Distant Star's Makoto Shinkai Makes Koto no Ha no Niwa Anime Film
posted on 2012-12-23 11:05 EST

Children Who Chase Lost Voices creator's "tale of 'lonely sadness'" in 1st half of 2013

The official website for Makoto Shinkai — the auteur director behind Voices of a Distant Star, 5 Centimeters Per Second, and Children Who Chase Lost Voices — announced on Christmas Eve that he is creating a new anime film called Koto no Ha no Niwa. Shinkai plans to open the film in Japanese theaters in the first half of next year, and he began planning this past spring. The tagline on the website reads, "A tale of "lonely sadness," older than even "love."

Shinkai writes on the website that this is the first time he is making a "love" story. He adds that there were words long before there were characters to write them in this world. The Japanese language during the era when it had no written form is known as "Yamato kotoba." The language during this time had its own pronunciations, before the importation of kanji characters from China.

At the time, "love" (koi) was written as "lonely sadness." Moreover, according to Shinkai, the modern concept of "love" was imported from the west. While his new Koto no Ha no Niwa film is set in the modern era, it will be about "koi" in the original "lonely sadness" meaning of longing for someone in solitude, as opposed to the modern meaning.

[Via Purple Pig]