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2008 was a big deal for Joe Hisaishi. The composer completed his two most accomplished scores to date, one of which was awarded the Japan Academy Prize for best score. A third accompanied the film that won best picture from the same association as well as best foreign film at America’s Oscars. A fourth accompanied his second score for a French film. And he oversaw a gargantuan concert at Tokyo’s Budokan arena celebrating 25 years of Miyazaki collaborations. After this, Western descriptions of him as “the John Williams of Japan” became common.
On a personal level, 2008 was also consequential as it was the year I first became aware of his work. “Joe who?”
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Ponyo / Gake no Ue no Ponyo (2008) - *****
Ponyo, Miyazaki’s first film since Howl’s Moving Castle, was a runaway hit at the Japanese box office, earning more than double what the next-closest film made in the country in 2008 and ranking as one of the five biggest domestic money makers in Japanese history. The Disney-backed English dub of Ponyo made the most money of any Studio Ghibli movie in the U.S. when it was released there in summer 2009 - and sure, $15M isn’t a lot by modern standards, but that was more than Spirited Away earned here and over seven times what Princess Mononoke brought in back in 1999.
Unsurprisingly, Hisaishi was along for the ride, and likely several years before its release. “One must work really hard to get through a Miyazaki production. It’s basically once every four years. When I finish one of his films, I’m worn out, but there’s no more work for at least another two years. I need to find a renewed self within [those] two years. After those two years, when Miyazaki writes out his storyboard, he soon calls me, which prompts me to prepare for the next two years.”
Going all the way back to Castle in the Sky, Hisaishi’s more melodic works had occasionally leaned towards the impressionistic works of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Ponyo took that to another level, rivaling Debussy’s famed concert piece La mer / The Sea in terms of instrumental evocations of the ocean (Hisaishi would actually conduct that classical work during a 2023 concert in Los Angeles). There are layered burbling woodwinds, shimmering strings, nautical-sounding horns, what sounds like an army of harps, and vast vocal forces on display. Hisaishi had occasionally used choir but rarely with this scope or in so much of his score, and the large ensemble adds a sense of fantastical wonder to the proceedings; in hindsight, the choral arranging done for the Psycho Horror Night concert may have been a warm-up act for Ponyo. The score is less a reinvention of Hisaishi’s orchestral mannerisms from this decade and more a realization of them on a more colossal scale, the playfulness of Totoro translated to an almost operatic setting.
The operatic element also applies to the themes. Hisaishi had laughed a decade earlier during the re-score of Castle in the Sky about having to adhere to Western scoring conventions of attaching themes to every character, but with Ponyo he arguably ended up writing his most Hollywood score. There are melodies for the title character, the boy she becomes friends with, the boy’s family, her father Fujimoto, her godlike mother, and the ocean in general, plus a host of secondary ideas. How these are used is a world away from The Legend, where several strong themes became stale through repetition via slightly changed arrangements. Instead, most of the themes in Ponyo evolve significantly throughout the film, with the composer occasionally intertwining them in melodic counterpoint, making the score a masterclass in musical storytelling. Few moments don’t involve one of these themes, though that’s not to imply the tracks lacking them aren’t without merit as the spirited Ponyo’s Sisters that accompanies a midfilm escape is a toe-tapping, celebratory delight.
The operatic feel was likely no accident. Miyazaki had taken some inspiration from Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre / The Valkyrie (Ponyo’s original name Brunhilde, the story of a girl rebelling against her father, Ponyo becoming mortal), and the director listened to The Ride of the Valkyries, the opera’s most famous piece, while he was designing the wave running sequence in the middle of the movie. Hisaishi would even tip his hat to that well-known piece for the music he wrote for that scene, with Ponyo’s theme being transformed into an unusually boisterous variation complete with swirling strings, exclamatory brass, and banging drums that reminded many listeners of that earlier piece. Effectively conveying the sense of scale and gleeful abandon, it was for some the highlight of the score.
As with earlier image albums, the one for Ponyo includes lyrics that didn’t end up in the film; the goofy Fujimoto’s Theme suggests what would happen if someone took one of Hans Zimmer’s comedy scores (plonking piano, tango-like strings, accordion, surf guitar) and put Japanese lyrics over it while Rondo of the House of Sunflowers provided another opportunity for the composer to collaborate with his daughter Mai Fujisawa. But other compositions were played by a midsized instrumental ensemble, with The Coral Tower, Mother of the Sea, and The Light Signal sounding like early drafts of film tracks and Ponyo Comes being an exuberant idea with shades of the composer’s Kids Return melody that didn’t make it into the film. Intriguingly, the track Little Sisters features the bouncy idea from Ponyo’s Sisters done by a children’s choir, almost resembling the rhythmic vocal creativity of John Powell’s music. The penultimate track Real Friends has an odd lounge music feel that sticks out from the rest of the material (and thankfully it didn’t make the film), but even with that blemish the Ponyo image album is one of the few such releases by the composer that merits repeated listens.
The rampant box office success of Ponyo catalyzed the song variant of its theme (out there since December 2007) tearing up the pop charts in Japan. To some that may be the only explanation for the song featuring the folk band Fujioka Fujimaki and eight-year-old singer Nozomi Ōhashi being so successful, given its aggressively cutesy sing-along demeanor and what sounds like a medieval fanfare being performed by a synthetic kazoo choir. It stayed in the top 10 for almost 3 months and spent almost two years in the top 200. It was the most downloaded ringtone in the country for a month. And the famed annual New Year’s Eve TV special broadcast by Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, an event often reserved for the most successful singing acts in the country, featured Ōhashi singing the song. It’s unclear how consequential this ended up being for either artist; Ōhashi retired a few years later to attend school while one member of Fujioka Fujimaki was known to be ill in late 2008 and the group doesn’t appear to have released anything of note since. Suffice to say the 2009 English version sung by younger siblings of several Disney stars was not as successful stateside.
Hisaishi’s concert covering 25 years of Studio Ghibli collaborations occurred only a few weeks after Ponyo came out in theaters in Japan, thus it made sense that it occupied the most time of any of the featured scores (17 minutes), juxtaposing moments of instrumental and choral bliss with bits highlighting the vocal contributors. Powerful female soprano Masako Hayashi showed up to perform the Mother Sea theme, while Fujioka Fujimaki and Hisaishi’s daughter reprised songs from the image album now backed by an orchestral accompaniment. The suite culminated in a gargantuan arrangement of the song, a tremendously entertaining finale in part thanks to the sight of Hayashi (a regal performer who’s been in operas by Wagner, Mozart, and Strauss, among others) standing on stage playing with a fish puppet.
The recent RPO album eschews the image album songs but keeps an orchestral arrangement similar to the Budokan presentation, with the theme song being sung in English by a choir being perhaps the album’s biggest surprise. A smaller arrangement done for a Piano Stories album in 2009 features the main theme being introduced on a solo upright bass, almost as if one were hearing the idea being jammed in a jazz club.
Ponyo was also the first animated film score to be nominated by the Japan Academy Prize for best score - and also the first to win the award. Believe it or not, even with Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away being named best picture by the association in their respective years, Hisaishi’s music for those acclaimed films was ignored by the group. But Ponyo - whether voters were acknowledging the score on its own impressive merits, the song’s success, or the film’s runaway commercial performance - could not be denied. And in the years since we’ve seen a sea change in how the organization acknowledges movie music, with scores from animated films now just as likely to win as those from live action ones.
Image album - https://open.spotify.com/album/6bV3GjpvWu7Zf48GmSAnU3?si=RSVDjIrnRCepUYDPfVJHVA
Score album - https://open.spotify.com/album/15rOJIfBtL56saE9EIlocm?si=90IdZxiDRySfEy9ofBQG4g
Budokan suite - https://youtu.be/qg-g2DH8GZw?si=c9cBASehiHX3CSoq&t=1883
Piano Stories 5 track - https://open.spotify.com/track/5Cpu7flGktb3B0LI8OhTwP?si=ac968675f37540fe
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Departures / Okuribito (2008) - ****½
This drama about a failed cellist who returns home and becomes a ritual mortician while reconnecting with his estranged father became the highest-grossing original live action feature film in Japan and won both the Japan Academy Prize for best picture (along with nine other awards) as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Hisaishi’s score, which likely would’ve won the best score award in Japan if not for his own Ponyo music, is quite intelligently structured, restricting itself to a midsized string ensemble in the early goings before gradually adding winds, piano, and harp as the protagonist starts to truly understand and appreciate the value of his new job before unleashing a spirited ensemble performance of its main theme in the end credits. The composer hadn’t had a live action score so clearly recall the in-your-face emotionality of Georges Delerue since 1999’s Kikujiro, the last such work of his to wear its heart on its sleeve like this. The composer arranged several highlights for an album with the LSO a few years later, but the full score is a gut punch both in the context of the film and on the score album.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/3Cidt4JOBuoV9sO8aqkwVQ?si=gEUgoBxGQo2aFWK1JOjYMA
Beautiful Dead in context - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMzHydP33p8
Departures theme in context - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91OXPBWrFw
Melodyphony suite - https://open.spotify.com/track/6kActPvKfzYPA425u5PW5x?si=da66711336114855
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I Want to Be a Shellfish / Watashi wa kai ni naritai (2008) - *****
The original I Want to Be a Shellfish, a tale about a man in post-war Japan who’s wrongly accused by the U.S. military of war crimes, was a huge hit when it debuted on Japanese TV in 1958, and a theatrical film version followed the next year. Nearly 50 years later the concept was remade with the lead role played by Masahiro Nakai, then Japan’s highest-paid celebrity who’d pivoted from being a boy band singer to a TV host and actor. The film wasn’t considered much of a success and barely got released outside of Japan, but its music received significant attention from score fans owing to it coming in the same year as Ponyo. Forcefully dramatic, alternating between rapturous waltz tunes and martial orchestral might, and blessed with some of his finest themes of the decade, Hisaishi’s score plays like a grand, large-scale orchestral tragedy, yet also one that never loses sight of its protagonist’s resilience and humanity. Some elements of the composer’s minimalist origins still linger though, as the two 13 tracks on the album suggest the influence of Philip Glass and point towards the vibrant material Hisaishi would start exploring in the concert hall in the years to come.
Hisaishi put a piano version of his main theme on a Piano Stories album issued in 2009, as well as a long suite on a 2014 Works album that gave increased focus to the violin soloist. There is no other way to legitimately hear the score in the U.S. unless you want to ship a CD from overseas - a shame since it's among the composer’s finest career accomplishments (the best score he ever wrote for a live action film) and deserves to be heard by a wider audience.
Score album - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjhGA8EQEvAKnNtC5N5H-mKefHKxYkQ44
Piano Stories 5 theme - https://open.spotify.com/track/1tgkHuX34mb4gEvgOV2ym1?si=bb05405849854e8c
Works IV suite - https://open.spotify.com/track/5SccQHyC9yhuyHIcsOTSRs?si=684442fe852a466b
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Sunny and the Elephant / Sunny et l'éléphant (2008) - ****
Discovery #40.
The composer’s second French film focused on the tale of a city boy who longs to become an elephant driver in Thailand. The composer leaped at the opportunity to write a score that was “about man's relationship with nature through that of a teenager with an elephant, [with a] melody [that] had to celebrate what is best in man, to illustrate the progressive accomplishment of a very young hero, and finally to contain a strong Asian color.” That theme is indeed a knockout, with the composer layering a long-lined melody on top of regional instrumental colors and hints of jazz. Much of the rest of the score adheres to the composer’s standard orchestral adventure mode of this era, though a pervasive sense of jubilation and the composer’s usual penchant for complex orchestrations keeps the work more distinctive than, say, A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies.
Hisaishi said his working relationship with director Frederic Lepage (who was an established producer of television documentaries but a novice film director) was among the best of his career, but Lepage never made another film, and for reasons unknown Hisaishi never worked on another French film, leaving the nation with two colorful works written for their films (this and Tom Thumb).
Arriving in Bangkok - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeaOyY9T01w
The Accident - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3356joZf8M
Poachers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLcv640W9YY
Boon’s Death - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBAOxEZ4_I
Waterfalls - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkD4wyUVeXY
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Joe Hisaishi in Budokan (2008) - *****
Hisaishi, talking about Miyazaki: “This has truly been a happy collaboration. All sorts of things came together in a good way. You can’t expect to meet another one like him. As for me, it has been the utmost pleasure.”
Playing in Tokyo’s 14,000 seat Budokan arena from August 4th to August 6th, Hisaishi’s two-hour celebration of 25 years of Studio Ghibli collaborations was an unprecedented film music spectacle and a feast for the ears and the eyes. The composer rendered suites of his then-nine Miyazaki scores with a literal cast of thousands including a 200-person orchestra, multiple adult and children’s choirs, several featured vocalists, a jazz band for the Porco Rosso love theme performance (doing a swankier take on the version debuted on Piano Stories III), and even a 160-person marching band for the Castle in the Sky arrangement - all in front of a giant screen showing images and scenes from the films.
The concert was also graced by a piece of art that the director drew for the composer, showing Hisaishi at a piano surrounded by characters from each of their feature collaborations. “I was amazed. Even though he’s so busy, he drew it for me.” Even more touching was the director’s surprise appearance in the crowd at the end of the main concert program as he walked down the aisle to hand his old friend flowers and congratulate him, a sight which seemed to briefly bring tears to Hisaishi’s eyes. It cemented how this had truly become one of the great director and composer partnerships of all time, in the same synergistic league as Williams / Spielberg and Herrmann / Hitchcock.
The concert - https://youtu.be/qg-g2DH8GZw?si=dJDEdmTqijrIMbjG
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Next time: What Hisaishi later called his favorite of his studio albums. And I do an about-face on a score that wasn’t even in my Hisaishi top 30 before this rundown but is now firmly ensconced among his top 10 scores.
