Highlights
- Suzume no Tojimari solidifies classic Shinkai themes of supernatural, unlikely meetings, and incredible journeys in an action-adventure setting.
- The film draws heavily on real-life tragedy, folklore, and mythology, with the story revolving around the consequences of opening supernatural doors.
- Inspired by Studio Ghibli and Haruki Murakami, the film explores grief, cultural changes, and the concept of closure during the pandemic era.
The following contains spoilers for Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume movie, available on Netflix.
At this point, director Makoto Shinkai’s name is synonymous with gorgeous anime movies. From Your Name to Weathering With You and now, Suzume no Tojimari (2022), Makoto Shinkai movies have become famous for their incredible supernatural, fantastical elements and presentation of incredible journeys centering on the unlikely meeting of characters from different worlds, and Suzume is no different.
This latest movie may be the one that solidifies the themes one will find in a Shinkai film. So, what exactly inspired the story and development of Suzume no Tojimari?
The Basic Plot
A Supernatural Heavy-Hitter
Suzume is an action-adventure story following the titular character Suzume Iwato, a 17-year-old girl dealing with the trauma of losing her mother during the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake disaster, who has to help a young man named close doors that are connected to the afterlife that wreak havoc on the world and cause immense disasters. The movie is set in the year 2023, 12 years after the disaster.
One day, on her way to school, Suzume encounters a young man who asks her if she has seen any ruins nearby, and she directs him to an abandoned bathhouse nearby. She follows him, and finds a strange door standing alone in its frame. When she opens it, she finds a starry field inside, but she cannot enter. Startled, Suzume trips over a cat statue nearby, which turns into a real cat and runs away. She rushes to school, trying to ignore what she just saw, but she soon notices a column of smoke emerging from the ruins, and when she arrives, she finds the young man from earlier struggling to close the door as a gigantic worm-like creature writhes to free itself.
Suzume helps him close it, however, the incident has caused an earthquake in the region. The young man, Souta Munakata, identifies himself as a “Closer”, a descendant of a long line of supernaturally inclined people who close the doors that have become connectors to “the other side”. They do this to prevent the emergence of a supernatural creature known only as the worm, which causes calamity, including the major earthquake twelve years prior.
The cat which ran away later identifies itself as Daijin, a keystone that had been holding together a seal keeping the worm from emerging, and without it, it’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes. To make things worse, Daijin curses Souta, binding his soul to an old chair Suzume got from her mother when she was four years old, which impedes their important mission to catch the loose Daijin and reinstate him as a keystone as they close the doors that open across Japan before another catastrophe takes place.
Some Familiar Themes
The Director’s Famous Touch
As seen with some of the director’s previous movies, Suzume is filled with profound themes and an interesting execution of a concept that viewers are never completely shown until the movie’s final act. It is a road movie, with characters having to travel across Japan being a big part of the narrative structure.
Both characters carry some kind of weight or trauma, which in this case, is tied to the real-life March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster. The disaster devastated Suzume’s home village and claimed the life of her mother, which forced her to move in with her aunt living in Kyushu. Souta has to deal with how his role as a Closer impedes his ability to focus on other key areas of his life, like his dream of graduating to become a teacher. Like in other Shinkai movies, a strong bond develops between these two main characters from vastly different worlds.
The environment, and contrast between the urbanization of locations like Tokyo and various rural backdrops is something that is drawn upon even more than in previous films with Suzume, due to the travel inherent to the plot, which makes it akin to a solidification of Shinkai’s thinking when it comes to reckoning with the various cultural changes that have affected not only Japan, but the world. There’s an intention to address the collective trauma and the fading memory of disaster, and because of this, grief reveals itself as a central theme and the thread that connects the protagonist to the fateful events that take place over the course of the movie. However, this is primarily the grief of having to leave a place.
Mythological Inspirations
Japanese Religious Traditions and Shinto Myth As The Basis
Suzume leans heavily into iconography, thematic content and aesthetics that are seen in Japanese mythology and folktales. In an interview with Japanese literary critic Masaki Enomoto for Pen Online, Shinkai explains that the film came from a desire to mythologize real-life occurrences as humans have done throughout history, in order to better understand their circumstances. This is a central element to the storytelling and details Suzume being written around the 2011 Tohoku earthquake as an event in time being mythologized to the same end.
”
Suzume
resonates with significant events that actually occurred, but I believe it’s one of the roles of storytelling to draw inspiration from reality and present it in a fictional form. When unimaginable events take place, people often encapsulate them in tales and legends to better understand them.”– Makoto Shinkai,
Jan 2023.
The name “Suzume” is an antiquated word meaning “sparrow”. These birds are often seen in Japanese mythology, but the titular character’s family name, Iwato, strengthens the mythological connection as it comes from the Ama-no-Iwato, the legendary cave in which the goddess of the sun, Amaterasu, hid herself due to her brother Susano’o wreaking havoc on her lands, plunging the world into darkness. Daijin and Sadaijin, the cats who were the cornerstones that kept the worm from emerging from great doors in Tokyo and Kyushu, are based on the kaname-ishi, the mythological capstone that holds the Japanese archipelago in place. It is said that disturbing the kaname-ishi gives rise to earthquakes, which falls in line with the disturbance caused by Daijin abandoning his post.
The Influence of Films, Video games and Novels
Studio Ghibli and Haruki Murakami
Shinkai has mentioned being inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service, and the visuals and various narrative elements in Suzume communicate inspiration from various Ghibli movies. Suzume’s green and white school uniform (and red hair ribbon) is the same colour palette as Chihiro from Spirited Away, another character who experiences the grief of leaving what was once known for a completely new environment, not to mention the fact that the story of Suzume kicks off at the ruins of a bathhouse.
Where Suzume heavily channels Kiki’s Delivery Service is through Suzume’s positive encounters with other women who, while not completely sure what it is she’s doing, do what they can to help her along and in their own way. Suzume’s interactions with them are just as important to them too. Beyond that, the adorable and heavily stylized design of the antagonist, the cat Daijin, shows Ghibli-inspired design sensitivities, while the intricate and gorgeous environmental backdrops and character designs are also reminiscent of various classic anime films.
The changing scenery in Suzume was also intended to evoke the same feeling as what is seen in Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Shinkai has explained in a past interview that the action sequences featuring the worms were inspired by boss battles in role-playing games. This is evident in the cinematic nature of these scenes, but also the idea of having Suzume move through various environments on her journey evoked the same kind of enjoyment one experiences from exploring the world of an RPG. For Shinkai, people are able to enjoy a process without necessarily being fixated on the end goal, making it possible for them to enjoy the journey and the dialogue that arises as a result. Suzume is also inspired by one of the novels of famous author Haruki Murakami, one of the most widely read modern Japanese authors, with Shinkai mentioning Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore as an influence.
The Closing Of Doors
The Impact of the Pandemic
Shinkai wrote the screenplay for Suzume during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly during the time when the fate of the upcoming Olympic Games, which were to be hosted in Tokyo, still hung in the balance. He was against the hosting of the games during a time when public safety was a major concern. This is why he wanted to make the concept of closure a central tenet of the film, having believed that allowing the Olympics to continue would cause a great number of other unexpected doors to open.
In Your Name, the main heroine’s family was tasked with the preservation of history, presenting the concept of “musubi” (ties/bonds) as the single most significant aspect. Suzume’s full title, “Suzume no Tojimari” is often translated to “Suzume’s Door-Closing”, as the word “tojimari” denotes a closing of doors which we understand metaphorically to mean the end of a particular period, era, opportunity or connection. However, the “-mari” part also features in “hajimari“, meaning “beginning”, so this closing is to the effect of not just ending something, but starting something as well.
Sources: Makoto Shinkai Interview Pen Online; Hollywood Reporter
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