Kaze Tachinu tells the story of Jirou Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's famed Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane of World War II, blending it with Tatsuo Hori's 1936-37 novelette of the same name, which follows the tentative relationship between a male narrator and Setsuko who suffers from encroaching tuberculosis.
It represents a first draft of the subsequent film.