A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965)

This 15-minute stop motion animation is animportant landmark in Japanese animation history.  AWonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) is thefirst independent film by TadanariOkamoto (岡本忠成, 1932-90) after he founded his ownstudio Echo Productions (EchoKabushiki-gaisha) in 1964.  It isalso the first stop motion / puppet animation to win the NoburoOfuji Award, which for 1965 was jointly awarded to Okamoto and experimentalanimation pioneer Yōji Kuri.  Okamoto was to go on to win this prestigiousaward more times than any other animator.

A Wonderful Medicine is an adaptation of the short-short story Nusunda Shorui (盗んだ書類) by novelist Shinichi Hoshi (1926-1997), acclaimedfor his “short-short” science fiction stories – many of which were illustratedby another Ofuji award-winning animator MakotoWada and one of Kuri’s fellow AnimationSannin no Kai members Hiroshi Manabe.  Short-short stories belong to the genre flash fiction, and as such tend to be notonly short but also boast fresh, innovative storylines and unexpectedendings. 

The evil genius imagines the medicine giving him powers of defying gravity / the winding road leading up to the scientist's lab

In an opening reminiscent of To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock,1955), an open top convertible winds its way up a coastal hill to a lookoutpoint.  But instead of Cary Gant andGrace Kelly, the car holds a tall, skinny, evil genius with a Poirot moustache andhis short, checked-cap-wearing lackey. The two men are targeting a moustachioed elderly scientist who quirkilyhas a boy assistant and a talking crow. 

Posing as a potential customer, the evilgenius spies on the scientist and overhears him making a new discovery.  Believing this new “wonderful medicine” to besomething useful for his plans for world domination, the evil genius and his lackeyplan a bold mission to steal the “wonderful medicine.”  Comical at every turn, they are almost foiledby the alarm systems and the talking crow, but in the end their cunning allowsthem make off with their prize.  In ahilarious twist at the end (spoiler alert), the lackey – who is coerced intobeing the guinea pig – takes some of the “wonderful medicine” which turns outto be a cure for turning a wicked heart into a good and wholesome heart.  Overcome by his new-found sense of morally upstanding principles, the lackey confesses his crime to the scientist, who is delightedto learn that his new medicine works as intended.

Examples of special effects

Compared to Okamoto’s graduate work Mirror (1960), one can see an improvement in thefluidity of character movement and general expressiveness of the characters –skills which Okamoto acquired during his period working under Tadahito Mochinaga at MOMProductions.  In an amusing touch, thescientist and the evil genius, whose mouths cannot be seen, both talk via their moustaches going up and down.  Theestablishing shots, both exterior and interior, set the scene beautifully.  The most innovative sequences occur when thecrow tries desperately to prevent the thieves from taking the medicine.  Scribbles and even foam have been overlaid ontop of the scene in order to depict the chaos of the fight in a dynamicfashion – I am guessing that as with Eastern European puppet films of thisperiod (hugely influential on Okamoto throughout his career), and indeed aswith Kihachirō Kawamoto’s earlypuppet films, this film was shot on the horizontal surface of an animationtable with the camera looking down from above. This would have allowed Okamoto to add depth and special effects on plates ofglasses placed at different camera distances above the puppets.

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

A Wonderful Medicine appears on the firstDVD of the Collected Works of Tadanari Okamoto (JP only), which I reviewed for Midnight Eye.  This review belongs to my series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, 1984)

When I was a girl there were fewheroines in animation with whom I could identify.  Snow White and Cinderella were too good and unattainablybeautiful.  I was a bit of a tomboy, so Irecall doing some Wonder Woman and She-Ra: Princess of Power role playing, butI found their sexy costumes a bit off putting. It is such a shame that Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ,1984) was not dubbed and released in North America in its original version, forI suspect my then ten-year-old self would have fallen in love with the gutsyyoung heroine Nausicaä.

My suspicions were confirmed when I watched the film onDVD with my two children.  Both Lukas andAnna loved the film, but my young daughter really warmed to Nausicaä.  Her heart melted in the scene where Nausicaäadopts her furry fox-squirrel companion Teto. She cheered during the fight scenes and both children were excited bythe dynamic animation of the scenes in which Nausicaä is flying her Mehve jetglider.  They had no great love forKushana, the Princess of Tolmekia but warmed to the buffoonery of heraide-de-camp Kurotowa .

My children are also bothnature-lovers and Nausicaä appealed to their interest inthe environment.  The environmentalistmessage of Nausicaä is even more importanttoday than it was in the 1980s, and is so well executed that it won the film theseal of approval of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).  Nausicaäis set in a future world in which is facing an environmental apocalypse.  Humanity clings to survival on a planet thatis being taken over by the polluted “Sea of Corruption.”  The few communities (the Valley of the Wind,the Pejite, the Tolmekia, and the Dorok) that are left have begun to fight eachother for the dwindling resources.  Nausicaä is one of the few who recognizes that in order for people to survive, they need to find a way to live in harmony with the other creatures of the world suchas the Ohmu – giant crustaceans that resemble pillbugs – whereas others see violenceand warfare as their only means of survival.

Flashback sequence animated in a different style.

This is not a film that one can just pop into a DVD player and leavekids to consume alone.  There is a lot ofviolence, including the murder of innocents / the defenceless both human andnon-human, and challenging themes (senseless destruction of the environment, warfare,and so on).  I think the part that upsetmy children the most was the cruel torture of the Ohmu by the Pejites.  Although these are difficult topics, I foundthe film really invigorated my kids to talk about how the lessons of the filmcan be applied to their own everyday lives. From discouraging their friends from harming insects and other smallcreatures to the day-to-day things we can do to better the natural world aroundus, Nausicaä inspired my children tostand up for what they believe in.

In addition to being a terrific story, Nausicaä is also a fine example of animation.  It won Miyazaki his second NoburoOfuji Award for innovation at the Mainichi Film Concours.  Particularly notable are the exhilarating flying sequences with Nausicaä on the Mehve and the God Warrior sequence animated by Hideaki Anno (of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame).  My favourite sequence was the flashback / dream sequence of Nausicaä's youth (image above), which was animated in a completely different style than the rest of the film.

This review is part of Nishikata Film's series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.

The Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows (1972-1980), Part II

I remember that once in an English Literature class we were asked:“If you could travel back in time to be in the audience for any performance inhistory, what would you like to see?”  Myanswer at the time was to see Fred and Adele Astaire dance on Broadway.  Today, I think my answer would be to attend theKawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows. 

The first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (川本+ 岡本パペットアニメーショウ) was in October 1972, one year after Tadanari Okamoto had held aretrospective of his own work.  Asmentioned in Part I, Okamoto had been the one to suggest a joint event with his friend Kihachiro Kawamoto.  Even with the work of twoanimators, they still did not have enough to fill a programme, so Kawamoto cameup with the idea of including live puppet theatre.   Many of the live puppet performances were writtenand directed by Kawamoto himself. 

The events allowed not only these two acknowledged masters of puppetanimation to shine, but also gave the staff who worked for them an opportunity to show offtheir own individual talents.  At thefourth show in 1975, for example, Hirokazu Minegishi presented his own shortfilm The Daughter of Osaka (Ōsaka no ojyōsan). Minegishi worked for both Okamoto and Kurosawa throughout the 1970s and1980s, and now does puppet animation under director Tsuneo Goda for Dwarf (Domo-kun,Komaneko, etc.)

According to Kihachiro Kawamoto: Animation and Puppet Master(Kadakawa Shoten, 1994), these are  the animation screening programmes for the Anime-Shows(KK=Kawamoto, TO=Okamoto):

1^st Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (October 1972)

The Demon (KK)

Chikotan (TO)

The Monkey and the Crab (TO)

The Mochi-Mochi Tree (TO)

2^nd Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (October 1973)

Tabi (KK)

TheTravelling Companion (TO)

PraiseBe to Small Ills (TO)

Bach Omnibus (Hiromi Wakasa,Yoko Higashikawa, Hiroshi Jinsenji)

3^rd Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (October 1974)

Sheep Song (Hitsuji no Uta, Hiromi Wakasa)

All You Need Is Love (Ai kososubete, Satoru Yoshida)

Get off (Noboru Shinogi)

A Poet’s Life (KK)

December Song (TO)

Five Small Stories (TO)  

4^th Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (October 1975)

Stripe (Hiromi Wakasa)

The Daughter of Osaka (Ōsaka no ojyōsan, Hirokazu Minegishi)

Three Stories (Mitsu no Hanashi, Kimura Hiroshi/Tamotsu Shiihara/TadakazuTakahashi)

Hana-Ori (KK)

Urameshi Denwa (TO)

The Water Seed (TO)

5^th Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (October 1976)

From Cherry Blossom With Love (TO)

The Strong Bridge (TO)

Dojoji Temple (KK)

Are wa dare? (TO)

Reprise Screening Event (October 1979)

The Strong Bridge (TO)

The Ningen Ijime Series (TO)

Dojoji Temple (KK)

Are wa Dare? (TO)

Chikotan (TO)

6^th Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show (October 1980)

TV Commercials (TO)

The Strong Bridge (TO)

Ningen Ijime Series Part 4: Oshizuka ni (TO)

Panache the Squirrel (TO)

House of Flames (KK)

Towards the Rainbow (TO)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Source:Kihachiro Kawamoto: Animation and Puppet Master (Kadakawa Shoten, 1994)

See these Films for Yourself:

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

The Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows (1972-1980), Part I

Ever since reading about Tadanari Okamotoand Kihachiro Kawamoto’s joint Puppet Anime-Shows (川本+ 岡本パペットアニメーショウ) on Anipages, I have wantedto learn more about them.  Had the two Japanesemasters of puppet animation met working on puppets for stop motion pioneer TadahitoMochinaga’s MOM Productions – the studio that famously did the puppet animationfor Rankin/Bass’s beloved children’s classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) – or had they met earlier? How did the idea for the Puppet Anime-Shows develop?  What was screened at the events?

According to Kawamoto's account in Kihachiro Kawamoto: Animation and Puppet Master (Kadakawa Shoten, 1994), Kawamoto and Okamoto met for thefirst time at the farewell party Mochinaga hosted for Kawamoto when he departedfor Prague to study under Jiri Trnka in 1962. Okamoto’s enthusiasm for the future of puppet animation in Japan madequite an impression on Kawamoto and became the basis for their friendship.

Shortly after Kawamoto’s return to Japan,Okamoto quit MOM Productions and founded his own animation studio in 1964 whichhe named Echo Productions.  Okamoto’sfirst independent film A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) impressed Kawamoto with its fresh style and subjectmatter.  However, from the very beginningit was clear that the two men had very different approaches to puppetanimation.  Okamoto was able to producemany more films than Kawamoto because he took advantage of the need foreducational films for schools.  Thismeant that Okamoto had a steady source of income for producing animated puppetfilms and employed a studio system of animating.  He employed a team oftalented artists including Sumiko Hosaka, Fumiko Magari, and Hirokazu Minegishi to assist with the construction of puppets and assisting with the animation.   

In contrast, Kawamoto worked as anindependent artist in the 1970, making the dolls himself, making theircostumes, constructing the sets, and doing the animation with very little moneyfor staff to assist him.  Much ofKawamoto’s work was funded by making puppets for NHK’s children’s programmingsuch as Okaasan to Issho (1966), Cinderella (1973), and Yan Yan Mū-kun(1973-75). 

In the early days of their independentwork, Kawamoto and Okamoto began to spent a lot of their free time together,not only to talk about their work but also going on ski trips and otherexcursions together.  It was on one suchouting that Okamoto, who had already hosted a solo show of his own work, suggested putting together a joint puppet animation show.

In hosting their Puppet Anime-Shows,Okamoto and Kawamoto faced two major obstacles: finding enough material toscreen and funding the event.  Becausepuppet animation is a time consuming process, Kawamoto could only complete anew work every couple of years.  EvenOkamoto, with his larger staff, could only produce two to four short films ayear.  With only a handful of new works,they needed something to fill out the programme to make it a proper event.  Kawamoto came up with the idea of includinglive puppet theatre performances.   Notonly would this lengthen the programme, but live shows could also incorporatethe humorous aspects of puppet performances.   

Hosting these Puppet Anime-Shows in addition to their usual puppetanimation production schedules was hard going for Kawamoto, Okamoto, and theirstaff.  The positive reaction of the audience tothe screenings and performances outweighed any hardships that they experiencedand made it all worthwhile for them. Kawamoto has said that if it were not for Okamoto and the PuppetAnime-Shows his work would never have amounted to much.  The period during which they held the PuppetAnime-Shows was the time that Kawamoto felt that he truly became anartist.  Ten years after the curtainclosed on the final Puppet-Anime Show, Kawamoto was able to pay a final tributeto his friend and puppet show collaborator by completing The Restaurant of ManyOrders (注文の多い料理店, 1991), the film that Okamotoleft unfinished when he died suddenly of liver cancer at the age of 62.   

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

What puppet films were screened at the Puppet Anime-Shows?  Read Part II to find out.

To learn more read: 

• Kihachiro Kawamoto: Animation and Puppet Master (KadakawaShoten, 1994)
• Tadanari Okamoto: The Heart of Animation (Benjamin Ettinger, Anipages, 2005)
• Kawamoto Kihachirō: Ningyō – kono inochi aru mono (Heibonsha, 2007)
• Midnight Eye Interview: Kihachiro Kawamoto (Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye, 2004)

AVAILABLE ON DVD:

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

Towards the Rainbow (虹に斑って, 1977)

The great puppet animator Tadahito Okamoto (岡本 忠成, 1932-90)was at his most prolific during the 1970s, sometimes creating two or even threeshort films per year.  The most beautifulof these is Towards the Rainbow (虹に斑って/Niji ni Mukatte, 1977): a story of love conquering all odds.  The 18 minute short is adapted from the folk tale Futari ga kaketaHashi (ふたりがかけた橋) by Etsuo Okawa about two younglovers separated by a river. 

The story is narrated by screen legend Kyoko Kishida, who lent her voice to numerouspuppet animations by both Okamoto and his friend and colleague KihachiroKawamoto.  The story is interwoven withthe music of folk singer Kōhei Oikawa, who adapted the story Futari ga kaketaHashi into song for the film.  Okamoto had usedOikawa once before for the music for Praise Be For Small Ills (南無一病息災, 1973).

Okamoto sets the scene with an ancient,creased map of two communities in the mountains that are separated by a fastflowing river.  The divided communitiesfeud with each other with the young boys calling names and throwing rocks at eachother across the deep gorge.  A younggirl on one side of the river collects flowers which she offers the boys on theother side of the river as a gesture of goodwill, but she is cruelly struckdown by stones.  A young boy tries tostop his older peers from continuing to throw stones at her and is struck downhimself. 

From that moment on a friendshipblossoms between the girl and boy.  Oneday, he brings her a present in a basket which he tries to send to her side ofthe river along a rope, but some boys tear the rope out of her hands and thebasket washes away in the river.  Inspite of all these obstacles, their love for each other only grows stronger.  When the boy grows into a young man, he bravesthe terrible current of the river with his raft to visit his love on her sideof the river.  Their love seemsimpossible for both are bound by responsibilities to their own families andcommunities. 

The young man decides to build abridge across the river and sets to work with supporters from hisvillage.  However, the river is too strongand knocks the bridge down.  In herdistress over the seeming impossibility of their romance, the woman falls intothe river and the young man rescues her.  As she lies in shock in his arms, the couple sees a magical display of white cranes forming a bridgeover the river and the woman experiences a vision in which she dances on a rainbow joining the twocommunities.  This vision inspires themwith the idea of building a new kind of bridge that does not need a supportbeam.  The tale promotes the value of devotion, dedication, and perseverance.

Towards the Rainbow is a truly spectacular stop motion animation.  The puppets were handcrafted out of wood andcloth and the misty backgrounds and sets – which are similar to those used inOkamoto’s previous film The Strong Bridge (ちからばし, 1976)  – have been made with an eye to historical accuracy.  Okamoto is said to have done extensiveresearch about how such bridges were designed and constructed in the period inwhich the film is set.  The attention todetail practised by Okamoto and his puppet and art designers can be seen in everything from the men having stubble on their faces after a long day of work to the use ofa professional choreographer to assist with the young woman’s dance on the rainbow inthe dream sequence.

In the opening sequence the young girl is shown picking flowers in afield of higanbana or red spider lilies – which fans of Japanese cinema willrecognize from Yasujiro Ozu’s film Equinox Flower (彼岸花/Higanbana, 1958).  Higanbana – which also appear on thecover of the original storybook – usually bloom around the autumn equinox near countrysidegraveyards and are associated withthe journey of the soul into the next world. It is clear that the bridges being built in Towards the Rainbow, are notjust literal but spiritual as well.  Thefilm comes full circle, beginning and ending in autumn with the narratordeclaring that the young heroine in her bridal garb is more beautiful than the autumn leaves.

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Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.2

Director

Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成

Original Story

Etsuo Okawa 大川悦生

Screenplay

Kunpei Nagakura 永倉薫平　

Yoko Higashikawa 東川洋子　

Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成

Animation

Seishiro Fujimori 藤森誠代　

Hirokazu Minegishi 峰岸裕和　

Hiroshi Taisenji  奏泉寺博　

Tokiko Ōmukai 大向とき子　

Yumiko Yoshida 横田由美子

Art Design

Takashi Komae 小前隆　

Masami Tokuyama 徳山正美　

Chizuko Makisaka 槇坂千鶴子　

Minoru Kujirai 鯨井実

Puppets

Junko Hosaka 保坂純子　

Yoshiko Kumahiko 阿彦よし子　

Sumie Ishii 石井寿美恵

Cinematography

Minoru Tamura 田村実

Editor

Naoko Aizawa 相沢尚子

Sound

Isamu Koufuji 甲藤勇

Narration

Kyoko Kishida  岸田今日子

Choreography

Saburō Satō 佐藤三郎

Music 

(composition/performance)

Kōhei Oikawa 及川恒平

Musicians

Paper Land  ペーパーランド　

Shuji Honda 本田修二　

Makoto Kouda幸田実　

Masayuki Nakatomi 中富雅之　

Kifu Mitsuhashi 三橋貴風 (shakuhachi)

Credits courtesy of Animations Wiki

Towards the Rainbow won TadanariOkamoto his 5^th Noburo Ofuji Award at the 16^th Mainichi FilmConcours.  This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

text © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Dōjōji (道成寺, 1976)

The Buddhist temple of Dōjō in Hidakagawa, Wakayama Prefecture is home to many National Treasures (国宝/kokuhō) and Important Cultural Properties (重要文化財/jūyō bunkazai). These include scrolls from the Muromachi period (c.1336-1573) called the Dōjō-ji Engi Emaki (紙本著色道成寺縁起) which depict the story of the lady Kiyohime and the monk Anchin. The story of this ill-fated pair has been told and retold for centuries.

Most English reviews of Kihachirō Kawamoto’s award-winning puppet animation Dōjōji (道成寺, 1976), describe it as a retelling of the 19th century Kabuki play Musume Dōjōji (The Maiden of Dojo Temple) which is still quite popular today. The Kabuki and Bunraku versions of the story were adapted from the Noh play Dōjōji (Dojo Temple) which dates back to the 14th century. The earliest known version of the tale is believed to date back as far as the 11th century (Donald Keene, Twenty Plays of the Nō Theatre, p. 238).

While Kon Ichikawa’s lost (and recently recovered) puppet adaptation of Musume Dōjōji (The Girl at Dojo Temple / 娘道成寺, 1945) is definitely an adaptation of the Kabuki version – complete with Kiyohime’s dance – I believe that Kawamoto’s adaptation is actually drawn from the much more sinister Noh version.  The main plot points, thematic concerns and even the title all point to the Noh drama as being his main source of inspiration.  He has also clearly drawn on the ancient depictions of the tale of Kiyohime as inspiration for the design of his sets and puppets.

Anchin and his elderly mentor are on their yearly pilgrimage to Kumano. Along the way, they take shelter in the home of Kiyohime. She falls in love with Anchin and tries to seduce him, but he resists her. He uses his devotion to Buddha as his excuse for not falling for her charms. She begs and pleads with him, but to no avail. When she discovers that Anchin and his companion have left, she chases after him barefoot like a wild woman, paying no heed to her bleeding feet. When she finally catches up with Anchin, he no longer sees her human form but sees her as an oni (demon).

Anchin crosses the Hidaka River in his effort to escape Kiyohime and begs the boatman to help him. When Kiyohime arrives at the river, the boatman refuses to help her cross. Undeterred, she flings herself into the water in desperation and transforms into a serpent as she swims across. Meanwhile, Anchin reaches the Dōjō Temple and asks the priests there for assistance. They hide him under the giant bell. When Kiyohime, in the form of a serpent arrives, she wraps herself around the bell and burns him alive. She then returns to her human form and throws herself into the river. When the priests raise the bell, all that remains of Anchin is his skeleton with his Buddhist prayer beads unscathed still clutched in prayer in his hands. The priests begin to pray and a breeze filled with cherry blossoms blows the skeleton into dust.

The “woman as temptress” is an age old motif in mythology from around the world, included by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (pp. 101-5) in his elucidation of the monomyth. While the feminist in me recoils from this depiction of a wrathful woman – I am reminded by the famous line by William Congreve "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." (The Mourning Bride, 1697, III.viii) – the pragmatist in me recognizes that the woman is functioning as metaphor for the temptations of life. Anchin is on a spiritual journey, like Campbell’s hero-knight figure, and Kiyohime represents the obstacles that life throws in the way of his journey.

In his animated films, Kawamoto was interested in depicting the Buddhist concepts of the hardship and suffering of human life. It was actually during the making of Dōjōji that the composer Teizō Matsumura (松村禎三, 1929-2007) gave him the complete works of Shinobu Orikuchi (折口信夫, 1887-1953) (Animation Meister interview). It was Orikuchi’s story The Book of the Dead which was to result Kawamoto’s last masterpiece, which I consider one of the most beautiful expressions of Buddhist philosophy on film.

Stylistically, Dōjōji is also a masterpiece of puppet animation. The puppets have been masterfully carved and dressed, and the sets meticulously painted. The colours and seasonal elements (spring flowers like sakura and forsynthia) have all been carefully chosen according to traditional Japanese customs. As I mentioned in my review of The Demon (Oni, 1972), the unusual mixture of 2D (watercolour backgrounds) and 3D objects (the puppets, the Bodhisattva statuette) was achieved by the use of horizontal sets shot from above with sheets of glass used to add layers to the image. Many of the scenes resemble Yamato-e paintings in the way in which set elements are places in the set. Some of the most technically stunning scenes in the film for me are the depiction of the moving waves when Kiyohime transforms into the serpent and the scene when the serpent wraps herself around the bell.

Dōjōji won Kihachirō Kawamoto much acclaim including the Émile Renault Prize and Audience Prize at Annecy in 1976. He then went on to win his third Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation at the Mainichi Film Awards.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

This film is available with purchase with English subtitles from cdjapan:

Kihachiro Kawamoto Sakuhin shu

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Credits

Music

Teizo Matsumura

Sets 

Tsuyuhiko Mibu
Suzushi Nakagawa

Puppets
Kihachiro Kawamoto
Hiromi Wakasa
Kaoko Takahashi

Camera
Minoru Tamura

Sound
Isamu Katto

Sound Effects
Iwao Takahashi

Editing
Hisako Aizawa

Lab
Toyo Laboratory

Animation
Kihachiro Kawamoto
Ryo Ozaki
Hirokazu Minegishi
Tokiko Omukai

Animation Special Effects
Hiroshi Jinsenji
Takashi Komae

Title Calligraphy 
Hideo Goto

Screenplay/Direction
Kihachiro Kawamoto

The Demon (鬼, 1972)

When Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本 喜八郎, 1925-2010) travelled to Prague in 1963 to visit the studios of Jiří Trnka (1912-1969), he was famously given the advice to look at his own country’s history of puppet traditions in order to improve his craft as a puppet animator. While he did throw himself into the study of the Bunraku theatre upon his return to Japan, he did not adapt any traditional Bunraku plays for his puppet films.  Instead, he looked to the wealth of legends from Japan's ancient past.

The Demon (鬼/Oni, 1972), which I think stands as Kawamoto’s first great masterpiece of puppet animation, is an adaptation of a tale from the 12th century anthology Konjaku Monogatari (今昔物語). The story concerns an ancient legend that says that when people grow old they turn into demons who will devour their own children. The story is told with title cards instead of a narrator with traditional musical accompaniment by Seiji Tsurusawa on shamisen and Goro Yamaguchi on shakuhachi. The music was also composed by Tsurusawa.

Two brothers live with their aged mother, the title cards tell us. The introduction to the story mixes puppets with a series of drawn images etched on black which sets up the story of the mother’s life of suffering. Born into this world to unfeeling parents, she was an outcast of her community as a child and suffered greatly at the hands of her husband. Her life has been truly wretched as she has only known illness and poverty. In the end, the title cards tell us, she has suffered a “human life inhuman without a trace of light.”

One day, while out hunting, the brother dressed in blue’s chonmage (topknot) is grasped by a ghostly hand from above. Unable to escape, the brother dressed in red rescues him by shooting the arm off using his bow and arrow. The brother in blue falls to the ground with the gruesome hand still grasping the chonmage. “A demon’s arm!” cry the brothers, and they run home in terror. When they arrive, they find their mother in bed with one of her arms gone. The mother transforms into an oni (demon) and dances with the disembodied arm. The film ends by relating to us the ancient superstition, ending with the observation “how horrible”.

In his early puppet films like The Demon, Dojoji (1976) and House of Flames (1979),  Kawamoto constructed horizontal sets and shot them from above. This is a technique which he had seen Břetislav Pojar (b. 1923) use during his 1963 visit to Eastern Europe (see the JMAF Animation Meister interview by Takayuki Oguchi). Using this technique, Kawamoto could also place images in the background and foreground using plates of glass, giving the film its Yamato-e look. The film looks absolutely stunning with its autumnal colour palette against black. I love the artistic flair of little touches like the bamboo forest and the twinkling fireflies.  The puppet movement is more refined than in his first independent puppet film The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (花折り/Hana-ori, 1968).  In fact, in some scenes the puppets almost look as if they are dancing.

The theme of suffering in the film comes from Kawamoto’s study of Buddhist philosophy - which is openly referenced in the art of the opening sequence (see above image). Each of his animated films tackles the theme of suffering in some way, particularly his final masterpiece The Book of the Dead (2005), which depicts a woman on the path to enlightenment.

The Demon won Kawamoto his first of six Noburo Ofuji awards – one of which was for his completion of his friend Tadanari Okamoto’s final film The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店, 1991).

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

This film is available with purchase with English subtitles from cdjapan:

Kihachiro Kawamoto Sakuhin shu

Or from the U.S.;

URSA minor BLUE (銀河の魚, 1993)

Shigeru Tamura’s animated short URSA minor BLUE (銀河の魚/Ginga no Sakana, 1993) begins with a simple scene that could be right out of an Ernest Hemingway novel: a grandfather fishing with his grandson. The grandson, Yuri, is quite able with the hand-thrown harpoon and he soon catches an impressive fish for their supper.  As they return home with their catch, Teshikai Utollo’s otherworldly music hints that all in this world may not be the same as in ours. The grandfather sends Yuri to find tomatoes for dinner and we discover that they have an indoor rain forest complete with a lemur-like creature whose eyes shine like headlights. The tomatoes that Yuri picks seem to pulsate with a strange light.

While the grandfather comically burns their dinner, Yuri ascends to the observatory above their home. Looking through an unusual telescope he discovers that the constellation of Ursa Minor appears to be missing a star. The pair set off in their rowboat again to try to find out what is going on. They pass through a talking forest and a rocky area with mythical flying beasts. Along the way, a walking and talking building approaches them and voices his concern that stars seem to be missing from the Milky Way. They reassure him that they are going to investigate and return the Milky Way to its original state.

As they head out over what appears to be open sea, Tamura (たむら しげる, b. 1949) shifts to an overhead perspective and we then realize that Yuri and his grandfather do not live in our world but rather above it. The sea that they are rowing across is the atmosphere and they are able to look down at a world that resembles ours. As they journey out into the universe, they witness a giant fish unlike any they have ever seen.  They come to a place where giants who seem hewn from rock appear to be forging stars on giant anvils and are greeted by the wizard who lives there. They soon learn that a giant fish has been eating the stars and the wizard presents Yuri with a magic harpoon and sends him on a mission to try to catch the fish in order to return the Milky Way to its normal state. Hence the Japanese title Ginga no Sakana, or Fish of the Milky Way.

The grandfather also refers to the Milky Way by its colloquial name Ama no gawa (天の川), or River of the Heavens, which suggested to me that Tamura was influenced by mythology in his creation of his fabulous world. In East Asian mythology it is said that the Milky Way resembles a kind of silvery river and mythological stories developed around this impression. The most famous is that of the stars Vega and Altair, who were said to be lovers (named Orihime and Hikoboshi in Japanese) separated by the Milky Way who could only meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month – a day celebrated in many parts of Japan as Tanabata (七夕/the evening of the seventh). The mythology surrounding the Milky Way has inspired much great literature – most famously Kenji Miyazawa’s Night of the Milky Way Railroad, which Tamura references by having a train pass under Yuri and his grandfather as they row across the sky. 

(Learn more about Anime Adaptations of Kenji Miyazawa)

As the English title suggests, colour is an important element of Tamura’s work. The predominant colour in this film is blue, but there are also wonderful scenes of green and orange when they visit the wizard. This style of filling the screen with bold colours is characteristic of Tamura’s aesthetic. His manner of completely filling the screen with colour reminded me of two younger animators: Tomoyoshi Joko – who also made a wonderful little film involving anthropomorphic buildings called simply Buildings (2008) – and Oscar winner Kunio Katō.  .  .  although Katō uses a more muted palette to fill the screen than the cheerful colours of Shigeru Tamura.

URSA minor BLUE won the Noburo Ofuji Award in 1993 and is available on DVD. The DVD extras include a music section where Teshiaki Utollo explains the motivations behind his expressive soundtrack, an illustration gallery, storyboards, layouts, interviews about the production with Tamura, Utollo, and producer Mitsuo Shionaga, and trailers for Tamura’s other animated works a piece of PHANTASMAGORIA (1995) and Glassy Ocean (1998). The soundtrack for URSA minor BLUE can also be purchased separately.  Check out more of Tamura's illustrations on his official homepage.  

Ginga no Sakana - URSA minor BLUE (JP only)

URSA minor BLUE (soundtrack on CD)

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

text © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011