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 written 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.”