ABSTRACT
Makoto Shinkai’s your name. (2016) is a striking cultural response to the devastation and overwhelming loss of the 3.11 triple disaster. Shinkai fictionalizes and revises history, offering a reversal of fortune through a spiritual mode of transcending time and space that is connected directly to kami and the Miyamizu Shrine at the center of this narrative. Using his signature aesthetic of the celestial—which provides, figuratively and literally, a cosmic and breathtaking view of large-scale catastrophe that falls from the heavens—your name. uses the aesthetics of kū to express diverse aspects of mono no aware, Sehnsucht, and emptiness. The film also centers on the multivalent complexity of musubi, which it communicates through its imagery, cinematography, and editing, as well as its story and themes. In this film, Shinkai comments on generational conflict, politics, and natural and manmade disasters in Japan, offering visions of magnificent destruction, struggle, and survival.
