“The wind’s come up,” Okudera-senpai whispers, and her long, wavy hair rises softly. A sweet scent I smelled once, somewhere long ago and far away, reaches my nose faintly. Like a conditioned reflex, the fragrance sparks a melancholy inside me.
“Thanks for spending the day with me. This is far enough,” Okudera-senpai says when I offer to see her to the turnstile at the station.
We ate dinner at the Italian restaurant where we’d worked part-time as students. Thanks to a promise I totally don’t remember making—“Come to think of it, Taki, didn’t you say you’d treat me after you graduated from high school?”—I ended up paying for Okudera-senpai. Even so, I felt a little bit proud picking up the check.
“You know, I had no idea the place we used to work had such good food.”
“Yeah, all the meals they gave us during our shifts were like school lunches.”
“We went for years without catching on.”
We laugh. Okudera-senpai draws a deep, contented breath, then says, “All right. I’ll see you later.” She waves at me, and there’s a band like a thin drop of water shining on her ring finger.
“You’ll find happiness someday, too,” she’d assured me earlier over an espresso, after informing me she was getting married. I couldn’t manage a good response—I just mumbled something congratulatory.
I’m not particularly unhappy, I think, watching Okudera-senpai’s silhouette descend the pedestrian-bridge stairs. That said, I don’t really understand what happiness is yet, either.
I abruptly inspect my palm. All that’s there is an absence.
Just a little longer…, I think one more time.
Before I know it, the season’s changed again.
An unusually typhoon-filled autumn passed, moving straight into a winter of nothing but cold rain. Tonight, too, the rain is whispering down unabated, like the memory of a pleasant chat on some bygone day. Christmas lights twinkle beyond windows beaded thickly with water droplets.
I take a sip from my paper cup of coffee, as if swallowing my scattered thoughts, then look down at my notebook again. Even now, in December, it’s packed with job-hunting appointments.
Visits with former upperclassmen to discuss their work, information sessions, entry deadlines, paper schedules, interview dates. The range is chaotic, covering everything from major general contractors to design offices to old-town factories, and as I check the notebook against the schedule on my phone, even I’m a bit disgusted by it. I start organizing the main points from tomorrow onward, writing them into my notebook.
“Y’know, I’d like to go to at least one more bridal fair.”
Mixed with the sound of the rain, the conversations of strangers sound a bit like secrets. The couple behind me has been discussing their wedding for a while now, and it makes me think of Okudera-senpai. Their voices and bearing are completely different, though. There’s a bit of an easygoing regional accent to their speech, and their conversation seems completely relaxed, as if they’re childhood friends. I’m not really listening, but my ears pick up what they’re saying.
“Again?” The guy sounds annoyed, but even then, there’s no mistaking the affection in his tone. “We’ve been to a ton of fairs already. They were all pretty much the same stuff.”
“Well, I was thinkin’ a Shinto ceremony might be nice, too.”
“You said your dream was to have it in a chapel.”
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I can’t make up my mind that easily.”
“But you said you did make up your mind,” the guy quietly complains, and I chuckle.
The girl ignores him. “Hmm…,” she murmurs, thinking. “Never mind that. Tesshi, you gotta shave off those whiskers before the ceremony.”
I was about to drink my coffee, but my hand stops dead.
My pulse is speeding up, though I don’t understand why.
“I’ll lose a few pounds for you, ’kay?”
“But you’re eatin’ cake!”
“I’ll start for real tomorrow!”
Slowly, I look behind me.
The two of them have already gotten up from their chairs and are pulling on their coats. The tall, skinny guy is wearing a stocking cap over his buzzed head. I just catch a glimpse of his profile. The girl is petite, and her bobbed hair makes her seem young, almost like a student. The pair turns away and leaves the café. For some reason, I can’t take my eyes off their backs.
“Thank you for your visit.” The café employee’s voice reaches my ears indistinctly, mingled with the rain.
By the time I leave the café, the rain has turned to snow.
Maybe it’s because of all the moisture up in the atmosphere, but the town is oddly warm in the falling snow. I feel strangely uneasy, as if I’ve wandered into the wrong season. It seems to me as if each and every person I pass is hiding some important secret, and in spite of myself, I keep turning back to look at them.
I go straight to the ward library, which is almost ready to close for the evening. The sparseness of the handful of readers in the vast, vaulted space makes the air inside feel even chillier than outside. I take a seat and open the book I’ve retrieved from the stacks. The title is Vanished Itomori—Complete Records. It’s a collection of photographs.
As if removing an ancient seal, I slowly page through the book.
Gingko trees and an elementary school. The shrine’s steep stairs, with their view over the lake. A shrine gate with peeling paint. A tiny railroad crossing, like toy building blocks abruptly set down in the fields. A pointlessly expansive parking lot, two snack bars right next to each other, a drab concrete high school. A prefectural road with old, cracked asphalt. A guardrail that traces a winding hill road. Vinyl greenhouses, reflecting the sky.
They’re the sort of ordinary sights you see all over Japan, so I recognize all of them. I can visualize the temperature of the stone walls and the chill of the wind, just as if I’d lived there.
Why is this so…? I wonder as I turn the pages.
Why do the unremarkable sights of a town that no longer exists make my heart hurt this much?
Once, fueled by intense emotions, I made some sort of resolution.
I remember this out of nowhere when I look up at the light in somebody’s window on my way home, or when I reach for a box lunch in the convenience store, or when I retie my loose shoelaces.
I decided something once. I took an oath because I met somebody—no, so that I would meet somebody.
Washing my face and staring into the mirror, tossing a plastic bag in the trash, squinting at the morning sun between the buildings, I think this and smile wryly.
“Somebody,” “something.” In the end, I don’t know a thing.
Still, I think as I close the door at an interview.
Still, even now, I’m fighting my way through. Perhaps it’s a bit dramatic to say, but I’m struggling against life. Wasn’t that what I decided once? To struggle. To live. To breathe and walk. To run. To eat. To bind, musubi. To live an ordinary life so I shed tears over the sights of a perfectly ordinary town.
Just a little longer, I think.
Just a little is fine. Just a little more.
I don’t know what it is I want, but I keep on wishing for something.
Just a little longer. Just a little more.
The cherry blossoms bloom and scatter, long rains wash the streets, white clouds billow high, the leaves change color, freezing winds blow. Then the cherry trees bloom again.
The days are accelerating.
I’ve graduated from university, and I’m working at the job I somehow managed to find. I spend every day with the desperation of a man trying not to be flung from a careening vehicle. There are times when I can believe I’m getting closer, in very tiny increments, to the place I want to be.
In the morning, when I wake up, I stare at my right hand. There are little drops of water on my index finger. By the time I notice them, both the dream I was in a moment earlier and the tears that for an in
stant stained my eyes have evaporated.
Just a little longer. With that thought, I get out of bed.
Just a little longer.
As I recite the wish, I face the mirror and tie my hair cord. I pull my arms through the sleeves of my spring suit. I open the door of my apartment and, for a moment, gaze at the Tokyo cityscape that unfurls before me. I climb the station stairs, go through the automated turnstile, and board a packed commuter train. The little patch of blue sky I can see beyond the heads of the crowd is piercingly clear.
I lean against the train door, looking out. The city teems with people, in the windows of buildings, in cars, on pedestrian bridges. A hundred people to a car, a thousand people to a train, a thousand trains crisscrossing the city. Gazing at them, I make my wish. Just a little longer.
In that instant, with absolutely no warning, I see her.
And then, I see him.
He’s there, close enough to touch if it weren’t for the windowpanes, on a train running parallel to this one. He’s looking straight at me, and his eyes are wide with surprise, like mine. Then I realize what the wish I’ve carried for so long really is.
She’s there, just a few feet away. I don’t even know her name, but I know it’s her. Our trains are pulling away from each other. Then another train passes between us, and I lose sight of her.
But I finally know what I’m wishing for.
I wanted to stay with her, just a little longer.
I want to be with him, just a little more.
The train stops, and I dash through the streets. I’m looking for her. I’m already positive she’s looking for me, too.
We’ve met before. Or, no, that could be my imagination. It might be just an assumption, something like a dream. It might be a delusion, like past lives. Even so, I—we—wanted to stay together a little longer. We want to be together, just a little more.
As I run along the sloping road, I wonder, Why am I running? Why am I searching? I probably know the answer. I don’t remember it, but everything in my body knows. I turn at a narrow alley, and the road drops off. Stairs. I walk over to them, look down…and there he is.
Fighting back the urge to run, I climb the stairs slowly. A wind that smells like flowers lifts my suit jacket and fills it out into a bell. She’s standing at the top of the stairs, but I can’t look at her directly. I only watch her out of the corner of my eye. She’s descending the stairs. The click of her shoes drifts softly into the spring air. My heart is leaping in my rib cage.
As we approach each other, we keep our eyes downcast. He doesn’t say anything. I can’t say anything, either. Then, still without speaking, we pass each other. In that moment, I feel a tense, squeezing pain all over, as though something inside me has taken hold of my heart. This is wrong, I think fiercely. We can’t possibly be strangers. It goes against something as basic as the mechanics of the universe, or the laws of life. And so…
And so I turn around. She turns, too, with the exact same speed. She’s standing on the stairs, the streets of Tokyo behind her, her eyes wide and round. I realize her long hair is tied back with a cord the color of the evening sun. My whole body trembles slightly.
I finally found him. We finally met. Just as I think I’ll probably burst into tears unless I do something, I realize I’m already crying. Seeing this, he smiles. Even as I cry, I smile, too. The spring air carries with it all sorts of apprehension and anticipation, and I draw a deep breath.
Then we open our mouths at the same time.
Like children who’ve agreed to go on the count of three, we say together:
What’s your name?
Afterword
To be honest, I didn’t intend to write this novel.
It may be rude to the readers for me to say something like that, but I thought your name. worked best as an animated film.
This book, your name., is the novel version of an animated movie I directed, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2016. In other words, it’s a novelization of the movie, but actually, as I’m writing this afterword, the movie hasn’t been finished yet. They tell me it will take another three months or so to complete. That means the novel will go out into the world first, so if you asked me which is the original work, the movie or the novel, I’d have to say, “It’s complicated.” Writing this book has altered some of my personal impressions as well. For example, Mitsuha was a pretty laid-back, optimistic kid, wasn’t she? and Taki really is hopeless with women. It’s likely to influence the postrecording (when the actors and voice actors create the voices for us) for the movie. This “gift exchange” between a movie and a novel was a first for me, and to tell the truth, it was a lot of fun.
There are no major differences between the novel and the movie as far as the story is concerned, but there are slight differences in the way it’s told. The novel is written from Taki’s and Mitsuha’s first-person perspectives; in other words, from their viewpoints only. They can’t tell us about things they don’t know. Meanwhile, movies generally use third-person perspectives: the world as the camera shows it to us. For that reason, many scenes are literally told from a high-angle viewpoint and include characters other than Taki and Mitsuha. I think it’s more than possible to enjoy either work on its own, but due to the unique characteristics of each medium, they inevitably complement each other.
I wrote the novel on my own, but movies are made by the hands of many people. The script for your name. took shape over several months of preliminary meetings with the Toei (the movie company) your name. team. Producer Genki Kawamura’s suggestions were always brisk and decisive, and although I sometimes secretly thought, He’s really superficial (because he’s the sort of person who says even important things like they don’t mean much), he always showed me the way.
In addition, I wrote this book both at home and in the movie production studio, about half in each location, and I think it’s thanks to the animation director, Masashi Ando, that I managed to complete it. It wasn’t that I discussed the novel with him. It’s just that, thanks to his truly dedicated work on the movie itself, I was able to relax even in the pandemonium of an animated film production site and make time to work on the book.
Then there’s the score by RADWIMPS, the group in charge of the movie’s music. Naturally, there’s no background music in the novel, but the book was greatly influenced by the world of RADWIMPS’s lyrics. The role music plays in the your name. movie is a big one, and I hope you’ll pay particular attention to how it was rendered in both the movie and the novel. (In order to do that, I guess you’ll need to see the movie. Please do go see it!)
I wrote in the beginning that I thought this story worked best as an animated film, but that’s because the movie is—as I mentioned before—a splendid crystallization of the talents of many people. I think movies are in a place that’s far beyond the ability of individuals.
Even so, in the end, I did write a novel version.
At some point, I changed my mind, and I began wanting to write it.
I had the feeling that, somewhere, there were boys and girls like Taki and Mitsuha. This story is a fantasy, of course, but I do think there are people somewhere who’ve had experiences similar to theirs, and who hold similar feelings inside. People who’ve lost precious loved ones or places, and who’ve privately decided to “struggle and fight,” even so. People who believe that they’re sure to find something someday, even though it hasn’t happened yet, and who keep reaching out for it. I felt that those feelings needed to be related with an immediacy that differed from the glamour of the movie, and I think that’s why I wrote this book.
Thank you very much for picking it up, and for reading it.
March 2016, Makoto Shinkai
Essay
GENKI KAWAMURA
“Please write the essay.”
That’s what Makoto Shinkai said to me in a meeting room at CoMix Wave Films.
The sudden request flustered me, and I told him I thought interpretive essays should be writt
en objectively, by third parties.
I’m the producer of the your name. movie, and I don’t have that perspective anymore.
Even so, Shinkai wouldn’t back down. He pressed me. Please. I want you to do this, no matter what.
Several months later, I read the novel. It was a wonderful book.
At that point, I thought I understood why Shinkai had asked me for the essay.
He didn’t want me to “interpret” anything, I realized. He wanted somebody who was “in the family” to reveal how this novel came to be.
Two years ago, I decided to make a feature film with Makoto Shinkai.
That night, I was drinking sake with him at a cheap pub under the elevated tracks in Yurakucho.
We were talking, me with a highball, him with a draft beer.
Voices of a Distant Star. The Place Promised in Our Early Days. 5 Centimeters Per Second.
Shinkai writes love stories about boys and girls who pass each other by in beautiful, magnificent worlds. I told him I wanted him to make his newest work “Makoto Shinkai’s best film.”
I wanted people who didn’t yet know Shinkai to encounter his world and be astonished (the way I was floored when I saw Voices of a Distant Star fourteen years ago). I also wanted people who had kept up with Shinkai’s works to witness, as if for the first time, what this particular talent could accomplish.
In addition, I told him I wanted the new work to be endlessly musical. (Makoto Shinkai’s works always have splendid music.) I asked him if there were any musicians he liked, and he named a certain band. I’d been on friendly terms with that band’s front man for a while, and under the influence of drink, I sent him a text.