is a 2013 Japanese anime drama film written, directed and edited by Makoto Shinkai, animated by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho. It stars Miyu Irino and Kana Hanazawa, and features music by Daisuke Kashiwa instead of Tenmon, who had composed the music for many of Shinkai's previous films. The theme song, "Rain", was originally written and performed by Senri Oe in 1988, but was remade for the film and was sung by Motohiro Hata. The film was made into a manga, with illustrations by Midori Motohashi, and later novelized by Shinkai, both in the same year as the film.
The film focuses on Takao Akizuki, an aspiring 15-year-old shoemaker, and Yukari Yukino, a mysterious 27-year-old woman he keeps meeting at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden on rainy mornings. While Takao is skipping his morning class to design shoes, Yukari is avoiding work due to personal problems in her professional life. Yukari tells Takao nothing about herself, including her name, while Takao opens up to her, sharing his passion for shoes by offering to make a pair for her. When Takao learns Yukari's identity, emotions come to a head as both learn that they have been teaching each other "how to walk". Shinkai wrote the story as a tale of "lonely sadness", based on the meaning of the traditional Japanese word for "love", and uses shoes as a metaphor for life. The story's motifs include rain, poetry, and the Japanese garden. The age difference between the two main characters and their character traits demonstrate how awkwardly and disjointedly people mature, where even adults sometimes feel no more mature than teenagers, according to Shinkai.
The Garden of Words premiered at the Gold Coast Film Festival in Australia on April 28, 2013, and had its general release on May 31, 2013, in Japan. For the Japanese premiere, the film was screened with an animated short called , also directed by Shinkai. The Garden of Words had an unusual release schedule since it was released digitally on iTunes the same day as the Japanese theatrical premiere, and its DVD and Blu-ray were released while the film was still in theaters, on June 21. The film has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America, Anime Limited in the UK, and Madman Entertainment in Australia. It was released on Crunchyroll on December 3, 2025. The film performed well in theaters for an extended period of time and was hosted at many local and international film events. It ranked highly on iTunes Store during 2013 and was selected as the Year's Best Animation in iTunes' Best of 2013. It won the 2013 Kobe Theatrical Film Award and awards at the Fantasia International Film Festival and the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film. Online reviews were generally favorable with universal praise of the art, though opinions were mixed regarding the story's length, plot and emotional climax.
Plot
The Garden of Words opens at the start of the rainy season in Tokyo with , a 15-year-old student and aspiring shoemaker, opting to skip his first class and sketch shoe designs in the garden at Shinjuku Gyoen. There, he encounters , a 27-year-old woman who is skipping work. Yukari bids him farewell with a tanka (a form of Japanese poetry), leaving Takao puzzled as to its origin and meaning. The two continue to encounter each other and socialize in the park on rainy mornings, but never formally introduce themselves. Takao decides to make a pair of shoes in her size. With the end of the rainy season, he stops visiting the park and focuses on his work.
Following summer break, Takao returns to school and spots Yukari, discovering that she is a literature teacher and had been the target of gossip and bullying. To avoid further confrontation, Yukari opted to avoid work and retreat to the park, hoping she would learn to overcome her fears. However, she quits her job and leaves the school. That afternoon, Takao meets Yukari at the park and greets her by reciting the 2,514th poem from the Man'yōshū Japanese poetry collection, the correct response to her tanka, which he found in a classic Japanese literature textbook. After getting soaked by a sudden thunderstorm, both head to Yukari's apartment and spend the afternoon together. When Takao confesses his love, Yukari is moved, but reminds him that she is a teacher and that she is moving back to her hometown on Shikoku. After Takao excuses himself, Yukari realizes her mistake and runs after him. Still upset, Takao angrily takes back what he had said and criticizes her for being so secretive and never opening up to him. Yukari embraces him and the two cry while she explains that their time together in the park had saved her.
The credits show Takao barely passing his final exams, but still working towards his goals, while Yukari moves back to Shikoku and resumes her teaching career. In a post-credits scene, Takao revisits the park that winter, reads a letter from Yukari, places her finished shoes on the bench, then vows that he will find her after he has made progress with his career.
Both the manga and serial novels share differences from the film. In the manga illustrated by Midori Motohashi, scenes were either added or slightly modified from the anime version. For example, after the conclusion of the rainy season, Takao was unable to visit the park during the only rainy morning that summer because he had scheduled to visit the footwear college he wanted to attend, disappointing Yukari who had hoped to see him. At the conclusion of the story, Yukari is seen wearing the shoes Takao had made for her. In the novel, Takao prepared to study abroad in Italy for his shoemaking, and had a party with his family. Before he was in Italy, he exchanged letters with Yukari every month or so, and ended up leaving his email address in one of them. Now with each other's email addresses, every message they sent avoided discussing personal issues such as if they were seeing anyone. In May 2018, he had some days off and decided to return to Tokyo, where he reunited with Yukari in the garden and delivered his promised shoes.
Characters
Takao Akizuki is a mature, hard-working 15-year-old first year high school student who hopes to become a shoemaker. On rainy mornings, he skips school to design shoes in the park. He is voiced by Miyu Irino in Japanese and Patrick Poole in English. In a scene depicting his childhood, he is voiced by Wataru Sekine in Japanese and Blake Shepard in English. He made a silent cameo appearance at the end of Your Name, another film of Makoto Shinkai.Makoto Shinkai on Twitter. January 3, 2018.
Yukari Yukino is the mysterious 27-year-old woman Takao meets in the park on rainy mornings. Takao later learns that she is a classical-Japanese teacher at his high school, and that she, too, is skipping, but due to her students bullying her. She is voiced by Kana Hanazawa in Japanese and Maggie Flecknoe in English (Katy Vaughn in Your Name). She also appeared in Your Name, teaching some old words for "dusk" in Mitsuha's class, including which is important to the plot.
Takao's 47-year-old mother is divorced from Takao's father, and is focused more on her love life than her family life. She is voiced by Fumi Hirano in Japanese and Shelley Calene-Black in English.
Takao's 26-year-old brother, who leaves home to live with his girlfriend, dismisses Takao's shoe-making as a whim. He is voiced by Takeshi Maeda in Japanese and Crash Buist in English.
Shota's 24-year-old girlfriend is friendly with Takao and fascinated by his shoe-making. She is voiced by Yuka Terasaki in Japanese and Brittney Karbowski in English.
Matsumoto is Takao's classmate and friend, as well as Satō's boyfriend. He is voiced by Suguru Inoue in Japanese and Mike Yager in English.
Satō is a second year student in Takao's high school and friend. She is voiced by Megumi Han in Japanese and Allison Sumrall in English.
Always surrounded by her friends, Aizawa is a third year student in Takao's high school and the source of Yukari's problems at school. She is voiced by Mikako Komatsu in Japanese and Hilary Haag in English.
Production
The Garden of Words was directed by Makoto Shinkai, who also wrote the original story and screenplay. He was responsible for the storyboards, animation composite, key animation, and editing. According to Shinkai, his numerous roles in the production of his works are due to the small size of the company, and in this film, it allowed him to tailor many elements of the film to more accurately portray his ideas.
The animated film was produced by Shinkai Creative, CoMix Wave Films, and the producer was Noritaka Kawaguchi. Kenichi Tsuchiya was the animation director and was responsible for character design, while Hiroshi Takiguchi was the art director. Planning for the film began in the spring of 2012 and was announced on December 24 of that year. The Japanese release was initially slated for the first half of 2013. Production took only six months, starting with location scouting by Shinkai around Shinjuku. Production officially started after he had created storyboards based on the photos he took.
Shinkai was approached in early 2013 about adapting the material into a manga, which was then done by Midori Motohashi. In April, Shinkai stated that he was not contributing to the adaptation, leaving the work entirely to the manga artist. However, he did express interest in seeing the finished product.
Inspirations, motifs, and metaphors According to Shinkai's announcement of the film early during its production, The Garden of Words was his first attempt at making a love story using the traditional Japanese meaning of "love". During the era of the Man'yōshū, the native Japanese words today known as were starting to be written using kanji, and the word for "love", koi (today written ) was written as , or "lonely sadness". As noted by Shinkai, a more modern concept of "romance", represented by , came about by Western influence. The Garden of Words emphasizes the original meaning of koi—a "longing for someone in solitude"—but in a modern setting. Loneliness is the central element of the film, according to Shinkai. In an interview, he said he created the film with the hope of cheering up people who feel lonely or incomplete in their social relations. However, he made a point that "this movie doesn't treat loneliness as something that must be fixed."
Although the story's central theme is loneliness, it uses shoes and rain as motifs, along with Man'yōshū poetry and the Japanese garden in which it is set. Although rain is typically seen as sad and gloomy, in The Garden of Words it makes the world more vivid and protects the two main characters from the reality of their lives and the limitations imposed by society.
According to Shinkai, shoes were a metaphor for life as Yukari learned to walk again, while Takao's shoe-making typified their relationship. Similarly, Yukari's choice of food and beverages—initially beer and chocolate, due to a stress-induced taste disorder—was a metaphor for her emotional health.
In many of Shinkai's films, sad endings resulting from misunderstandings and unrequited feelings are common. According to Shinkai, his stories are intended to encourage teenagers as they learn to cope with these commonplace experiences. In an interview, he admitted that he had been accustomed to being turned down by women, and felt that his stories were encouraging because his characters continue to try, despite being unsuccessful at love. The Garden of Words also illustrated how people do not mature as linearly or elegantly as we often assume. Shinkai himself could relate with Yukari in not feeling as smart or mature at age 27, stating, "We're all still just children at age 27," a point that voice actress Kana Hanazawa also agreed with.