When I first heard the English name of this animated feature, “Suzume,” I couldn’t help but think of a 1920s children’s song. That and other cultural clues color in a nuanced and very thoughtful depiction of life on the brink of disaster in modern day Japan. The film “Suzume” is in Japanese called “Suzume no to jimari” (すずめの戸締まり), meaning the “Suzume’s Locking Up.”
Japan, like California, is on the ring of fire. Unlike California, Japan has active volcanoes. The 1991 eruption of one (Mt. Unzen) was recently the focus of two documentaries that came out last year: “Fire of Love” and “Fire Within.” But although the film begins in Kyushu, the same island where Mt. Unzen is located, the focus is on another tragedy, one that took the lives of many Japanese: The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (東北地方太平洋沖地震 or 東日本大震災). there were 19,759 deaths, with 6,242 people injured and 2,553 people missing.
The film is about Suzume Iwato (岩戸 鈴芽), a second-year high school girl who lost her mother, Tsubame Iwato ((岩戸 椿芽) during the Tōhoku Earthquake and subsequently became the ward of her aunt, Tamaki Iwato ((岩戸 環). On her way to school one morning, Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara as a teen, but Akari Miura as a child) meets a young man, Sōta Munakata ( (宗像 草太) who stirs something in her. Sōta asks about old ruins and there’s an old deserted onsen resort. Although she means to go to school, she decides to follow the curious man to the abandoned resort. Once she gets there, she can’t find him and instead notices a door in a frame, standing erect in a great pool of water. Through it, she can see a starlit field, but she when the crosses through the threshold, she only sees the field on the other side. Looking down, she seeks a small abstract statue of a cat. Lifting it out of the water, suddenly the stone becomes fluffy white fur. The small cat leaps through the water.
Seeing neither the cat nor the young man, Suzume continues on to school. At lunchtime, she’s talking with her friends, when they all get earthquake alerts no their smartphones. Suzume notices a column of red and black smoke rising from the area of the onsen, but realizes nobody else can see it. Ditching school, she returns to the onsen and finds the young man trying to force the door in the pool closed. Together, they are able to do it, but the young man is injured and when the red column falls to the ground, the town suffers earthquake damage.
Suzume takes Sōta home to clean and bandage his injury. While there, the small white cat appears. Initially, the two don’t realize this is the curious statue, but when the cat speaks the two are startled, but Sōta is suddenly transferred into the three-legged child’s chair that Suzume’s mother made her. Sōta is a door closer, a person who must lock the doors to prevent the legendary worm Namazu from escaping and causing terrible earthquakes. Keystones help keep the namazu contained, but the white cat, Daijin, was able to transform when Suzume mistakenly picked him up, releasing the Namazu.
Now freed, Daijin wants to play but Suzume and Sōta chase him in order to re-install the keystone and prevent the Namazu from causing a disastrous earthquake in Japan.
The Song
There’s a 1920s children’s song named “Suzume no Gakkō” or “The Sparrow’s School.”
The lyrics were written by 清水かつら (Shimizu Katsura) and the melody by 弘田龍太郎 (Hirota Ryuutarou) in 1921.
チ-チ-パッパ チ-パッパ
chī chī pappa chī pappa
雀の学校の先生は
suzume no gakkō no sensei wa
むちをふりふり チ-パッパ
muchi o furi furi chī pappa
生徒の雀は 輪になって
seito no suzume wa wa ni natte
お口をそろえて チ-パッパ
o kuchi o soroete chī pappa
まだまだいけない チ-パッパ
madamada ikenai chī pappa
も一度一緒にチ-パッパ
チ-チ-パッパ チイパッパ
The song is about the sparrows. The teacher waves a baton or whip and the students get in a circle and raise their voices together, but they need to practice more.
In “Suzume,” the girl named Suzume is a second-year student and the curious man she meets is studying to be a teacher. In their quest,
What’s in a Name?
Suzume Iwato 岩戸 鈴芽 is a name with definite meaning. You can see that the “to” of “Iwato” is the same as the one in the title. The “to” means “door.” In the case of the surname, Iwa means rock, but more specifically a rock and a mountain. Suzu (鈴) means “bell” and you’ll see and hear a bell during the film. “Me” here means “bud” or “sprout.” And this is different from the character for “sparrow” which is 雀.
Iwato is also part of the name of the rock cave, Ama no Iwato, where according to Japanese mythology, the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu, hid away because of her brother’s bad behavior. That meant the world was without light. Another god, Omoikane suggested the other gods hold a party outside the sealed cave. When Amaterasu peeked out, the god Ame-no-tajikarao, who was hiding behind the door drew her out and sealed the entrance with a straw rope so that Amaterasu could not shut herself away again.
There’s a shrine there now, Amano Iwato Jinja 天岩戸神社、and it is located in Miyazaki prefecture in Kyūshū. This is the prefecture where the film “Suzume” begins.
The motif of doors begins with the Japanese title which uses the same “to” as in “Iwato,” “Suzume no to jimari” (すずめの戸締まり). The verb “shimarimasu” (締まります) or “shimaru” (締まる and not 閉まる), means to tighten or lock up as opposed to close or shut. One verb uses the radical for “thread” and the other for “gate.” The prototype for the straw rope is from the Amaterasu Ama no Iwato myth and lengths of rice straw or hemp rope is still used for ritual purification in the Shinto religion. Called shimenawa and, as you might expect, this also uses a Chinese character which has a thread radical (標縄/注連縄/七五三縄). Nana (縄) means rope.
Just as Iwato suggests religion (Shinto), so do the characters for the surname of Sōta Munakata (宗像 草太). The characters of the given name, Sōta, look like they could be read Sōtai which would be a homophone for early (早退), but the characters literally mean “grass” and “big.” The surname Munakata uses the first character for the word used for “religion” which is 宗教 (shūkyō). The second character is used to mean image, statue, picture or portrait. You could look at the surname and think it might be pronounced “shūzō” which sounds like 集蔵 which means “collection.” The “shū” of that word uses the old bird radical (隹). You can see this used in the word for “sparrow” (雀). The religious references in the given name Sōta makes even more sense because the Japanese word that has been translated as “closer” (閉じ師) is associated with both teacher (教師) and priest or priestly teacher（師僧）as well as father (師父). The characters 師父 in Chinese translates as “master.”
The cats are curiously named Daijin which in Japanese could be 大臣 which is a minister of state or a state department. Or it could be 大尽 which means a rich person or someone who spends a lot of money in the red-light district. Miki could be 幹 which means the stem or trunk or main part of things. But Miki can also be 御酒・神酒 or sake offered to the gods.
Sparrows
There are a few Japanese sayings about sparrows. A poetic image that plays upon alliterations is “sasa ni suzume” (小竹に雀）which means the “sparrow(s) in bamboo grass.” While Suzume Iwato doesn’t have “grass” in it, the name of the male protagonist does: Sōta Munakata (宗像 草太) . The “Sō” can also be read “kusa” (草）means “grass.”
Another saying is “suzume hyaku made odori wo wasurezu” (雀百まで踊りを忘れず) which means, even if a sparrow reaches the age of 100, it will not forget the dance.
Another brings three birds together: “enjaku nano kōkō no kokorozashi wo shiran ya?” (燕雀なの鴻鵠の志ざしを知らんや）or “how would a sparrow or a swallow understand the thoughts of the great swan. Similarly, to be overawed by an enemy of great size and power is “like a sparrow meeting a hawk” or “taka no atta suzume no yō” (鷹の会った雀のよう). Something that is small is like “the tears of a sparrow” or “suzume no namida” (雀の涙).
Going back to the pairing of the swallow and the sparrow, there’s also an ancient Japanese folktale in which the sparrow and the swallow are sisters. The swallow is vain. The sparrow is faithful. When both sisters hear that their parents are ill, the sparrow hurries over to be beside them, but the swallow preens herself and comes too late. As already pointed out, “Suzume” can mean “sparrow,” but also, her mother’s name, “Tsubame” can mean “swallow”（燕). However, the character used for her mother’s name, 椿芽 means “camellia” or “tsubaki” (椿) with the same “me” (meaning bud) as used in Suzume (鈴芽). The first character, when coupled with another character, means “sudden death” or “an unexpected or strange occurrence” (椿事 chinji).
You’ll see that we’re meant to think about birds because when Suzume opens her o-bento bako, the o-nigiri is decorated to look like birds.
The association isn’t carried over to the aunt, Tamaki Iwato (岩戸 環). The character means “ring” or “circle” or “loop.”
There is another saying that seems to permeate “Suzume.” In Japanese, there was a saying that the four things most feared are “jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyají ” which means “earthquake, lightning, fire, father.” Kaminari is feared because it causes fire, but certainly what Suzume sees is both the possibility of an earthquake and fire.
Catfish and Worms
The Japanese mythical beast Namazu (鯰) or Ōnamazu (大鯰) is usually giant underground catfish and this is plainly seen that it is associated with fish because of the usage of the fish radical (魚). Here, in “Suzume” it is portrayed as a worm, “mimizu”（ミミズ ) or “earthworm.” I’m not sure why the creature a worm instead of a fish unless that also tied into the bird theme because catfish aren’t generally eaten by sparrows. Or perhaps, catfish are too sympathetic? Namazu (鯰) literally means catfish and uses the fish radical.
There are two traditional shrines that have keystones: Kashima Shrine (鹿島神宮) in Kashima city (Ibaraki Prefecture) and Katori Shrine (香取神宮) in Katori City (Chiba Prefecture).
Mourning
The director said that he had noticed there were many deserted areas that had once been a source for family gatherings and wanted this film to be a mourning for those abandoned places. In Kyushu there is a spa that was abandoned and has been photographed.
Imagine trying to remember some beautiful event of the past only to find that such as place no longer exists or isn’t operational. But there is also something that resonates in the chair that Sōta becomes. There’s a children’s book called “Futari no Īda.” In this book, two girls living in Tokyo visit their mother’s hometown of Hiroshima. While there, the girls explore an abandoned Western-style house and encounter a chair that is searching for someone. The chair believes that Yuko is Īda, the girl the chair is looking for. The book was original published in 1969 and was placed on the Hans Christian Andersen Honor List in 1979.
In this case, the chair represents Suzume’s connection with her mother. Her mother made the chair for her and it’s a tangible sign of her mother’s love before the tragedy.
What I’m trying to give you is an overall sense of the layered meanings that a Japanese person might have when seeing this film. It reminded me of the expansive onsen I visited in Kyushu in the 1980s that had dragon heads spouting warm water. I, of course, have no photographs, but there used to be tours of large onsen that seemed like water parks. Some of these places have been abandoned.
- The Tokushima Countryside Healthspa (お水荘ヘルスピア)
- I Explored A Spa In Japan Abandoned Since The 1990s (12 Pics)
As I grow older, I think of the places that were and the experiences I had that I can never have again. And living in California, like Japan, we’re always aware that an earthquake can easily damage the buildings around us. A friend who used to work in the seismology lab at Caltech but left to area and eventually ended up on the East Coast, passed away recently. It would have been fun to have seen this film with her.
I suppose it’s comforting to think that someone can fight to control and prevent great earthquakes. If only we could.
“Suzume” is the third film by director Makoto Shinkai ((新海 誠) who was born Makoto Niitsu ((新津 誠) that deals with natural disasters. His 2016 “Your Name” was set around the fragment of a comet Tiamat falling on a town called Itomori. His “Weathering with You” was about an orphan who can control the weather and bring sunshine in a time when Tokyo is plagued by seemingly endless rain.
“Suzume” premiered in Japan on 7 November 2022. It was released in the US on 14 April 2023. In Japanese with English subtitles.
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