This
delightful early anime is the first animated short by Toei Dōga (now known as Toei Animation) Most of the animators who worked on the film –
Taiji Yabushita, Yasuji Mori, Akira Daikubara, et al. – had previously worked at the
animation studio Nichidō (Nihon Dōga-sha/日本動画株式会社, 1948-56) which was acquired by
Toei in 1956. Although Yabushita, the
co-founder of Nichidō, is the director of Kitty's
Graffiti (こねこのらくがき/Koneko no
Rakugaki, 1957), the character design and general look of the 13-minute
animation often gets attributed to Yasuji Mori.
Shot on
black-and-white film stock, and the film has no dialogue – much in the style of
a Tom and Jerry cartoon – and like Tom and Jerry, there is a cat chasing
mouse gag, but it is executed in an entirely different manner. A kitten is busy scribbling pictures on a
bare external wall of a house. His line
drawings are images typically drawn by a child: a horse in the sun, fish and a
crab blowing bubbles, a cat mother and kitten, a streetcar, traffic, a horse
and carriage, and a train on a long railway track with a tunnel at the
end. At the sound of a whistle blowing,
the drawing of a train comes to life and starts to rumble down the track. The kitty stops the train then notices a
terrible traffic jam of cars pushing and shoving each other on the portion of wall
where he had randomly drawn an assortment of vehicles. He quickly draws in a traffic police bear to
direct the cars more safely.
Pleased with
his results, the cat smiles as he observes the scene then turns upon hearing a
smattering of applause behind him. There
he discovers a pair of mice who are equally pleased with the kitty’s
drawings. One of the mice is tall and
slender and dressed slacks, the other is small and round dressed only in a long-sleeved
shirt. The shorter of the two mice stands
on a tin of fish to get a better view.
For his audience, Kitty draws a parade of mouse figures on the wall. The mice celebrate by jumping up and down
causing the little one to lose his balance and clatter into hiding with the tin
attached to his tale. A large bear,
presumably the owner of the house, peers around the corner and admonishes kitty
for defacing the wall. He is given a
bucket and cloth to clean up the mess, but he gets distracted by the laughing
mice who take Kitty’s pencil and board the train and take off with it. Kitty chases after them and jumps aboard and they
enter the tunnel and are transported into a wonderfully imaginative cat chasing
mice sequence through a land of child-like drawings. The chase continues with many delightful
slapstick moments until the mice turn the tables around and start chasing the
cat instead. It is all just a bit of fun
and ends with the cat doing what is right and cleaning up after himself. . . leaving only the drawing of the police bear as
a reminder of the day’s events.
This type of
cartoon that enters the imaginative world of children, and actively encourages
children to think creatively beyond the realms of the “real” is my favourite. It transported me back the one of the
cartoons of my childhood such as Simon in the
Land of Chalk Drawings (Ivor Wood, ITV, 1976), which aired on TVO when I
was as kid. I much prefer these kinds of
absurdist jaunts through the realms of the imaginary to didactic / moralistic
tales for children. They seek not only
to entertain children, but encourage them to pick up their pencils and
entertain themselves after the film has concluded. The enjoyment of the film is
elevated by Senji Itō’s playful score. Itō is best known in film studies for his
dramatic scores for the films of Yasujirō
Ozu (The Only Son, The Brothers and
Sisters of the Toda Family, Late Spring, A Hen in the Wind, Early Summer) and
Hiroshi Shimizu (The Masseurs and a Woman, Four Seasons of Children,
Children of the Beehive, Notes of an Itinerant Performer, A Star Athlete,
etc.). Here his music drives the tempo
of the animation (lilting, marching) with interruptions timed to heighten the comedic
moments. The score is so expressive that one hardly notices the lack of actual dialogue.
The central
characters in Kitty's Graffiti (the
cat, the bear homeowner, the mice duo) are beautifully realized, with round,
expressive faces – much like the animal characters of Disney’s Bambi. The kitty has some design similarities to the
kittens of Kenzō Masaoka’s Tora-chan
films – on which Mori also worked. However,
that being said, these are only minor similarities and the kitty is certainly recognizable
as a distinct character with its own cheeky personality. This
film gives us a glimpse of what wonderful cartoon shorts Taiji Yabushita, Yasuji
Mori, Akira Daikuhara and co. could have made if they had had a Disney budget. Kitty's Graffiti is a film treasure that
serves as a testament to the great skill in particular of Yasuji Mori, who is
remembered as a mentor to many animators who learned their craft in the 60s and
70s, from Hayao Miyazaki to Gisaburo Sugii. Mori
is revered by those he mentored not only for his skills as an animator but for
his incomparable character design. Books
of his art can be ordered
from Anido.
Catherine Munroe
Hotes 2013
Director:
Taiji
Yabushita 藪下泰司
Producers:
Kōichi Akagawa 赤川孝一, Zenjirō Yamashita 山本善次郎
Writer:
Akio
Kinoshita 木下秋夫
Original Music:
Senji Itō 伊藤宣二
Cinematography:
Mitsuaki
Ishikawa 石川光明
Animation:
Yasuji Mori 森やすじ
Akira
Daikuhara 大工原章
Shōji Ichino 市野正二
Sumiko
Naganuma 長沼寿美子
Takashi
Uchiyama 内山孝
Chikao
Katsui 寺千賀雄
Makoto Nakashima 田島実
Kiyoshi
Nakajima 中島清
Mitsuko Shindō 進藤みつ子
Junji Yamada山田順治
and others
Production Company:
Toei Kyōiku
Eiga-bu 東映教育映画部
