After watching Suzume no Tojimari not just once, but twice, I decided to dive a bit deeper into the story.
3 December 2022: Updated after watching the movie for the third time
25 December 2022: Updated after watching the movie for the fourth time
12 February 2023: Updated after listening to director Shinkai Makoto's online birthday talkshow
2 May 2023: Updated with director Shinkai Makoto's interview with Crunchyroll
12 May 2023: Updated with insights on dates
Note: This post contains spoilers, so please read it after watching the movie.
Regarding the surnames of the two main characters, Suzume's surname is
Iwato 岩戸, which literally means rock door. This actually has its roots
in the legend of the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu,
who hid in a cave behind a huge rock (that acted like a door). And this
cave is supposed to be located in Takachiho Gorge in Miyazaki
Prefecture, which is the same prefecture that Suzume and her aunt live
in. (Note: This was confirmed by director Shinkai Makoto at an event on Christmas Eve.) Sota's surname is Munakata 宗像, which can be traced to the Munakata Taisha
shrine dedicated to the three Munakata goddesses, who were told to
serve the imperial family of Japan (as the imperial family are
descendants of Amaterasu).
A core part of the story revolves around finding "hidden" doors that lead to the other world. When such doors are left open, the spirits known as mimizu may escape into our world, manifesting as earthquakes. In a way, I think these spirits are metaphors for our memories, especially bad memories and failures, that we want to put behind us and lock away. But as we all know, once in a while, such memories return to haunt us. When they do resurface, they may cause significant "damage" if we do not deal with them in good time. I think Shinkai Makoto is trying to tell us that, yes, those memories are very much a part of us, and they do come back, but as long as we know how to deal with them and lock them away again, we can avoid letting these bad memories affect our present lives.
I guess this is why he chose to portray these spirits as escaping from a door, and having to close and lock that door to prevent disaster from happening. In this way, the action of locking the door is to lock our memories away, to put them behind us again so that they do not impact our present lives.
But at the same time, I think it also symbolises a new start. We lock the door when we leave the house to go somewhere. Locking the door is like saying, I am going somewhere. I am heading off to a destination. Whether it is to go to school or work, or to go to the supermarket, or on the adventure of a lifetime to climb Mount Everest, we lock the door as we leave to go somewhere. In this way, locking the door is not just about locking away our memories and putting them behind; it is also about taking a step into the future, about moving forward.
Regarding these hidden doors, in the movie, they are found in abandoned places. For example, the first door was located in an abandoned onsen resort town. The second was in an abandoned town after it was hit by a mudslide. The third was in an abandoned amusement park. The fourth was under Edo Castle, which was vacated by the Tokugawa shogunate after the Meiji Restoration. The fifth door was in Suzume's birthplace, the place where she used to live with her mother but was destroyed by the Great East Japan Earthquake that struck on 11 March 2011. Such places breed a kind of negative energy that give rise to the mimizu spirits in the other world. It is like saying, we need to give a proper conclusion to our failures, to our bad memories. If we just run away from them and leave them as they are, they will eventually come back to haunt us.
A bit more about the fourth door that Suzume encountered, which was in Tokyo. Its location is
somewhat unique and immediately recognizable by anyone living in Japan.
When Suzume checked her location on her phone, she saw that she was
underwater. She was actually below the moat of the Imperial Palace in
Tokyo. The Imperial Palace was actually Edo Castle, occupied as the seat
of government by the Tokugawa shogunate, during the Edo period. It
became the Imperial Palace after the Meiji Restoration, when the capital
was moved from Kyoto to Edo (which was then renamed Tokyo, or capital
of the east). This could also explain why its location was blackened out
on documents in the anime. If Sota's family is actually descended from
the Munakata goddesses that serve the imperial family, they probably
wouldn't want people to know that one of these doors (which can lead to
disaster) is actually under the Imperial Palace.
The Japanese phrase ittekimasu いってきます, which literally means "I am going and will come back", appeared several times in the movie. In reply is the phrase itterasshai 行ってらっしゃい, which literally means "Please go and be back." In both cases, the person who is leaving is expected to return. He or she could be going to work, to school, or even on a trip, long or short. But at the end of it, the person is returning. The implication is that the two (or more) parties involved in this greeting will see each other again. This, of course, was not the case for some people when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on 11 March 2011. Which makes the phrase okaeri おかえり ("you are back"), used to greet people when they return, at the end of the movie all the more significant.
The relationship between Suzume and her aunt Tamaki is reflected in that between the cat/deity Daijin and Suzume. Just like how Tamaki's life was turned into a turmoil when Suzume
ran off with a guy/chair, Suzume's life turned upside down when Daijin
led her on a nationwide tour. Suzume didn't explain her motive to Tamaki
about why she was running off; Daijin also didn't tell Suzume that it
was actually leading Suzume to those hidden doors.
At the same time, I think this is a portrayal of how Shinkai Makoto sees the relationship between parent and child. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tamaki (the younger sister of Suzume's mother) told Suzume, "Come be my child." When Suzume saw the cat/deity Daijin, she fed him and also asked, "Why don't you come and stay with us (as part of the family)?" In both cases, it was the "parent" who initiated the relationship; the "child" did not ask for it. Which resulted in a similar reaction from the "child" in a later part of the movie. When Tamaki let loose that she had some regret about taking in Suzume, Suzume's reply was that she never asked to be taken in. When Suzume got angry with Daijin, Daijin was shocked because it had thought that Suzume was the one who wanted this relationship. In this way, the child does not get to choose the parent. Which brings me to the other part of this.
There was a scene in which Tamaki was pedaling away on a bicycle, with Suzume riding behind. I can't help but feel that this was another way in which Shinkai Makoto sees the relationship between parent and child. A parent is responsible for bringing the child to where the child wants to go. But once they reach there, it is up to the child to walk his/her own path, just like how Suzume got off the bicycle when they reached their destination (her old house, where she used to live with her mother) and went of on her own looking for that hidden door.
Talking about Daijin, the movie also includes elements of the yin-yang concept. Daijin (or rather, U-daijin) is portrayed as a small white cat that can transform into a huge black one. Sadaijin is portrayed as a black cat that can transform into a huge white one. The two cats/deities, black and white, work together to make sure that the head and tail of the main mimizu spirit does not escape into our world. Each cat/deity also contains within itself a black and white, big and small, cute and powerful aspect. This is in tune with the yin-yang concept; one cannot exist without the other. Both exist together, and in a certain form of balance. (As a taiji practitioner, I can go on and on about this... but I shall stop here without going too deep.)
I think it is also deliberate that the movie premiered in Japan on 11 November 2022. The Great East Japan Earthquake struck on 11 March 2011. That's 11/3/11, while the movie was released on 11/11/22. That's two 11s taken from 11/3/11 and 11+11=22 too. (Okay, the 11+11=22 is probably a coincidence, but 2022 is also 11 years after 2011...) The previous two Shinkai Makoto films premiered in summer, and it does not look like a coincidence that 11/11/22 was chosen as the date for this movie.
A bit more about the dates and such. You can see the dates in the movie through Suzume's diary. Her diary entry for 24 May showed her with her chair, which was made by her mother as a birthday present for her. I guess that means Suzume's birthday is 24 May. Then, we know that Suzume lost her mother when she was 4 years old, as mentioned by Tamaki. That means Suzume was four years old on 11 March 2011. The movie takes place 12 years later, in 2023, and she was a second year student in high school. Sorting this out, the chair was given to Suzume for her third birthday, which means she received the chair on 24 May 2009 (and thus was born on 24 May 2006). She was four years old when the earthquake and tsunami struck on 11 March 2011. The movie took place 12 years later, when Suzume was in her second year of high school, in September (due to the red spider lilies, or higanbana 彼岸花, which bloom in Japan in autumn), after her 17th birthday (24 May 2023).
When watching the movie for the eighth time, I started to wonder if I could actually pinpoint a date for the movie's setting. So I looked at the calendar, and seeing that the movie ended with a full moon when Suzume was in Tohoku, that full moon night would have to be 29 September 2023, a Friday. (This date is also the Mid-Autumn Festival, being the 15th day of the 8th month in the lunar calendar. It is probably a coincidence, though.) This also made sense, since the entire road trip was five days, with Day 1 in Miyazaki, Day 2 in Ehime, Day 3 going to Kobe and spending the night there, Day 4 taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo, and Day 5 traveling to Tohoku. We know that Day 1 is a weekday as Suzume had school. On Day 3, we see Chika wearing her school uniform, so that must mean it is likely a weekday too. While in Tokyo on Day 4, there were people wearing school uniforms too, so Day 4 is likely to be another weekday. All these help to piece together that Day 1 is 25 September 2023, and Day 5 is 29 September 2023. I will confirm again when I next watch the movie to see if I can spot any actual dates.
(Update 24 August 2023:
The official website confirmed that my analysis of the dates was correct, stating that Suzume's story took place between 25 September to 29 September, as shown in the screenshot, in Japanese, above.)
Suzume explained that her chair lost a leg when she was young but she did not remember exactly how. I thought it was probably because of the earthquake/tsunami, since her diary showed the chair with four legs, but when she was found by Tamaki sleeping by the "hidden" door after the earthquake/tsunami, the chair only had three legs. This was confirmed in "Shinkai Makoto Book 2", when Shinkai Makoto mentioned that the missing leg is a metaphor for the emotional injury that Suzume suffered due to the Great East Japan Earthquake, and Suzume carrying the broken chair with her is basically Suzume carrying her emotional scars with her as she goes forward in life.
Like other Shinkai Makoto films, there were the "everyday" scenes. Of "just another day in the city of XX" (mostly Tokyo). This is a great way to show the contrast with the extraordinary stuff that Suzume and Sota are doing. But at the same time, I think this has to do with how the Great East Japan Earthquake affected Shinkai Makoto's thinking. He has revealed that, in Japan, we are living in a world of instability, both geologically as well as geopolitically. What we see today may not be there tomorrow. Thus, once of his goals is to capture the scenes of Tokyo and other parts of Japan today, so that even if disaster strikes tomorrow, there is a record of how things used to look like.
Some trivial:
- The season is late summer early autumn, likely September, as can be seen from the red spider lilies (彼岸花 higabana). (This was confirmed in "Shinkai Makoto Book 2".)
- Suzume likes to use the phrase "uso deshou" (うそでしょう which means "you must be kidding!").
- The song "Itomori Koukou" (糸守高校 meaning "Itomori High School") from Your Name. played as background music for a TV show in the movie. (This piece of music was used in Your Name. and it is the high school that Mitsuha attended.)
- In a way, Daijin is like a maneki-neko,
a good luck charm in the form of a cat that is believed to bring good
fortune. For example, when it went to Ehime, the Japanese inn in which
Suzume stayed suddenly had many staying guests. The bar that Suzume
helped out in Kobe also saw a lot more customers that night.
- The scene where Suzume sat on Sota when he was a chair, that was one of the scenes that the director insisted on including in the movie.
- At a stage event in Yokohama, director Shinkai Makoto mentioned something about Sota's birthday but did not elaborate. It seemed he had given that date to other fans in a stage event on the previous day. A search on Twitter hinted that Sota's birthday could be 24 February. If he has entered university right after high school, this would mean that he was born on 24 February 2002.
- On 26 September 2023, director Shinkai Makoto stated in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that he never did think about setting a date for Tamaki's birthday, but after being asked by many fans, he has decided to set it as 12 July.
There is a reference to Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便), with the first song that Serizawa (Sota's friend) played in his car when setting off on his journey to bring Suzume in search of the fifth door. The song is the same one as when Kiki set off to start her training with her black cat, titled "Ruju no Dengon" (ルージュの伝言 meaning "Message in Rouge"). Serizawa even commented that they are setting off on a trip and there is also a cat with them. And after Tamaki and Suzume got into the argument (when Tamaki was "possessed" by Sadaijin and let loose some of her true feelings), Serizawa played "Kenka wo Yamete" (けんかをやめて meaning "Stop Fighting"), saying that it was the most appropriate song for the moment.
Director Shinkai Makoto said that, for Suzume's dub that will be shown
in other countries, he has told the companies handling the dubs that these
songs which Serizawa played while driving can be changed to match
nostalgic songs of those countries. He wanted those songs to invoke
nostalgia in the viewers, which was why he chose those Japanese classic
pop songs. He was hoping that those songs can be changed in the dub to
achieve the same effect in other countries.
Being a Violet Evergarden fan, I could not help but notice two things. One, the opening title used white characters on a totally black screen, just like Violet Evergarden The Movie. Second was this scene from when Suzume was on the ferry from Miyazaki to Ehime.
.png){kind=tracking}
It looked like this scene from Violet Evergarden The Movie.
.png){kind=tracking}
Maybe I am just thinking too much... 😅 but it is like a contrast. Suzume was arriving at Ehime at dawn, while Violet was leaving Ekarte Island at dusk. Both of them are leaning out from the port side of the ship/ferry, but Violet is looking back toward the stern, while Suzume is looking forward.
PS. I will keep adding to this post if something comes to mind.
Disclaimer: All images used in this post belong to the respective copyright owners and are used under the premise of fair use.
Interview on Screen Daily:
Interview with Crunchyroll:
No comments:
Post a Comment