Kodansha’s Noda Publishing Award ceremony recently honoured Makoto Shinkai for his contribution to the literary world. The 46-year-old filmmaker is most popular for his movies: Voices of a Distant Star, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, Your Name and Weathering With You.

The novelization for his latest film, Weathering With You (Tenki no ko) topped Oricon’s Bunko ranking chart with a whopping 511,159 copies. Needless to say, this award was well deserved by this talented director/writer.

However, this is not the first time Makoto has accomplished this feat. 3 years ago, a novelization of his movie: Your Name (Kimi no na wa), was a huge success as well and got #1 in the same ranking chart. Being his humble self, Makoto commented very modestly to this award:

“This was a big year for films. We made Your Name and Weathering With You, but in the overwhelming face of Disney and Hollywood, I’ve been wondering what kind of works we should create and what we can accomplish.”

He shared a source of inspiration for his novelization saying “Through writing novelizations, I’ve come to realize that novels bring young people in Japan to the theatre. There were many kids from elementary school to their teens telling me that they chose to write about my novelizations for their book report or that they came to know about the film through the book. I’m normally quite distant from [the world of publishing], but I was surprised, and then moved when I discovered that children are reading my books and getting introduced to the movies that way.”

About Kimi no Wa:

The film revolves around Mitsuha Miyamizu and Taki Tachibana as they attempt to unravel a mysterious link that connects them together across space. Mitsuha lives in a distant peaceful village of Itomori, whereas Taki lives in Tokyo. Their consciousness switches bodies as they go to sleep and they wake up in each other’s bodies. Trying to understand why this is happening, they bear with the conditions and eventually fall in love. This tale puts a fresh twist on love stories and is worth the watch.