Whether going to the countryside to see his parents or traveling the country to present his movies, Makoto Shinkai was seeing more and more deserted places and deserted buildings in Japan, due to the country's aging demographics. He wondered why Japanese people have prayers for groundbreaking ceremonies, but not when the buildings are abandoned, unlike what happens for people. That's why he made the movie about mourning for places.
Makoto Shinkai cites the short story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" and the novel "Kafka on the Shore," both by Haruki Murakami, as well the anime film Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja (1989) as the main inspirations for this film.
The scene where the little Suzume is with her mother playing and talking about the chair was directly based on reality.
When Makoto Shinkai came back home after the shooting, his little daughter was always around him asking if he "already finish the movie or not". And he just always answered "No, not yet!".
While the movie did very well at the Japanese box office and surpassed the 10-million ticket threshold, it became in April 2023 the most successful Japanese animated movie of all time at the Chinese box office, and the second most successful Japanese movie after Kimi yo fundo no kawa wo watare (1976), after only ten days of exploitation, with more than 80 million dollars. It also became the most successful Japanese movie of all time in Korea with more than 5 million tickets sold (i.e. 39 millions dollars), a threshold that had never been met before for a Japanese movie.
Makoto Shinkai: "At first, I wanted to turn this story into a movie about Suzume and another girl journeying. Why I even wanted to go in that direction in the first place is because I personally felt a little bit tired of telling the very traditional romance story. I felt that in Your Name. (2016), I [did] everything that I possibly could in terms of "boy meets girl" and "will they, won't they, will they meet." That element of romance is very relatable to the masses, which is why it was a subject matter that resonated with a large audience. Personally, because I've done that so many times, I pivoted. I wanted to pivot to a more sisterhood type of romantic story, but I had to change that because my producer said, "You may be tired of these romantic stories, but your audience loves it." So in order to not make it too much of a romance, I decided to make her primary interest a chair. In terms of the LGBTQ commentary, it's not something that I'm actively trying to write or not write or [is] a conscious decision. But with this film, Suzume as the main character, it works. But I think it would also work had she been a boy or had she been non-binary. It's not necessarily the context of male/female; it's about a human overcoming something. In my future films as well, I want to focus on that human story as opposed to too much commentary on gender or sex."