"Imagination after the Great East Japan Earthquake in Shinkai Makoto's Your Name."

International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) 23rd Biennial Congress: Possible & Impossible Children: Children's Literature & Childhood Studies. July 29-August 2, 2017, York University, Toronto, Canada.

Makoto Shinkai’s animated film, Your Name (Kimi-mi-no-na-wa) was released in August, 2016 and has drawn audiences totaling more than 10,000,000. In this paper, we will see how Shinkai combines some plots and fantastic ways of earlier literary works and then creates a new story to make something impossible, possible. Some of them are from standard young adult fiction. One is A Transfer Student (Ten-ko-sei 1982), a film directed by Nobuhiko Ohbayashi and based on a young adult novel, I am You, and You are Me (Ore-ga-aitsu-de-aitsu-ga-ore-de 1979-1980) written by Hisashi Yamanaka, where a boy and a girl happen to find their bodies exchanged. Each of them explores his/ her own new life through their trans-gender experience. The other is from The Girl Who Leapt through Time (Toki-o-kakeru-shojyo 1967), a young adult sci-fi written by Yasutaka Tsutsui, which was later cinematized (1983 and 1997) and animated (directed by Mamoru Hosoda in 2006) as well. This is a story about a girl who meets a boy from the future. In Your Name, Shinkai reinvents a new story using some standard plots to recreate what is lost.