Youth is not a time of life; it is a state
of mind. . .
For her
first stop motion animation, the young puppet animator Aki Kōno (河野亜季, b.
1985) was inspired by the famous poem “Youth” by Samuel Ullman (1840-1924). In
the tradition of Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata” (1927) or Robert
Frost’s “The Road Not
Taken” (1916), Ullman’s “Youth” teaches a kind of Horatian Carpe diem philosophy on how life should
be lived.
Ullman, a
German Jew who immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a
boy and served in the Confederate Army, is a rare example of a poet who is not
that well known in the English-speaking world but has a high degree of fame in
Japan. His poem “Youth” was brought to
Japan by General Douglas MacArthur,
who kept a framed copy of the poem on the wall of his Tokyo office during the
Occupation of Japan and regularly quoted the poem in his speeches.
According to
Margaret England Armbrester, a
Japanese businessman by the name of Yoshio
Okada read about MacArthur’s love of the poem in the December 1945 issue of
Reader’s Digest. He found the poem very moving and translated
it into Japanese to display in his own office.
Through word of mouth, the poem eventually gained renown in the Japanese
media and became quite popular (Samuel
Ullman and “Youth”: the Life, the Legacy, 1993, p. ix). The poem remains much loved by Japanese businessmen. In fact, co-founder of Sony Akio Morita (1921-99) and a number of
other prominent Japanese executives were instrumental in saving Ullman’s Birmingham,
Alabama home and turning it into a museum (See: Akio Morita
Library). The Birmingham
Boys Choir even went to Japan in 2009 and performed a song version of the
poem for audiences there.
There was more than one
version of the poem, but the following is considered the standard:
Youth
Youth is not a time of
life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and
supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor
of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a
temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for
adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than
a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by
deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the
skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust
bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or
sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing
child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the
center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it
receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from
the infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are
down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of
pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials
are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at
eighty.
Source: Samuel
Ullman Museum, Birmingham, Alabama
Aki Kōno’s puppet
animation is set during the Second World War.
An active soldier dies (possibly kills himself?) and his comrade finds
him with a letter to his mother clutched in his hand. The injured comrade takes the letter to the
man’s mother but he unknowingly just misses seeing her as she walks in her geta-clad feet in the opposite direction
down the street. He sees posters
advertising a Pierrot performance for children and as the mother is not at home
he decides to watch the show. He enjoys
the Pierrot performance so much that it moves him to tears, for the horror of
war has meant that he had almost forgotten how to smile. When he later calls again at the elderly
mother’s house he suddenly realizes that she is the actor behind Pierrot. The film’s poignant message is that age does
not matter when one is young at heart – or in the words of Ullman: “Youth is
not a time of life; it is a state of mind.”
The animated short has no dialogue, though Kōno does impart additional
story information using occasional inter-titles. The lack of dialogue matches well with the
Pierrot theme. The nostalgic atmosphere
of the film is created subtly with two songs: a haunting rendition of the Kyūshū
folk song “Itsuki Lullaby” (五木の子寺唄/Itsuki no Komoriuta) sung by Hideko Seno, and the melancholy strains
of Claude Debussy’s “Claire de lune” (piano for both songs: Misaki Takada). The expressive puppets are beautifully crafted
and the puppet movements are excellent for such a young animator.
Aki Kōno made Youth
during her undergraduate studies at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in
Kyoto (2008). She went on to do her
graduate studies at Tokyo Univeristy of the Arts where she made a beautiful
silhouette animation called Promise (約束 / Yakusoku,
2011). Check out her website to learn more about her animation,
illustration, and other art projects. She has posted the film on Youtube: