THE SHAPES OF WATER IN THE FILMS OF MAKOTO SHINKAI

In Japanese literature, seasonal imagery has a fundamental, codified importance. In poetry, where syllables dictate the rhythm of a composition, specific words or phrases associated with seasons are aptly disseminated to convey precise emotions. For example, when the rainy season controls the meteorologic calendar, lightning and rain, are just a couple of the natural phenomena that are used to indicate that a poem talks about summer. That’s why, mimicking tanka (a genre of classical Japanese poetry), in The Garden of Words (2013), Shinkai pens a couple of twinning poems for his lovers to recite in which water is the protagonist. [Published on the Metrograph Edition]