Unlocking the Mysteries of the Reenchanted World in Makoto Shinkai’s Light Novel, Your Name

Abstract

          This academic article aims to describe the interdependence between humans and non-humans and between human physicality and biophysical environment, by employing material ecocriticism. This article aims to provide an ecological interpretation of the text, rituals, folklore embedded in the core narrative, and supernatural events that affect the protagonists in Makoto Shinkai’s light novel Your Name (2017, English version).

        The textual analysis reveals that the protagonists' body-swapping, Japanese traditional craftsmanship of braided cords (kumihimo/musubi), twilight folklore (tasokare), and the sacred maiden dance ritual (miko kakura) during the harvest festival challenge the fragmented human perception of reality.

            Through interconnected events and folklores in Your Name, the readers are disenchanted with the claim that each physical thing, all entities and the time: past, present and future, are split and separately independent from each other. In reverse, the Japanese local wisdom and folklore function as a medium or an agency in materially interweaving networks of human internal physicality associated with outer environment, of the linkage between organic and inorganic compounds and of the undivided connection between nature and urban civilisation from micro to macro scales. Also, the belief in Shinto, that spiritual essence not only inhabit in humans, but also manifests in multiple forms: rocks, trees and other inanimate objects, is deeply and explicitly rooted in Japanese local wisdom, ritual and, folklores. This ancient oriental belief coincides with material ecocriticism and modern biological science originated in Western world. Specifically, the narratives and rituals in Your Name eliminate the blurred boundaries between imaginative fantasy and tangible reality; instead, these two spheres are fused into one.