The Garden of Words / Kotonoha no Niwa is the latest film premiere from acclaimed Japanese director Makoto Shinkai that was premiered at the Gold Coast Film Festival in Australia last April and has since been screened and released in a number of languages and locales.
The official website for Motohiro Hata, the singer who provided the films image song “Koto no Ha” released a director’s cut music video for the song earlier this week. Despite being the short version the video comes in at a whopping five minutes in length and has commentary dispersed throughout by Makoto Shinkai himself. This short version will be followed up by a full release on iTunes at the end of the month.
Takao, a shoemaker in training, skips school to sketch shoes in a Japanese-style garden when he meets a mysterious older woman, Yukino. Then, without arrangement, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other, but the end of the rainy season soon approaches…
Check out my review of the film from the world premiere HERE, as well as my interview with Makoto Shinkai HERE.
Looks beautiful. Never heard of this movie til now, but I definitely want to see it now. And this song – amazing. Gonna be bringing this up on Youtube a lot on the future. You guys should recommend music more often, and link more music videos – ‘specially if they’re as gorgeous as this one 😉
I wouldn’t call The Garden of Words the best film by Makoto Shinkai, however it is simple, well written and carries the same visuals one would expect from any of this films. He is the sort of director who could most probably get people flocking to see a film of nothing but landscapes and music 🙂
Thanks for the suggestion, will try and share some more stuff like this in the future!