

retrograde entries (notably the second). However, this also further supports his roots in

minimalism by stretching the usage of the theme even farther into an entirely new context and

cementing his personal style as a composer.

Joe Hisaishi built an empire with his ability to craft unique, memorable, and heartfelt

melodies that favor emotion over complexity and honor his roots as a minimalist and as a

Japanese film composer that pulls from Western and Eastern traditions. As a living composer, he

continually inspires and impacts the lives of millions across the globe and embodies universality

with his personal style, connections to Ghibli, but most notably the soul that he pours into his

work. I was fortunate enough to attend one of his symphonic concerts at Radio City Music Hall

in New York in 2022, and the experience speaks to this universality and emotional impact. As a

student composer, it is not often that we get to meet our idols, especially not those who propelled

us into composition entirely. His music continues to touch the hearts and souls of many and may

even be enough to inspire a new world of dreamers in the realm of composition and film.
 9

Works Consulted

Beek, Michael. “Biography.” Joe Hisaishi, 2022. https://www.joehisaishi.com/biography.

Bellano, Marco. “The Parts and the Whole. Audiovisual Strategies in the Cinema of Hayao

Miyazaki and Joe Hisaishi.” Edited by Maureen Furniss. Animation Journal 18 (2010): 9.

Bond, Jeff. “Princess Mononoke.” Film Score Monthly 4, no. 10, (December 1999): 44.

https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/backissues/viewissue.cfm?issueID=35.

Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. New

York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019.

Roedder, Alexandra Christina. ""Japanamerica" Or "Amerijapan"? Globalization, Localization,

and the Film Scoring Practices of Joe Hisaishi." Order No. 3604685, University of

California, Los Angeles, 2013.

https://ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-

theses/japanamerica-amerijapan-globalization/docview/1476396384/se-2.

Vincentelli, Elisabeth. “The Composer Who Turns Hayao Miyazaki's Humane Touch Into

Music.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 12, 2022.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/movies/studio-ghibli-composer-joe-hisaishi.html.