There is a moment in Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea when a tiny fish-girl, riding a surge of impossibly large waves, races across the surface of a stormy ocean to chase the little boy she loves. And there is a sound that goes with it—brass blazing, strings sweeping upward, a melody so big and so unafraid that it feels like the music itself is running on water.

That piece is called “Cliff,” and if you have ever felt your chest tighten with joy at something purely, unembarrassedly hopeful, you already understand what Joe Hisaishi was trying to do here. You don’t need to know a single thing about classical music to feel it. That’s rather the point.

Who Is Joe Hisaishi?

If you have watched almost any Studio Ghibli film, you have already spent hours inside Joe Hisaishi’s imagination, perhaps without knowing his name.

Born Mamoru Fujisawa in 1950 in Nagano, Japan, he took the stage name “Joe Hisaishi” as a young man—a playful nod to the American producer Quincy Jones, reworked into Japanese readings. He trained in composition and was drawn early on to minimalism, the spare, hypnotic, pattern-based style of composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. You can still hear that DNA in his work: small musical cells repeating, shifting, slowly building into something enormous.

His decades-long partnership with director Hayao Miyazaki produced some of the most recognizable film music ever written, from Castle in the Sky to Spirited Away to Howl’s Moving Castle. But Hisaishi has never been “just” a film composer. He thinks like a concert composer who happens to write for pictures, which is exactly why his soundtracks hold up so beautifully when you listen to them on their own, with no screen in front of you.

The Background: A Lullaby for a Goldfish Princess

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008) is Miyazaki’s loose, oceanic reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Ponyo is a magical goldfish who longs to become human after she meets a five-year-old boy named Sōsuke. The whole film has the wide-eyed logic of early childhood, and Miyazaki reportedly wanted music that a young child could love without translation.

Here is the detail that explains everything about this score: Hisaishi modeled parts of it on Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre. The film’s most famous theme deliberately echoes the surging, heroic energy of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Where Wagner sent warrior-maidens galloping through the sky, Hisaishi sends a little fish-girl galloping across the sea. It’s a wink, a tribute, and a piece of genuine compositional ambition all at once—grand opera repurposed as a child’s adventure.

“Cliff” sits among the score’s quieter, more tender material, the music tied to the windswept house on the hill where Sōsuke lives with his mother. It carries the film’s sense of home, height, and the vast ocean stretching out below.

What to Listen For

You don’t need a music degree to hear what makes this music work. Here are a few simple anchors.

The melody comes first, always. Hisaishi believes a great theme should be hummable, and he writes accordingly. Notice how the main tune moves in clear, singable steps rather than complicated leaps. This is music built so a five-year-old could carry it home in their head—and so can you.

Listen for the “rocking” motion. Much of the Ponyo music breathes like the sea, with gentle rising-and-falling patterns underneath the melody. It’s the minimalist influence at work: small repeating figures that give the music a tidal, swaying quality, like being rocked.

Watch the orchestra grow. Hisaishi loves to start small—maybe a piano or a few woodwinds—and then gradually layer in strings, then horns, then the full ensemble, until a simple idea blooms into something overwhelming. Pay attention to that swell. The emotion lives in the build, not just the loud part.

The brass means courage. When the horns and trumpets come forward, that’s Hisaishi reaching for his Wagnerian heroism. It’s the sound of a small creature doing a brave, enormous thing.

Recommended Recordings

A wonderful thing about Hisaishi’s music is that it exists in two forms: the original film soundtrack and his lavish live concert arrangements. Both are worth your time.

The original soundtrack (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea: Image Album / Soundtrack, Yonezawa/Hisaishi) is the place to start. This is the music exactly as it appears in the film, intimate and closely tied to the story. Best for listeners who want the pure, unembellished version.

Joe Hisaishi in Budokan – 25 Years with the Animations of Hayao Miyazaki (2008) is the spectacular alternative. Recorded live with a full orchestra and choir, it captures the Ponyo material at its most cinematic and grand. Best for listeners who want goosebumps and scale.

The “Symphonic Suite” arrangements, which Hisaishi has performed with orchestras worldwide in recent years, reimagine his film scores as serious concert works. If you find yourself wanting to take this music more seriously, seek these out. Best for the curious listener ready to hear film music treated as symphonic art.

Why This Small Melody Stays With You

There’s a quiet courage in writing music this sincere. It would be easy to dismiss a theme built for a child as simple, but simplicity done this well is its own kind of mastery—Hisaishi strips away everything clever and leaves only what’s true.

That, in the end, is what “Cliff” offers. It asks nothing of you except that you let yourself feel something openly, the way you did before you learned to be guarded about it. A wave that wants to become a girl. A house on a hill above the sea. A melody big enough to run across the ocean. Press play, and let it carry you for a few minutes. You may be surprised how far it goes.