Short answers, pulled from the story.
Joe Hisaishi is a Japanese composer, conductor, musical director, and pianist known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. He is best known for his long collaboration with animator Hayao Miyazaki, having scored all but one of Miyazaki's films, and for his scores for filmmaker Takeshi Kitano.
Joe Hisaishi created his stage name as a tribute to the American musician Quincy Jones. The kanji characters in "Hisaishi" can be read as "Kuishi," which approximates the Japanese transliteration of "Quincy," and "Joe" came directly from "Jones."
Joe Hisaishi began working with Hayao Miyazaki in 1983, when he was recommended to create an image album for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. He went on to score the film itself in 1984, beginning a collaboration that has been compared to that of Steven Spielberg and John Williams.
Merry-Go-Round, the main theme from Howl's Moving Castle, is Hisaishi's most streamed composition, with over 158 million Spotify streams as of May 2026. The opening theme from Spirited Away, One Summer's Day, had surpassed 109 million streams as of April 2026.
Hisaishi has won seven Japanese Academy Awards for Best Music, in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2009, and 2011. He also received the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from the Government of Japan in 2009, the Order of the Rising Sun in 2023, and the Winsor McCay Award at the Annie Awards in 2024.
Hisaishi scored seven films for director Takeshi Kitano, including Hana-bi and Kikujiro, as well as the Academy Award-winning film Departures, the South Korean film Welcome to Dongmakgol, a BBC wildlife documentary narrated by David Attenborough, and in 2025 his first Western film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.