Director Makoto Shinkai's Suzume has been a tremendous global success. It has attracted over 35 million overseas viewers and its overseas box office figures have surpassed 28 billion yen. It has been an especially big hit in Asia, breaking new records for a Japanese film in both China and South Korea.

Starting in February 2023, Shinkai visited 13 cities in 9 countries, including China, India, Thailand, and Mexico, to promote Suzume. Shinkai discussed his experiences overseas with us, along with the realizations he came to.

Suzume deals with the Great East Japan Earthquake, and from a Japanese perspective, enjoying it would seem to require an even deeper understanding of Japanese culture and history than Shinkai's other films. Shinkai says that he believes that the film bridged this cultural gap and became an overseas success because, as he puts it, "Japanese anime has entered a new phase."

Text: Yui Kashima　Photo：Masashi Kuroha　　Edit: Goshi Kuno, Miho Moriya

Overseas, Japanese anime has entered a new phase

--Reflecting on the success of Suzume (2022), you tweeted that "Japanese anime has entered a new phase in terms of worldwide box office revenue." What has changed?

Shinkai : "Suzume" made more overseas than it did in Japan.

A lot of that is thanks to the distribution companies in different countries. Just making a great film alone isn't enough to have a global hit. It's also vital to work hard to get that film out there. Ever since we started making movies, every time a new film came out we'd go overseas to promote it, but this time the level of enthusiasm and the scale of the promotions by the distribution companies were unprecedented. We spent three months promoting Suzume overseas, starting in February, and I could really feel the difference.

--Were expectations high in each country?

Shinkai : Yes, but more than people having high expectations because it was a new Shinkai film, I felt like the expectations were high because of the very fact that it was a Japanese anime film.

Overseas fans aren't just fans of my films, they have a lot of favorite animes. People like anime adaptations of comics that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump, like Jujutsu Kaisen or One Piece. The First Slam Dunk, which came out a bit after Suzume, have also been global hits.

Distribution companies have told me that a big part of it is that, due to the pandemic, watching streaming content at home has become a part of the culture in many countries.
Of course, even before the pandemic, there were a lot of anime fans around the world, but I guess you could say that the world really discovered Japanese anime during the pandemic. Suzume came out after the audience for Japanese anime had broadened far beyond its original fan base, which is, I think, why it has proven so successful.

The encouraging words of a woman in Syria

--Your movies have been praised for the detail with which they depict life in Japan. Do these uniquely Japanese elements come across successfully to overseas audiences?

Shinkai : Generally speaking, when I make movies I make them with Japanese audiences in mind. For a while, I was worried that the nuances in these depictions of life, based on an assumed familiarity with Japanese culture, would be lost on overseas viewers.

For example, in "5 Centimeters per Second", there's a scene in which a character becomes anxious because of a late train. I'm sure that there are viewers in which it's par for the course for trains to be late. The emotional aspects of the cherry blossoms blooming in the spring might be hard for people in areas without cherry blossoms to appreciate.

Shinkai : At the time, every time one of my films was released overseas, I'd worry about whether audiences would understand these scenes, and I felt terrible that the scenes might not succeed in conveying what I was trying to communicate. That's why after "5 Centimeters per Second" I made "Children who Chase Lost Voices", which had a lot of fantastic elements, because I knew that fantasy adventures could be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of their nationality. However, although the movie was well-received, I also heard from a lot of people that "this isn't the kind of film we're hoping to see from you.

--It seems that depictions that are uniquely Japanese are preferred overseas too.

Shinkai : Going back to the release of 5 Centimeters per Second for a moment, when I screened the movie in Damascus, Syria, an older woman told me that "the story was truly touching." As I said earlier, at the time I was really worried about this, so when I heard her words, I was happy but, at the same time, a little bewildered. "This movie I created, which expresses my own personal sensibilities, resonated with this Syrian woman who is decades older than me?" Looking back, it was the first time someone had expressed to me, in words, the message that stories connect with people of all ages, with all kinds of different customs, from all different cultures.

After "Children who Chase Lost Voices", I made "The Garden of Words" (2013). It's an extremely Japanese work -- it has people reading the "Man'yoshu" (Japan's oldest collection of waka poetry, compiled between the late 7th century and the late 8th century) -- but it was really well received overseas. Some of the countries where it was shown probably don't have rainy seasons, and lots of viewers certainly had no kind of connections with the setting of Tokyo, but despite not having that kind of background, many people said it was their favorite of my films.

Shinkai : Seeing the overseas audience response to "The Garden of Words" finally brought home the message that the Syrian woman had shared with me. I realized that even if we made films that stayed close to home, overseas audiences would appreciate them. Thanks to that encouragement from the audience, I could see the path open before me, and came to feel that it's a direction I could explore. Then I made Your Name. (2016), and the audience for my films grew, both in Japan and overseas.

Shinkai's emotional experiences during the overseas release of "Suzume"

--So as you forged your own path, the reactions of overseas viewers have been a tremendous support. Has that support from overseas audiences changed or reinforced your own mentality?

Shinkai : Even now, I focus more on faithfully depicting things close to home than to thinking about the global market. When you think about whether the appeal of Japanese works will communicate to overseas audiences, all you can really say is that every audience member has their own knowledge, experience, and values, so it really all comes down to the individual. So I recognize that there may be differences in the knowledge that people bring to the table, and I try to make stories that as many people can enjoy.

However, "Suzume" deals with the Great East Japan Earthquake, so I felt like it would be difficult for overseas audiences to understand 100% of what went into the movie.

Shinkai : Because of that, whenever I made a speech on-stage for an overseas showing, I asked the audience "Who here knows about the Great East Japan Earthquake?" In pretty much every country, about 30% of the audience raised their hands. At one showing, an audience member had provided support to disaster-struck areas as a member of the U.S. Navy through Operation Tomodachi. However, roughly 70% of the audience were unfamiliar with the Great East Japan Earthquake. Most of the viewers simply came to the theater to watch some fun entertainment.

These overseas appearances at movie theaters are always lively. Sometimes I'm welcomed so warmly that members of the audience come on stage to take a selfie. However, when I tell the audience "this film is based on an actual disaster, the Great East Japan Earthquake," the theater falls silent.

Shinkai : I then go on: "The depictions of the ship on top of a building, and the burning city, are all actual things that happened in Japan 12 years ago. There were countless people in Japan in the same situation as Suzume." The audience becomes even more silent.

In Mexico, I talked about the yellow butterflies that appear in the movie. When I told them that the butterflies that sometimes appear around the heroine, Suzume, symbolize her feelings towards her mother, everyone in the audience started crying. The interpreter got all choked up, as well. It was a wonderful, emotional experience.

About 70% of the audiences at the showings were unfamiliar with the Great East Japan Earthquake, but they were still able to enjoy the film as a piece of entertainment in its own right. People overseas also learned about what happened in Japan thanks to the release of the movie. Even if that's all it had accomplished, that alone would still have made me happy to have released "Suzume" overseas.

--I'd imagine that it resonates with a lot of people as a disaster story in general, not specific to the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Shinkai : A lot of things that happened during the global release made a big impression on me. For example, I received a long letter from a fan in China saying that the film reminded them of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and they took it as a message of salvation. Someone in India said that the sorrow of the character Suzume, who lost her mother at an early age, echoed the sorrow they felt from losing a loved one to COVID-19, and the movie brought them to tears.

Shinkai's sense of animism, and how it leads to the creation of films with universal appeal

--Why do you think your stories have such international appeal? Are there any things that you focus on in telling your stories?

Shinkai : I don't set out from the start to make global movies. Instead, I call on my own personal sensibilities.

For example, when I was a young boy, I lived in the countryside of Nagano, surrounded by mountains. There's a group of mountains in Nagano named Yatsugatake. Sometimes they'd look to me like an enormous whale. In "Suzume", there's a massive worm that rears up from the mountains. This isn't something I've actually seen, yet it feels like something I've known since I was a child.

--Almost like a sense of animism.

Shinkai : Yes, and that's a feeling that I think everyone shares, irrespective of their nationality. That feeling of just somehow knowing something, and that moment where you're moved or your interests are aroused, those are things where perhaps the specific ways that people experience them varies depending on people's cultural backgrounds, but the root feelings themselves are largely the same for Japanese people and people in other countries. I think this is an intuitive, real feeling that many people feel, not just me. When I work on my films, it's like I'm mining the potential around me. If I keep digging down, I might just dig so deep that I create a tunnel that connects to the other side of the world.

Japanese anime has finally reached the starting line

--At the start, you mentioned a "new phase." What do you think is going to happen to Japanese anime in the future?

Shinkai : I think that Japanese anime is going to have an even bigger presence in the global market. From a business perspective, it's already become difficult to turn a profit from domestic revenue alone, and that's not just true for anime. The Japanese game industry shifted its focus from Japan to overseas long ago, and I think the same thing is starting to happen with Japanese anime.

But looking at the Berlin International Film Festival, I think it's also going to take a while longer before anime establishes a strong presence as a form of film in forums like international film festivals. There are exceptions, like Hayao Miyazaki, and there are Japanese anime films that are tremendous successes in film festivals, but for creators like myself, who are not in that kind of position, it feels like Japanese anime has finally reached the starting line.

Shinkai : Personally, I'm looking forward to reaching even larger audiences, so I don't feel really motivated to try to win awards on the film festival circuit. However, sometimes those international film festivals can be influential in bringing films to more people. So I spur myself on with the idea that "if you want to show your films to more people, it might be a good idea to place more importance on awards."

--Having successfully climbed the peak of making a hit film, have you found the next mountain you want to climb?

Shinkai : My goal isn't simply to climb mountain after mountain, but having visited lots of places has given me a glimpse of how welcoming foreign audiences are to Japanese anime, which I hadn't really understood before. In that sense, as well, I'm happy to have made "Suzume".

--You travelled around Japan talking to audiences at showings of Weathering With You (2019), and you've said that this is why you made Suzume a road movie. Do you think your next movie might be set overseas?

Shinkai : I get asked that in every country I visit, and that's sometimes followed up with "please, set your next film in our country" (laughs).

I'm very honored that people ask me that, and I do want to expand the horizons of my films a bit, depicting things that I haven't seen, so the day may come when I set a movie in a country other than the one I live in, or in an era other than the current one. But I haven't started thinking specifically about my next film, so I don't know yet (laughs).