Makoto Shinkai was born in Nagano prefecture in 1973.
In 2002, he debuted with self-produced Voices of a Distant Star, which won many awards including Best Public Submission at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 21. His first feature released in 2004, The Place Promised in Our Early Days won Best Animated Film in the 59th Mainichi Film Awards. In 2007, 5 Centimeters Per Second won Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Lancia Platinum Grand Prize at the Future Film Festival in Italy. In 2011, Children Who Chase Lost Voices was released nationwide and won the Golden Monkey King Award at the 8th China International Cartoon and Animation Festival. In 2013, The Garden of Words won Best Anime Feature Film in Germany’s Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film.
In 2016, Your Name was released to great commercial success, becoming the second-highest-grossing film behind Spirited Away (2001). At the 40th Japan Academy Prize, it won Excellent Animation of the Year and Screenplay of the Year, a first for an animated film. Also critically acclaimed overseas, it won many awards including Best Animated Feature Length Film at the 49th Sitges Film Festival, as well as Best Animated Film at the 42nd Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.