"The Wind Rises" takes its name from a Paul Valery poem: "The wind is rising, we must strive to live." In his dreams, Jiro meets Italian aeronautical engineer Count Giovanni Caproni who encourages Jiro to build planes. Caproni would also be building planes during World War II, but the movie shows them only as men meeting in dreams, thinking more of the science and wonder of flight than their machines as instruments of war.
As a university student, Jiro survives the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The houses roll like waves. Traveling back to Tokyo by train, Jiro and other passengers must leave the derailed trains. Jiro helps an injured woman traveling with a girl named Naoko back to their home by carrying the woman on his back. Yet when he returns a few days later, fire has destroyed the girl's home. He continues to search for her and eventually they meet and marry.