“‘One More Time, One More Chance’ also became the subject of an urban myth, with some members of the public coming to believe that it had been written in memory of a lover who had died in the 1995 Kobe Earthquake. This was not true, at least not for Yamazaki himself, although it is possible that at least part of the film’s 1990s success was that other listeners associated it with their own sense of bereavement.”

Over at All the Anime, I delve deep into the backstory and the historical resonances of the song that just drops into Makoto Shinkai’s Five Centimeters Per Second right at the end, which I regard as the musical equivalent in Japanese pop culture of Haruki Murakami’s “On Meeting My 100% Woman One Fine April Morning” (for which see here).