Chapter 12

ESSAY NORIKO KANDA Novels are like mean-spirited older lovers—they see straight through to our adoration for them, but won’t show us everything about themselves. All too often, you think you’ve come up with a marvelous, original tale only to find that someone’s actually written it already. There are some stories, great stories, that feel as if they incorporate our thoughts and even the experiences we’re living through now. There’s no need to despair, though; using part of one of these great stories as a foundation for something new is a very respectable way to create a novel. It’s been said that the writer Mieko Kanai thinks of writing a novel as obsessively covering those foundations in graffiti, but I think that the challenge of novel writing may lie in looking for fascinating ways to fill in the gaps of the foundation. The novel The Garden of Words was written by animated film director Makoto Shinkai, and it uses a film he himself produced and directed as its foundation. The basic storyline—Takao, a high school student who aspires to be a shoemaker, meets the enigmatic Yukino in a rainy park—unfolds as it did before, but the author himself has included more details regarding how he went about filling in the gaps of that foundation. Since the story is told from the perspectives of various characters, readers learn about more than Takao’s and Yukino’s pasts and feelings. We also have the worries and conflicts of the older brother, Shouta, whom we only glimpse in the anime and who is presented there as a confident, relaxed adult; the hidden relationship between the stern-faced, tracksuited Mr. Itou and Yukino; the startling past of Shouko Aizawa, whose animated version looks like nothing more than a bratty, popular girl; and the unexpected occupation and life history of Takao’s artificially youthful, rather childlike mother. By filling in their backgrounds, he gives depth to the characters and the story. However, despite the detail of these depictions, they’re exquisitely restrained. If a novel grows too wordy, it turns into exposition and limits the reader’s imagination. (Works like this one in particular, where the author has clear images in his mind, tend to go too far in that direction.) Like its taciturn protagonists, though, this story is written without telling too much, instead inspiring the imagination. For example, what triggered the protagonist Takao’s interest in shoes is casually hinted at through his relationship with his mother. Her many shoes are the weapons of a mother who wants to continue her life as a woman; in other words, they’re a way to protect herself. That being the case, I’d like you to pick up on the subtle implication of the gentle colors of the pumps Takao means to give Yukino—they are meant to protect her, and to serve as a symbol of the time they spent together. The characters’ backgrounds aren’t all that gets filled in. The settings—the streets of Tokyo and the Japanese garden—are also delicately rendered like characters in the story themselves. The beauty of the scenes in that light-filled garden amid its rustling greenery are beyond description. In the novel, the characters are written in depth to fill in the gaps in its foundation. However, even if you view the images that form the original foundation (i.e., the movie) after you read the book, I doubt they’ll seem shallow to you. The Garden of Words, at forty-six minutes, is on the short side for an animated film, and yet it’s clear how deftly it has skimmed off the transparent, beautiful, clear layer at the very top of the story. The novel has one more foundation: the Man’yoshu. This is, of course, Japan’s oldest collection of poetry, and its role in this book is to run delicate threads of meaning through the entire story. As you’ve seen, one Man’yoshu poem is given at the close of every chapter to symbolize the current of the story or the emotions of a character. As you read them, you develop a solid sense of the characteristics of that era’s poetry. The conditions and emotions of that time are distilled into poems in a frank, unaffected way. While they are generally written in the archaic language of their era, if you read through them, it isn’t that difficult to grasp their meaning. Unlike the poems of later years, which gave full play to pivot words, inversion, and allusions to older poems, these chains of words flow powerfully from top to bottom, straight down. Putting them at the ends of the chapters generates a driving force to carry the story forward. In the scene where Takao and Yukino first meet, Yukino offhandedly recites a poem to him, as if she’s quietly saying it to the sky: “The thunder whispers, / and clouds darken the sky. / If rain should fall, / would you stay with me?” This is a type of love poem known as a soumon-ka. Soumon is an old word that means to ask how the other person is feeling, and these poems were used as romantic gestures between men and women. One lover would send a poem to the other, and the recipient would respond with a poem of their own. There are many examples of these exchanges in the Man’yoshu. This serves as a hint about Yukino’s occupation. However, the shape of the “response” to this poem shows the trajectory of the boy’s feelings for this mysterious adult woman, even though he thinks of himself as nothing more than a fifteen-year-old kid. Do note the gravitational pull of this soumon poem, which has been repeated over and over again since antiquity. The life of the woman known as Nukata no Ookimi, who wrote the poem “As I cross the murasaki field, / shining madder red, / the forbidden land, / will its guard not see you / wave your sleeve at me?” is also reflected in this story in a pronounced way. Nukata no Ookimi was born into an imperial family and became the wife of Prince Ooama (later Emperor Tenmu). However, she also had the favor of Prince Naka no Ooe (later Emperor Tenji), Prince Ooama’s older brother, and it’s said that she wrote this poem on an occasion when the two men ran into each other. Later generations have been fascinated by the personal magnetism of Nukata no Ookimi. While there are in-depth theories that say otherwise, she described a love triangle with two members of the imperial family, not to mention two emperors who would leave their names in history, in such generous, unconstrained terms. Many fictional works have been written about her, beginning with the one that makes an appearance in this novel, Yasushi Inoue’s Lady Nukata no Ookimi. Ms. Hinako, the teacher who had such a big influence on Yukino’s adolescence, says that “everybody has their quirks.” That remark may be based in this type of love, which can be found in the Man’yoshu. In addition, one phrase in the poem—“shining madder red”—links to the red umbrella Yukino uses on rainy days. With the Man’yoshu as a foundation, we have these rich images that transcend time and space, and the message comes to the fore that people remain the same even after a thousand years. And if they don’t change in a thousand years, they certainly can’t change in ten. Yukino’s experience of idolizing Ms. Hinako and losing her is repeated when she herself is idolized and discarded by Shouko Aizawa, while Reimi Akizuki is startled to discover the same determination she herself had thirty years ago in her son Takao. This may be a bittersweet, foolish thing, and yet it makes you think that the hopelessly heartrending, endearing sight of people living their lives will be just about the same a thousand years in the future, in a society where civilization has advanced even further. I’d also like to touch on the wonderful writing style that’s completely unique to Makoto Shinkai the writer. If I were to describe it briefly, it would be “the sensation of floating.” The perspectives he writes sometimes rise lightly, taking a bird’s-eye view, and these moments create an ephemeral, beautiful mismatch that lends a captivating sparkle to the text. For example, take the view down over the city from the top of a tall building. The cluster of buildings seen in a dream that one is gliding through as a bird, or a view that one gazes at with the sensation that one is underwater. This drifting sensation isn’t just a spatial phenomenon; it occurs with time as well. A tale is told from the viewpoint of a girl who, for a moment, takes another look at it from her current perspective. This may be a point of view the author cultivated through his work in animation, but when the technique is used with the written word, it leaves a rather vivid impression. The narration in chapter 9 deserves special mention. This part is told in parallel from Yukino’s and Takao’s perspectives, and the writer doesn’t simply change narrators. Instead, he tries something rather experimental. In the gaps in their conversation, internal statements made in first person and other sentences written in third person mingle together, seamlessly; the two perspectives switch with each other at incredible speed, and he also changes the spacing between paragraph breaks, showing “indescribable” thoughts striking against each other. The sensation is dazzling and dizzying, as if you’re looking at scattered reflections of light. It feels as though there’s another, transparent foundation layered over the foundations of the storyline and backgrounds and classical literature. That transparent foundation skillfully links the words and backgrounds, sets the perspective floating, and diffusely reflects the light. As if several foundations have been layered, then flipped through like the pages of a book, the story begins to move. (Book reviewer)