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.