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Movie Directed and written by Makoto Shinkai Music by Radwimps Theme song:  Yumetourou  Release date: 26 August 2016 ⚠️   Spoiler a lert! Since  this blog explains the movie  'Your Name'  or ' Kimi No Na Wa' , there will be spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk. Plot Summary Makoto Shinkai tells the story of two individuals meeting each other in an odd way. A historic event connected the lives of a boy and a girl of the same age: Taki and Mitsuha. He lives in the busy streets of Tokyo and she lives in a small town called Itomori. Without any explanation they start to switch bodies at nighttime. At first they think that it isn’t real or that they are caught in a dream. When they find out that isn't the case, they start to leave notes to make each other’s lives easier. One day, Itomori was hit by a comet and the body switching stopped and the memo's Mitsuha left of Taki's phone dissapeared. Slowly but surely, Taki st...

Mitsuha meeting  Taki As we go into detail of the moments they meet, we need some background information on several scenes in the movie in order to understand how and when they meet. Not every scene has to be interpreted literally because typical the Japanse phenomena and spiritual elements that play a huge role in the movie, can be interpreted metaphorically.  Mitsuha and Taki live three years apart in time. We can conclude this from the scene where Mitsuha sets up a date for Taki and mentions that he will see the comet after the date has ended. The note left him somewhat confused, because he already saw the comet three years in the past.  During the movie it becomes clearer that their timelines got tangled somehow like  musubi, in the sense of braided cords, can get tangled.   The day Itomori was hit by the comet the body switching stopped. Taki tried to call Mitsuha many times, but he never got an answer. He decides to look for her tog...

What is Shintoism? In the rest of our blog we will often refer to Shintoism as a religion, as a link between the movie and Japanese culture. Therefore, we will now explain a little bit of what Shinto means. Shinto is a religion that originates in Japan. It is a pantheistic, naturalistic and animalistic religion, which means that there are a lot of gods or sacred powers, called kami, that can be found in nature, in people or in just pretty much anything that is extraordinary. The worship of ancestors is important as well. Some of the key elements of this religion are that there is no written text like the Bible, nor is there a central dogma on what the religion means. There are some books, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki that are considered ‘historical sources’ by Shinto believers. These books were written in the early 8th century AD and are both collections of mythical stories of Japan.    The Nihon Shoki is often considered to be more profound than the Kojiki . The...

Musubi                                        Musubi is an element that keeps resurfacing in this movie. It's something that binds a lot, if not all of the storyline together. Mitsuha's grandmother describes it as: “ Mus u bi is the old way of calling the guardian kami. Tying thread is musubi . connecting people is musubi . these are all the kami's power. So the braided cords that we make are the kami's art and represent the flow of time itself. They converge and take shape. they twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again. That’s musubi . That's time." By this small fragment alone , you c an already tell it plays a big role in the story, considering that Mitsuha and Taki are somehow connected, despite of the time difference. So what exactly is musubi and what roll does it play or has it played in Japanese culture? Musubi has a lot of different meanings an...

Kuchikamizake   口噛み酒 Kuchikamizake   or  Kuchikami -no -sake  is a type of sake that Mitsuha and her little sister Yotsuha make during the offering ceremony early on in the movie. The word  kuchikamizake  consists of 3 parts:  1.  口  ( kuchi : mouth) 2.  噛み  ( kami ), which comes from the verb  噛む  ( kamu : to chew, gnaw or bite)  3.  酒 ( zake : the rendaku form of  sake , which is a rice based wine).  Therefore, it literally means sake that is chewed with your mouth. This is exactly what you see Mitsuha and her little sister Yotsuha do in the movie. They chew cooked rice and spit out the liquid that remains . In this post we will explain how this process works and what the relation is between  kuchikamiazke  and Japanese culture. How  kuchikamisake  is made Despite the fact that sake is often translated as “rice wine”, the process of making it i...

Makoto Shinkai, known for his movies ' 5 Centimeters per Second' , ' Kotonoha no Niwa'  and now ' Kimi No Na Wa' , revealed in an interview for Nippon.com the common theme that returns in all his movies. Makoto Shinkai tells us that he gets his inspiration from his adolescence. The nature of a relation between himself and other individuals, pain and longing for a human being, are common themes in all of his work. In the interview he said: "Why do we fall in love with someone? Why doesn't that person we love, love us back? These were totally commonplace concerns, but to my adolescent self they were a vast mystery, like the very cosmos itself." This reflects on his movie ' Kimi No Na Wa' . The whole theme is based on two individuals, relying on faith to fill the emptiness in their hearts, that can only be filled by finding each other.  He also visualises this central theme in the cinematographic elements. The movie has a colour...

Opinion Lotte van den Bogaert: This movie is very approachable, yet not easy to understand or explain. It’s open for interpretation. That much is clear by the amount of analyses and conspiracy theories you can find on the internet. A lot of little details, you would think are unimportant at first, resurface and play a role in the storyline.  There are also a lot of references to Shintoism. In spite of that, the fact that as a foreigner with no knowledge of Shintoism, it is still enjoyable to watch. This is because they do explain a lot in the movie itself and it’s not too dependent on the religious elements. In fact, since the story is understandable without this knowledge, you can conclude that the traditional elements play a mostly symbolic role and provide an interesting context for the story.  This being said, I think some things should be taken into consideration. These traditional elements all play a role, obviously, but the beauty lies in the fact that yo...