In Suzume, a director faces a deadly earthquake

Makoto Shinkai knows that the 2011 Tohoku earthquake changed him.

The Japanese director has been talking so much about that catastrophic earthquake and its aftermath that he’s been making the rounds to promote his latest anime, “Suzume,” now in theaters, as it focuses on that disaster and its aftermath. But those familiar with Shinkai’s work know that he has been carrying on a conversation about natural disasters through his films for years.

In an interview earlier this month during a visit to Los Angeles for the premiere of the English-dubbed version of the film, Shinkai carefully recounted how everyone’s lives were disrupted that day 12 years ago, even in Tokyo, far from the epicenter. Every time another earthquake early warning alert went off on cellphones, he would gather with his wife and young daughter and wonder what would happen to Japan.

The disaster of the earthquake and tsunami was exacerbated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster that caused it. Only after enough time had passed to bring back a semblance of a normal life did he begin to feel a sense of purpose.

“I always believed that daily life in Japan would go on forever, but the earthquake made me realize that everything can end suddenly,” said Shinkai. “Because of that experience, I increasingly felt this urge to confront disasters and depict disasters in ways that only animation can.”

Souta in “Suzume” by Makoto Shinkai.

(“Suzumi” Film Partners / Crunchyroll)

In “Suzume”, which was released in Japan ahead of its international premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, Shinkai participated with the Tohoku earthquake live for the first time. 17-year-old Suzumi is an earthquake and subsequent tsunami survivor who lost her mother in that disaster in northeastern Japan. Raised by her aunt, Suzume now lives in Kyushu, located in the far southwest of the main islands of Japan.

One day, after meeting a handsome stranger, Suzume stumbles upon a mysterious door among nearby ruins connected to a world known as Ever After. Unless these doors are closed properly, a supernatural worm can explode and cause massive earthquakes when it falls to the ground. Suzume sets out on a cross-country journey to help her new companion Souta close these doors, which can only be found in the ruins of abandoned places, until she is finally forced to confront her past in her deserted hometown.

Suzume prides itself on Shinkai’s signature: lush, natural visuals paired with an approach to disaster that can best be described as magical realism.

Although he has garnered acclaim for his previous works, Shinkai’s first international film was 2016’s Your Name, a fantasy body-swapping romance about two teens separated by time and space, whose fates are intertwined by an approaching comet. It broke a number of Japanese box office records and remains Shinkai’s biggest release to date. Its follow-up, 2019’s Weathering With You, is another teen romance, this time about a boy and girl trying to live life on their own terms in a Tokyo that’s drenched in endless rain.

Shinkai’s success and commitment to crafting original animated features has drawn comparisons to the brilliant Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli, even though their work is quite distinct.

With Suzume, Shinkai wanted to tone down the romance, so Souta, a handsome love interest, spends most of the movie trapped in the form of a small yellow chair that has lost a leg. The three-legged walking-and-talking chair (plus a magical, mischievous cat) was designed with the goal of improving on the film’s comedy.

“Because this movie is based on the earthquake, there is a sadness to this story,” Shinkai said. “So I thought I’d have to make it more of a comedy and fun movie to make sure people would come and see it.”

Souta is transformed into a child-sized chair in “Suzume” by Makoto Shinkai.

(© 2022 “Suzume” Film Partners / Crunchyroll)

According to Shinkai, his decision to make the heroine of “Suzume” a girl was initially because in “Weathering With You”, his protagonist was a boy. He believes that the story “Suzume” works regardless of the gender of the central character.

But when asked to think about how Suzume is a teenage girl whose journey includes encounters with a series of women, he takes a moment to reflect on his intentions. (One reason Shinkai is likely to take his time working through his questions to come up with an honest answer is to make every question count.)

“I was trying to think of who would really help you during a disaster,” Shinkai said. I am sure the government will of course help. But I think it’s the people next to you — other individuals — that will really help you the most.”

Shinkai explained that in Japan, women are still seen as weaker in some ways and do not wield the same social and economic power as men. So the people Suzume meets on her journey, such as a single mother of young children or the teenage daughter of a working-class family, are not those whom Japanese society considers privileged or powerful.

“Looking back now, I guess I wanted to show how Suzume is able to grow by having relationships with a series of people who could be considered helpless throughout her journey,” said Shinkai.

He echoes this subtle bit of social commentary when he explains that one of the reasons many of his characters have no fathers or absent fathers is because he resists the idealization of two-parent families in Japan. Shinkai’s films may stand out for their fantasies, but they also reflect the everyday concerns of the Japanese people.

In “Suzume”, the element of fantasy comes in the form of a giant, supernatural worm that causes earthquakes and other natural disasters after it bursts through forgotten doors linked to the Ever-After. Shinkai explained that this supernatural reason was inspired by Japanese legends about a giant catfish that lived deep in Japan and caused earthquakes and other disasters when it moved underground.

“The idea that there is some kind of organism under Japan is something I think the Japanese are very familiar with,” said Shinkai. “Of course, we now understand the science behind earthquakes. But that was something people believed in in the past, so I thought it was not only fair game to use a creature as an expression for earthquakes but also make the symbolism more accessible.”

Daijin in “Suzume” by Makoto Shinkai.

(“Suzumi” Film Partners / Crunchyroll)

Among the reasons why Shinkai specifically chose the form of a giant worm was the creature’s proximity to Earth. “Worms swallow the earth. They excrete the earth. They make the earth. Worms are basically the earth,” he said.

Shinkai was also inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo”, which is about a giant talking frog “Kaeru-kun” who fights a giant earthquake-inducing earthworm that lives in the ground under one of the wings in Tokyo.

It was important to Shinkai and the film crew, however, that the “Suzume” worm could not be considered a creature or monster, like Godzilla. Instead, the worms are designed to resemble phenomena such as smoke, rain, and lava.

“Living things can appear to have thoughts and they can be seen to have some kind of will or purpose,” Shinkai said. “But earthquakes and natural disasters have no purpose or will, so I wanted to make sure the worm didn’t look like a monster or a creature.”

Shinkai began developing “Suzume” in early 2020, and was working on the film’s script when Japan declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and six other prefectures at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It made him more committed to telling a story about the Tohoku earthquake.

“What I felt for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic was a sense of crisis that will further erode our memories of the earthquake of 12 years ago,” said Shinkai, who realized he was not negatively affected by the earthquake 12 years ago. An epidemic like the others. His concern that the earthquake will be forgotten by people due to the epidemic prompted Shinkai to film real scenes of the repercussions of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

“I thought if there’s one thing a great animated movie can do, if animation can serve a societal purpose, it’s to connect generations and our generational memories.”

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