Two
quick notes: first, please try to watch “The Garden of Words” before reading
this (it’s only 46 minutes long and is available for free online), and second, while
you’re watching, please keep the idea of romance out of your head and don't skip the credits!
Let’s
ask ourselves a very philosophical, and deeply human, question: what is the
nature of love, or posed another way, what characterizes love? An innumerable
number of authors and artists have created an innumerable amount of works
dedicated to answering this very puzzling, but important, question.
In recent years, a
number of works, notably films, have explored new ideas in relation to just
what exactly is the nature of love. From the idea of love between a human and
non-human put forth by the brilliant drama film “Her,” to the idea of love defying
traditional gender ideals as depicted in the very engaging and whimsical anime
film “Your Name,” the traditional idea of love in the United States and abroad
has been challenged by cinema a number of times. These challenges are most
likely a result of changing social norms and the advent of a brand-new and
constantly evolving online world that has created a wholly new way to foster
and have relationships with other people and fall in love.
With this new online
world and quickly evolving social norms, there is one film that put forth a
very foreign, at least to my mind, and interesting idea related to the nature
of love: the 2013 anime film directed by Makoto Shinkai titled “The Garden of
Words.” In this masterfully crafted visual and thematic odyssey, Shinkai weaves
the traditional Japanese meaning behind the word “love” into a very appropriate
and poignant setting in modern Japanese society; and in the process, he teaches
us volumes about the nature of love itself and how we should go about our
relationships with others.
In
order to fully understand this film, one needs to know and understand what the
director was intending to convey, and by that I mean one must know the
fundamental difference between two meanings associated with the word concept:
love. The commonly used and modern concept for “love” in the Japanese language
is ren’ai. This word reflects a
Western-influenced idea of romance per the likes of some of Shakespeare’s
stories and Victorian ideals. In contrast, the older, more traditional concept
for “love” is koi. This concept of
“love” came about in the era of Man'yōshū, and the kanji used in koi reflect the idea of “love” that was
prevalent at that time (“The Garden of Words”).
When translated, the word’s kanji is read quite literally as “lonely sadness,”
and this meaning is interpreted by Shinkai to mean simply “longing for someone
in solitude” (“The Garden of Words”).
With
that, Shinkai intended to make the central elements of “The Garden Of Words” loneliness
and love by expressing the meaning of koi
and its traditional idea of “lonely sadness” in a modern, very real and
relatable, societal setting.
It is not a cookie-cutter romance story that is perpetuated in American
cinemas, and it is not the melodramatic mess that many think it is. Instead, “The
Garden of Words” is a wonderfully detailed masterpiece delving into an old, but
paradoxically kind of new, idea of the nature of love that is wholly lacking in
romance and full of companioned-sized holes in all our hearts.
The
story starts with the main male character, the 15 year-old Takao Akizuki,
skipping school to enjoy his hobby of shoe designing under the gaze of a rainy
morning in the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. During his foray into the
garden, he encounters another person, the main female character, seemingly doing the same thing:
skipping out on societal responsibilities to enjoy their hobbies or quirks. He
immediately notices that she is enjoying the rainy morning by delving into beer
and eating chocolate, and he points them out as perhaps being her quirks. In
contrast, she notices that he is a student and is skipping out on his
responsibilities as well. After this realization, she leaves him with a one
piece of a tanka, a form of Japanese poetry, from the era of Man'yōshū:
With
the mysterious woman and tanka embedded in his head, Takao visits the garden on
another rainy morning and finds the same woman doing the same things. They
acknowledge each other’s company and, after some light conversation, they both
resolve to meet each other on rainy morning in the garden. Over the course of
Tokyo’s rainy season, they meet and, quite simply, talk to one another. Takao
talks about his dream of becoming a shoemaker, an odd career path in today’s
tech-driven world, and she simply listens to him. He talks about his life, his
aspirations, and his future to her, but she does not even disclose her name,
nor her life, dreams, loves, or pain. One day, she states that “before I knew
it, I wasn’t able to walk properly anymore” (“The Garden of Words”).
In response, Takao decides to make a pair of shoes for her in order to help her
walk again.
Eventually,
the rainy season ends and their meetings become non-existent. We see both of
them lamenting the passing of the rainy season, particularly the woman, who we
learn has both been bullied and largely detached from “normal” society. When
Takao’s school year starts, he, and the audience, finally learns who the woman
is. We learn that she is Yukari Yukino, the 27 year-old classical literature teacher at
Takao’s high school, and that she was subject to petty bullying by her students
over a jealous tiff. Takao confronts the bullies, gets beat up, and meets
Yukino again at the garden. Now that the apparent veil concealing Yukino’s
identity has been lifted, Takao is able to figure out and recite to her the
other piece of the tanka that she left him pondering the first time they met:
Soon
after, they get caught in a rainstorm and proceed to spend the afternoon at her
apartment eating and talking to their hearts’ delight. They both describe their
shared afternoon as the happiest time of their lives. Takao later confesses
that he thinks he has fallen in love with Yukino. She dismisses this, stating
that she is moving back to her hometown soon, and she thanks him for helping
her walk again. After exchanging a solemn and role-respecting “arigatou
gozaimashita,” he abruptly leaves (An
Analysis…). She looks back at their shared time in the garden and decides
to chase after Takao. They confront each other in a rain soaked stairwell
overlooking the garden, and Takao lets out a burst of anger at Yukino about her
never opening up to him and never sharing anything about herself because he
thinks she is just humoring a young man with high aspirations. As the rain stops
and the sun start to shine, Yukino embraces Takao and opens up to him by telling
him how he saved her.
We
then see them part ways on different paths, with one starting a new path while
the other staying steady on another. At the end, we see Takao reading a letter
from Yukino in the garden with the shoes he made for Yukino at his side. After
finishing the letter, he leaves the shoes in the garden and vows to see her
again once he learns to walk on his own as well.
Throughout the film, we
see that Yukino has an issue; after all, she is sitting in a park illegally
drinking beer and eating various chocolates in her work clothes on rainy days.
However, that issue is slowly elaborated upon, and with its reveal comes one of
the important take ways from the film thematically. Yukino was happily pursuing
her dreams, having relationships, and generally engaged in society until she
was subject to bullying by her students. This horrendous treatment, over a
jealous tiff remember, caused her to go into a very depressed and
psychologically negative state wherein it got so bad that she developed a bad taste
disorder, hence the beer and chocolate.
During these hard times for her, it is revealed that everyone around her,
even her boyfriend, Mr. Itou, who is a dean at her high school, didn’t believe
her and treated her situation as solely her own problem. Instead of going to
the police with harassment charges, Mr. Itou decided to put the school’s, and
by extension his own, reputation ahead of Yukino’s dire situation. As a result,
the façade that Yukino held about society and her relationships were all but
destroyed wherein she realized that all her relationships that she held dear
and cherished were empty and superficial (Kotonoha
no Niwa). She realizes that she was being ignored by the people she held
dear as well as by society itself. It may be said that she was not even treated
as a human during that time (Review:
“The…). She realizes that she was experiencing what it truly means to be
alone or to be in a state of “lonely sadness;” to be utterly, unflinchingly
ignored by those around you despite their presence (Kotonoha
no Niwa). She utterly lost the will to create or maintain relationships
with other people after this soul-crushing realization, and that is when we
first see her in the garden drinking beer and eating chocolate, alone, as the rain falls down around her.
In contrast, Takao
seems to be going through the same thing, albeit in a drastically different
situation and manner. In watching his interactions with others besides Yukino,
one is almost forced to see that he is lacking in meaningful connections with
other people as well. His mother is seen to run out on her children, his
brother is seen to see him and his dreams as just teenage obsessions, and his
friends seem to be held at arm’s length. All of these interactions point to the
idea that Takao is in a state of lonely sadness as well, but like the “old”
Yukino, he simply hasn’t yet realized that his relationships are in that same state (Kotonoha
no Niwa).
This creates an
interesting dynamic, and one that drives the film’s plot and climax. From their
first meeting, it is shown that Takao and Yukino don’t know each other as
people normally would. In a sense, most “normal” relationships can be seen as a
public interaction turning into a private relationship wherein one exchanges
the customary greetings and small talk before getting to know another or
divulge one’s personality and characteristics. Inversely, Yukino and Takao get
to know each other by sharing their private selves first, and only learning of
each other’s public attributes by sheer happenstance. For example, their first
impressions of one another are about the
things they do not want society to find out, such as skipping school to
draw or skipping work to drink and eat alone (An
Analysis…). It is this private “life” divulgence, or “opening up,” that
draws Yukino into her relationship with Takao, and this is especially seen in
the content and nature of the tanka she leaves Takao with after their first
meeting. She wants someone to open up to her and simply treat her as another
person, and her use of the tanka subtly and eloquently verbalizes her longing. By
opening himself up to her, not outwardly caring about her name, title,
occupation, or past, she finally feels connected to another person again.
Takao hints at a
similar feeling of longing for a meaningful human connection throughout the
film, and mistakes it for romantic love near the end during their afternoon
together, but he doesn’t truly realize its nature until the end when she opens
up to him (Kotonoha
no Niwa). By stating that their interactions was the only thing that saved her from a life of lonely sadness, he finally
realizes that he was trying to fill the same “hole” she was, and that he was
also trying to climb out of the pit of lonely sadness that plagued his
relationships. Ultimately, no “love” is declared as there is simply the
realization and acceptance that they both saved each other from lonely sadness
and filled the hole that they so desperately wanted filled.
At its core, koi is about people’s craving for
companionship in the most basic sense: a simple connection between two people
that is unclouded by expectations of romance or sex. There seems to be a
companion-sized hole in all our “hearts,” by that I mean our emotional, psychological,
and interpersonal well-being, that we constantly, almost incessantly, attempt
to fill. To be an existentialist for a moment, we desperately crave for some
form of acknowledgement or recognition of our existence; we need confirmation
that we are indeed alive, and the apparent “fix” for that is companionship. That
“hole” cannot be filled, nor is it ever filled, by the indifference and apathy
that is experienced when one is in a state of “lonely sadness” because to be
regarded with indifference and apathy is the same thing as being ignored which
is the exact opposite of that recognition we crave (Kotonoha
no Niwa). But, koi, or simply the
act of “longing for someone in solitude,” can be seen as the sole way to “fill”
that companion-sized hole as it drives that fundamental need for companionship
and recognition.
Essentially, Shinkai
wants the audience to consider the idea that love is born out of fundamental
need for companionship and recognition, and not out of a need to high-strung
romance or sexual desire. Even more, perhaps Shinkai wants the audience to consider
the idea that love is simply two connected people regardless of anything else,
whether that is age, sex, or occupation (Kotonoha
no Niwa). As it is presented in the film, and perhaps for Shinkai himself,
love is both the longing for someone in solitude and the subsequent cessation
of that longing in the creation of a meaningful connection with another person.
In the end, however, Shinkai
does an interesting thing with Takao and Yukino’s relationship, and I think
speaks even more volumes about the nature of love. By helping each other either
learn or relearn how to “walk,” Shinkai reveals that, while they “saved” each
other by each making the other realize their lack of actually meaningful and not
superficial human relationships, they fundamentally need to part ways and
continue to “walk” their own paths. With that, the theme of koi and “lonely sadness” is elevated to
a lesson on both why "loneliness shouldn’t be treated as something that must be
fixed" and one's “purpose” in life because love should enable people, not disable
them (“The Garden
of Words”).
After seeing Yukino and
Takao’s embrace during the film’s climax, I found the ending extremely
confusing as it was the exact opposite of what I expected to happen. Why do
they, after “saving” each other, simply part ways and perhaps never see each
other again? Shinkai answers elegantly answers this question in the film’s ending,
where “The Garden of Words” can come to be seen as a film about two people
losing, or desperately trying to find, their purpose in life and, consequently,
their “will” to live or progress in life. Yukino lost her drive and purpose
because of her experiences with her bullying students and her realization that
she was not even treated as a human being, even by those she holds most dear.
Takao is desperately trying to find a purpose for his life as seen in his passion
for shoemaking and dispassion for normal school. Their “paths” in life have
either been lost or not concrete and clear as a result of their shared
experience of lonely sadness. Put simply, they can’t walk their individual
paths. In “saving” each other, they can see their paths sprawled out before
them where Yukino continues to teach in her hometown and Takao continues his
training to become a shoemaker. They both learned how to walk, either again or for the first time,
their individual paths through their mutual companionship with one another,
through koi and “longing for someone
in solitude.” If they had simply stayed together, then neither of them would
have ever gotten back up and walking on their paths as they would have been
stuck in their “garden” simply fulfilling each other’s need for a connection to
others (Kotonoha
no Niwa).
Through the film’s wonderful
ending, Shinkai makes one final statement about the nature of love, wherein
perhaps “love,” in its most basic form: companionship
arising from an understanding of lonely sadness, koi, is meant to help people walk their individual path in
life. Essentially, love shouldn’t be seen as the mere means or “drug” that many
people think it is; instead, love should be seen as the one of the many “sets
of directions” to life that seeks to help people along the path of life. In the
end, Yukino and Takao realize that they helped each other do just that: help
each other along the path of life. Their time in and around their “garden of
words” helped them, quite simply, find their own motivations to walk the path
of life and live.
~ Author’s Note: You can watch and
read my thematic analysis of “The Wind Rises” and see a very similar conclusion
and statement made by Miyazaki about dreams. Pretty cool! ~
I know that this is a
very hard, dense, and really unflinching film that doesn’t really cater to
normal audiences to well that are looking for an animated version of a romantic
drama. This was a hard film for me to understand and process, a lover of film
and its themes, but that is a testament to both what Shinkai was able to create
and just how hard to “show” the included themes is. The fact of the matter is
that I cannot find another Western film that portrays this theme, even in
different form, as all the base ideas and or execution seem to be drastically
different. There simply isn’t anything else like this film except for a few
Miyazaki films in my experience.
I want to be clear that
this is by no means the only interpretation for this film as there are numerous
other symbols, ideas, and overall thematic interpretations that I haven’t even
touched in this analysis. I encourage you to watch this film for yourself, read
other analyses, and form your own interpretations on the film because I think
this film’s themes are very important in this day and age.
I think that this film,
even before the beginning of the writing process for this post, is what truly
got me motivated to pursue filmmaking simply because, on a seemingly
subconscious level, I could tell that every frame, sound, movement, rain drop
had a distinct and noteworthy purpose in the story and themes. The visuals are
the story and I strongly admire Shinkai for the work he did on this film. It
truly is a master-class in film form, but, more specifically, it is a
master-class telling a story almost totally visually, all the while surrounding
a very difficult theme, with minimal dialogue and a short duration.
Every time I watch “The
Garden of Words,” I get very, almost stupidly, happy on the inside, despite
some of the more sad portions of the story and themes, simply because I feel as
though this film has helped me begin to walk my path, just like Takao, Yukino,
and even Shinkai have.
~
Works Cited ~
