Makoto Shinkai's "disaster trilogy": How to live after surviving disasters
Date
2025
Authors
Šilhová, Marie
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Volume Title
Publisher
University Of Victoria
Abstract
How can you live after witnessing a disaster? Author and director Makoto Shinkai faced this question after March 11, 2011 (3.11), wherein the east coast of Japan was struck by the nation’s worst ever recorded earthquake and subsequent tsunami. His following film releases explored questions of national, local, and personal responses to and relationships with disasters, wherein characters confront cataclysmic events out of their control. The narrative construction of Your Name (2016), Weathering With You (2019), and Suzume (2022) function as varying arguments or promotions of surviving, mitigating harm, and healing after disasters. This research decodes these thematic arguments through film analysis centered around narrative, genre, and aesthetic deconstruction, augmented by correlating character actions (and reactions) as a fantasy narrative device of ideological and author expression. Through his “disaster trilogy", Shinkai is able to convey his emotions regarding 3.11 to personal, local, and national levels: he encourages acceptance and the acknowledgement of loss over the suppression or erasure of grief; how healing and growth is remains possible; that through collective action, individuals, communities, and Japan can adapt and take proactive against future disasters, even if doing so causes discomfort or challenges societal pressures.
Description
Keywords
Makoto Shinkai, film studies, disaster awareness, Japanese film, animation, Japanese culture