Kimi no Na Wa is an extremely popular and powerful anime movie directed by Makoto Shinkai. We say “powerful” in that it is thought-provoking of matters outside the ordinary limits of time and space.
Musubi. Kumihimo is a Japanese braiding method for making decorative and functional cords, and it is depicted in several scenes in the movie. Musubi is a knot, a tying together, of connecting people and things. The photo shows two kumihimo cords in a musubi knot.
Motohisa Yamakage has taught Koshinto through books such as The Essence of Shinto. Yamakage Sensei writes, “Musubi means to unite or bind together. … the concept of musubi signifies the proliferation of life and spirit. … the very process of creating and giving birth to life and spirit is described as musubi and we [Koshinto] place it in very high regard.”
Tying Thread Is Musubi. Connecting People Is Musubi. The Flow Of Time Is Musubi. These Are All The God’s Power.
Time and Space. We have related the Tanabata Festival tale as the weaving of time and space. This is an observance since early Jomon times that takes place in the seventh night of the seventh lunar month, when the moon is only half-full and the stars in the Milky Way can clearly be seen. The word tanabata means a kind of weaving loom. So picture a fabric being woven with threads of warp and woof. The threads of the warp represent the flow of time, and the shuttling of the woof creates space. See also here and here.
Kimi no Na wa (君の名は) is an international hit movie, entitled Your Name in English. The warping and entangling of time and space is the theme of this metaphysical movie. Perhaps that’s why millions of people find the movie so intriguing.
Early on in the movie, we see that Mitsuha lives with her sister and grandmother in a very small town in the rural land of Hida. Grandmother is priestess of an old shrine which has as its goshintai sacred object a megalith in the center of a meteor crater. Mitsuha serves as miko-san shrine maiden and performs a ritual at the shrine. Grandmother is also teaching Mitsuha to braid cords in the style of kumihimo. What, we wonder, is the significance of these elements?
Movie Review]: “kimi No Na Wa” The Harmony Of Makoto Shinkai Uniquenesses.
Grandmother’s explanation of Musubi uses the imagery of kumihimo. In one scene, Mitsuha and her sister are going with their grandmother on a pilgrimage to the sacred place of the megalith. On the way, Grandmother is explaining Musubi. We have restored the original word, kami, to the subtitles.
From the above, we can see that the concept of musubi is that of gathering and connecting. Grandmother has explained how people are connected in time and space, and she stresses the time element. This is the basic theme of the movie.In Kimi No na Wa (Your Name), for example, the art of weaving, which signifies “musubi” or time, drives the story of the star-crossed lovers separated by temporality and two paralleled universes.
The anime also captures the magical realism involved in the traditional making and offering of the known Japanese sake, again another material greatly connected with (the passage) of time.
Analysis: Kimi No Na Wa
I say magical realism for these time-based elements were elegantly combined and interwoven into the fabric of the story, and were generally accepted as part of the order and reality of things surrounding the lives of the two young adults.
Although time is a very fragile element to manipulate, director Makoto Shinkai succeeds in plotting an intricate storyline that alternates between the past and the present, the highly-urbanized Tokyo and the countryside Itomori. It succeeds in underlining contrasts between Taki and Mitsuha’s lives, add to that the fact, the very foundation of the story: they interchange corporeal bodies whenever asleep such that each takes the place of the other. The story, thus, touches even differences in gender of the two in a playful, but honest-to-good manner.
It is films like this that kill romantics, like me most especially. The belief in that lost pair which takes roots from the ancient Greek mythology where humans, believed to be made up of four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces, were split into two by Greek god Zeus who feared their power. Altho seldom admitted, this notion of a missing half that shall complete a person, is a guilty pleasure among romantics, yes, including me.
Kimi No Na Wa Musubi
This theme, and the cross-over between dreams and reality, are devices very similarly found in Haruki Murakami’s canon. In fact, all I can think about while watching Kimi No na Wa is Murakami’s On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. Although, of course, the latter had a more fatalistic ending, because well, it’s Murakami’s.
I wonder, though, if Kimi No na Wa weren’t a mainstream release, would it pursue a more, say, open-ended, even bolder and “darker” ending that would shock even Murakami himself? I like the fact that it had a resolution, but I think it would be more interesting if Shinkai had been more daring especially in ending the film.
In totality, Kimi No na Wa greatly deserves all the hype it had been receiving. Looking to see more anime films from Shinkai, although, i would need to brace myself if again, they would go along the lines of romance with happy endings.) is how it weaves its various themes to form a coherent labyrinthine story, waiting to be untangled by the unsuspecting viewer. Its take on the body swap plot allows for much more complexity and poignancy. The film also integrates seamlessly two main threads—the struggle against a terrific fate and the love between the two leads.
The Art Of Krystal Grace N. — ✨
A major theme is the impermanence of memory. Mitsuha and Taki both describe recollections of their body-swapping escapades as dreamlike. Details are progressively blurred until memories fade entirely. In the first two acts, this transience gives a sense of levity and wonder. However, by the third act, the disappearing memories and records have given rise to impending loss, especially in the context of the film’s non-linear timeline. Mitsuha thus has to mobilize an evacuation plan before the comet breaks, and Taki has to get his message to Mitsuha before he forgets everything. The suspense is palpable in their race against time.
Although Mitsuha and Taki successfully avert disaster, in their last ephemeral moment in each other’s body, they left no trace of the events ever happening. No record, no name, no memory. All that is left is a lingering vague feeling that something good is now lost.
The two would eventually meet again, but it feels regretful that none remembers the incredible series of phenomenons that once brought them together. At the end of the film, they are—despite all that happened—mere strangers. However,
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. Indeed, it is possible that our love persists even without memories of events. There are accounts of people without autobiographical memory.1 Though unable to recall any past experiences, most of these individuals have healthy relationships and passionate lives.2 Likewise, Mitsuha and Taki are able to recognize each other without knowing whence.
My initial thoughts after the movie was that it is fifteen minutes too long—the resolution of Mitsuha and Taki’s seemingly irretrievable romance dragged. Still, the final scene is that much more powerful for it. The slow monotony built in that quarter of an hour is contrasted with a sudden meeting, frantic search, hesitation, near-miss, and finally, love.
1. Palombo DJ, Alain C, Söderlund H, Khuu W, Levine B. “Severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM) in healthy adults: A new mnemonic syndrome.” Neuropsychologia. 2015;72:105-18. 2. Hayasaki, Erika. “In a Perpetual Present: The Strange Case of the Woman Who Couldn’t Remember her Past—and Can’t Imagine Her Future.” Wired. April 2016.Musubi is an element that keeps resurfacing in this movie. It’s something that binds a lot, if not all of the storyline together. Mitsuha’s grandmother describes it as: “ Mus u bi is the old way of calling the guardian kami. Tying thread is musubi. connecting people is musubi . these are all the kami’s power. So the braided cords that we make are the kami’s art and represent the flow of time itself. They converge and take shape. they twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again. That’s musubi . That’s time. By this small fragment alone , you c an already tell it plays a big role in the story, considering that Mitsuha and Taki are somehow connected, despite of the time difference. So what exactly is musubi and what roll does it play or has it played in Japanese culture?
Kimi No Na Wa Musubi
Musubi has a lot of different meanings and can refer to a variety of different subjects and most meanings can be connected to the movie. It s meaning ‘knot; bond’ can refer to mus u bi-knotting or Cupid. Its m eaning ‘creation’ can refer to musubi as an element of S hintoism. It can even refer to food. The first two meanings we will discuss in more depth.
The first and (after watching the movie) most straight-forward meaning of musubi, isreferring to kumihimo (meaning ‘braided cords’). This is a Japanese way of braiding cords. Originally it was based on the finger loop braiding technique, but it evolved
