Exploring Tenmon's Music

Contextualizing Tenmon

The name of Tenmon is intrinsically connected with the name of Shinkai Makoto, one of the most promising and prolific animation directors of recent years in Japan. A typical representative of that segment of the Generation X born in the 1970s, described by Simon Sinek in 2014 as "overlooked and hardworking,"¹ Tenmon—born in Tokyo in 1971 as Shirakawa Atsushi—started his career as composer of sound backgrounds for games at Nihon Falcom Corporation in 1990 as one of the members of Falcom Sound Team JDK. During his time at Falcom, Tenmon composed music for various games, most notably Brandish (1991–98), Ys (1993–2001) and The Legend of Heroes (1994–99). At some point in his late twenties, unhappy over the misrepresentation of his generation in the local entertainment industry, particularly in manga, anime, and video games, Tenmon decided to cooperate with Shinkai Makoto, whom he had met during their work at Falcom, in their pursuit to find ways to express the yearnings and desires of their generation. Their first anime work, a fiveminute "short" black-and-white movie titled She and Her Cat (彼女と彼女の猫), was released in 1999. Encouraged by its success, they released a second short movie in 2002, titled Voices of a Distant Star (ほしのこえ, literally "Voices of the Stars"). Voices of a Distant Star turned out to be their breakthrough work, which allowed them to definitely quit their day jobs at Falcom, and to dedicate themselves entirely to delivering further animation works. Together, they worked on three more animation features: The Place Promised In Our Early Days (雲のむこう、約束の場所, literally "Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place") released in 2004; Five Centimeters per Second (秒速5センチメートル) (2007); and Children Who Chase Lost Voices (星を追うこども, literally "Children Who Chase Stars") (2011).

The main characteristic of these animation works might be labeled as the "Shinkai-Tenmon combination," is their particular focus on the intimacy of individual emotional and mental states, rather than on rescuing the world, or on suggesting grand solutions to current international crisis. As a director, Shinkai Makoto strives to describe in his anime the lives of average individuals in their everyday joys and struggles—without berating them or advising them in the name of efficiency and happiness, but simply accepting them as they appear. Correspondingly, Tenmon's music addresses major themes visually displayed in Shinkai's animation works from an investigative angle, with musical structures and impulses actively participating in the narrative discourse, on an equal level with the animated images. From this symbiotic approach to existential questions of their time, a fresh artistic paradigm emerges, with kindness and acceptance at its very core, and striving to employ a variety of expression modes that could presumably lead to greater levels of empathy and self-awareness among audiences.

In accordance with these preliminary observations, this article approaches Tenmon's music along three stages identified in his compositional strategy: from the active negotiation between visual and musical images in She and Her Cat and Voices of a Distant Star; through the more reflexive construction of auditive sceneries in vibrant dialogue with the plotlines and the emotional design in The Place Promised in Our Early Days and Five Centimeters per Second; until it reaches stylistic maturity in Children Who Chase Lost Voices. These musical architectures slowly, but decidedly turn into independent entities to highlight and deepen the visual and narrative constructions, metamorphosing within the complex architecture of each artwork into powerful modes of expression, subtly contributing to the subliminal creation of rich, alternative worldviews.

Methodologically, the article draws on work interviews and informal discussions with Shinkai Makoto back in 2006–7, when he was still at the beginning of his career as an animation director and his cooperation with Tenmon was flourishing. The function of music in his animation works—with particular focus on Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days—was an important element in our conversations. Furthermore, an extensive and specialized literature survey was conducted on anime and Japanese animation, as well as their significant contextualization both within the local and the international entertainment industry. From a contentrelated perspective, this article aims at...