User:Haileyab/Joe Hisaishi

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In 1998, Hisaishi provided the soundtrack to the 1998 Winter Paralympics. The next year, he composed the music for the third installment of The Universe Within (NHKスペシャル 驚異の小宇宙 人体III 遺伝子), a series of popular computer-animated educational films about the human body produced by NHK and the score for the Takeshi Kitano film Kikujiro, whose title track Summer became one of his most recognized compositions.

In 2001, Hisaishi produced music for another Kitano film, Brother, and Hayao Miyazaki's animated film Spirited Away. The opening theme to this film, One Summer's Day, had great popularity, with over 33 million Spotify streams as of September 2022. He also executive-produced the Night Fantasia 4 Movement at the Japan Expo in Fukushima 2001. On October 6, he debuted as a film director in Quartet, having also written its music and script; it received excellent reviews at the Montreal World Film Festival. His first soundtrack for a foreign film, Le Petit Poucet, was released the same year.

Miyazaki film Howl's Moving Castle was released on November 20, 2004 in Japan. Its main theme, Merry-Go-Round, became Hisaishi's most commercially successful movie score, with over 38 million Spotify streams as of September 2022. From November 3 to 29, 2004, Hisaishi embarked on his "Joe Hisaishi Freedom – Piano Stories 2004" tour with Canadian musicians. In 2005, he composed the soundtrack for the Korean film Welcome to Dongmakgol (웰컴 투 동막골), and participated in Korea's MBC drama series The Legend (태왕사신기 "The Story of the First King's Four Gods"), released in 2007.