How Does “Your Name” Tie Together America and Japan? With a Kumihimo Thread
When you wish upon a star… is familiar to audiences of all ages as the tune that precedes and imbues every Disney film with a sprinkle of magic and the promise of dreams come true. It is also the premise of Kimi no Na Wa — a Japanese film whose title translates to Your Name in English — albeit with a depth of sentimentality and realism foreign to most films bearing the Mickey Mouse logo. Though American tastes for Hollywood cinema have varied throughout the decades, the pursuit of dreams has been one theme that has never failed to enamor the nation. In 2017, Your Name opened to United States audiences in the midst of political and social turmoil characterized by the National Anthem protests, the Women’s March on Washington, and even Hurricane Harvey shortly thereafter. By reflecting contemporary struggles with tragedy and inequality through subtle tropes, Your Name was able to resonate with US audiences in fulfilling their yearning for common-folk championing the American Dream.
From the very start of the film, Your Name brings attention to a problem that both America and Japan share: the depopulation of rural areas and the limited offerings their inhabitants enjoy. America’s deepening rural-urban disparity was a trend decades in the making when Your Name opened to American theaters. Youth from rural areas have increasingly moved out into the cities seeking to escape the “economic poverty” of rural towns, where “the economic forecast for rural families is not promising” (Ziliak 2018). Mitsuha, a shrine maiden disgruntled with rural life in her town of Itomori, opens the film by declaring “Please make me a handsome Tokyo boy in my next life!” This leads to a series of daily body swaps with Taki, the “handsome Tokyo boy” in whose body she satisfied her yearning for city life by splurging on strawberry shortcake in a pet-themed Tokyo cafe. Itomori, by contrast, offered a canned-coffee vending machine whose only seating was a grimy bus stop bench. Even their high schools highlighted the rural-urban divide — Taki’s was adorned with skylights, while Mitsuha’s boasted a dirt field. The contrast is made even clearer with the juxtaposition of the blue-collar construction laborers of Itomori, and the white-collar salarymen of Tokyo. Country versus city and class struggle are themes that resonate deeply with American roots, responsible in part for events like the Civil War and even Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. In contrast with these serious undertones, however, Your Name manages to appeal to audiences on both sides of the spectrum by concurrently highlighting the best of both worlds. Tranquil forests versus neon lights; the dream “house with a yard” versus sophisticated coffee shops; these together encompass all the American Dream. Your Name’s success may be attributed to its Freaky Friday approach to tackling delicate subjects, a reflection of our urge to let out a laugh before getting serious.
The film ultimately cannot help but take a slightly darker turn when we are introduced to gender inequality at Taki’s part-time job as an Italian restaurant waiter. Mitsuha in Taki’s body witnesses a male customer slashing his fellow waitress’s skirt after complaining about an unsatisfactory meal. The indignation that the scene provokes in audiences across borders also reveals mutual systems of prejudice and misogyny that exist in both Japan and America. While US audiences may not understand why the waitress bowed in apology instead of filing a complaint against the customer, it is clear that gender inequality is an injustice found across borders. The rise of the #MeToo movement and the Women’s March on Washington in early 2017 served perhaps to heighten sensitivities to stories like these that acknowledged the experiences of Americans who felt wronged. While not the focus of the film, these unsettling disparities served as a prelude to more serious scenes that reconciled inequalities by bridging past and present.
Through kumihimo, a cultural plot device, Your Name suggests that the path to reconciliation with our tumultuous history lies in exploring our culture as a uniting force, one inclusive of all our people and traditions. When Taki is introduced to Mitsuha’s lifestyle as a shrine maiden, he engages in cultural practices absent from his regular Tokyo lifestyle. Traditional kumihimo cords, or religious silk ornamentation, are usually braided in preparation for village festivals, but Mitsuha’s grandmother explains the deeper meaning behind the tradition. “The braided cords…represent the flow of time itself. They twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again.” Every day, without fail, we see Mitsuha tying her hair with the ribbon and Taki wearing one coiled around his wrist. Near the end of the film, Mitsuha casts her kumihimo ribbon to Taki in order to preserve their connection to each other. It becomes the only evidence of the time they spent together after they lose their memories. The kumihimo is a motif symbolizing that time and space are bridged by culture itself. The many racial, gender, and economic inequalities much of America faces today have caused many to declare the American Dream dead. Your Name’s sensitivity to Japan’s cultural roots may inspire a unique nationalism in American audiences too, prompting reflection into a past that may be difficult but necessary for us to explore. Just as Mitsuha’s grandmother conveyed the depth of purpose in a centuries-old cultural tradition, the film prompts us to rediscover pride in our traditions to forge a future where America’s many parts can continue to coexist as one nation. Comforting audiences in the hope that there is still a way to make the American Dream work, Your Name appeals to a nation divided seeking unity.
The optimistic message embodied in the film may be motivated in large part by a desire for heroes like Taki and Mitsuha in the midst of disaster and tragedy. The “lingering trauma of Japan’s 2011 tsunami and earthquake” inspired Director Makoto Shinkai in the making of Your Name (Alt 2017). Taki’s body swaps with Mitsuha led to him trying to save her village — and her — from imminent destruction by a comet that would obliterate Itomori. The devastation depicted harks back to the Tohoku tsunami that wreaked havoc upon Sendai. Taki and Mitsuha’s quest to reach each other across their timelines — Taki in the future and Mitsuha in the past — to evacuate Itomori residents to safety displays a sense of individualism that distinguishes it from contemporary Japanese films. While family is traditionally featured prominently in films and TV series like Totoro, Oshin, and Tokyo Story, Taki’s parents make no noteworthy appearances, and Mitsuha’s few family interactions are limited only to her sister and grandmother. Values of individuality and courage are values that resonate closely with America, where it is generally believed that hard work and an adventurous spirit are key to success. With 9/11 in 2001, the Orlando Nightclub Shooting in 2015, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, America, too, had its fair share of disaster and turmoil — and searched for heroes, harbingers of justice. The film’s exclusive focus on Taki and Mitsuha, two ordinary teenagers who race to save a town, fit them for that role. Perhaps searching for heroism in the ordinary citizen rather than the already-exceptional is reflective of current struggles in America. Likewise, the film shows little of Taki and Mitsuha’s background or merits. They are not hilariously funny, show no indication of intellectual giftedness, and lack the charisma and bravado of typical American heroes. They are boring, ordinary high schoolers — but they successfully evacuate an entire town from obliteration. This desire to overcome boundaries, in spite of the odds, through individual merit and sacrifice is characteristic of the American Dream. The fact that Mitsuha and Taki manage to become heroes despite rejecting the idea of exceptionalism and conventions set by Marvel or DC sums up the desire of perhaps all Americans to achieve upward social mobility regardless of background. The kinship that both the US and Japan may share in the process of rebuilding and the search for heroes is one that Your Name exploits in Taki and Mitsuha, independent youth who strive to reshape the future.
A more superficial reading of the film opining that “Your Name” is more of an epic sci-fi love story than a quest to solve conflict through empathy probably served audiences in America well as a means of escape amidst contemporary turbulence. The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as “a bittersweet, impossible romance laced with humor and mystical innuendo,” citing the film’s focus on two protagonists’ — who just happen to be male and female — race across time to save each other. Towards the latter part of the film, we even see Mitsuha open her palm to reveal what Taki wrote on her hand just before their timelines snapped: “I like you.” While love does play a minor role towards the latter portion of the film — especially when Taki pens his feelings on Mitsuha’s palm — it is an extremely insignificant one. A more astute observer would note that love had little role in driving the plot, but rather, was the end result of two individuals seeking a common purpose and achieve synergistic empathy. But even if Americans were inclined to focus on the epic romance, the body swaps, and the destructive comet, perhaps it was because of their desire for escape. The heavy atmosphere of political, racial, and class tensions most likely served to divert American audiences away from realism into a foreign film imbued with comedy and the supernatural, just as escapism contributed to Great Depression-era blockbusters. Not all of its parallels to inequality and appeal to humanity could have been ignored, however. Paradoxically, it may also have been the subconscious acknowledgement of the deeper themes explored in the film that allowed Americans to truly connect to it.
Recent years in America have been shaped by struggles to redefine itself as a nation and as a people in the midst of social unrest. With a 2017 peak interest in anime with the release of Pokemon Go, Yuri On Ice, and My Hero Academia, one might attribute the success of similar Japanese cultural exports as means of escape for Americans’ tumultuous daily lives. The popularity of Your Name, however, seems to defy contemporary trends by confronting superhuman challenges. By focusing on the connection between Taki and Mitsuha and how forces such as culture, empathy, and perseverance serve to strengthen it, Your Name shows that America, too, can create a better future by drawing upon its own values. While the setting and cultural motifs in the movie may be utterly foreign, the quest for objects that bridge our divides rather than those that deepen them is a call to action for both nations. The question is, are we willing to make the sacrifice to do so?
Alt, Matt. “‘Your Name,” the Most Popular Anime of All Time, Comes to America.” The New Yorker, www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/your-name-the-most-popular-anime-of-all-time-comes-to-america.
Shinkai, Makoto, director. Your Name. Toho, 2016.
Young, Deborah. “‘You Name’ (‘Kimi No Na Wa’): Film Review: Tokyo 2016.” The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Dec. 2016, www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/your-name-film-review-942290.
Ziliak, James P. “Are Rural Americans Still behind?” Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oct. 2018, www.irp.wisc.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Focus-34-2b.pdf.
