Most pre-war
Japanese animation is derived from Japanese fairy tales and mythologies. However,
the origins of the story behind Yasuji
Murata’s animated folktale adaptation Why
is the Sea Water Salty? (海の水はなぜからい / Umi no Mizu wa Naze
Karai, 1935) are very complicated. Long
before science could explain why oceans are salty,
myths and legends were developed to fill the knowledge gap. Murata’s film seems to have been influenced
by a tangled web of European and Japanese folktales.
This
retelling by one of the great pioneers of anime appears on Disc 3 of Digital Meme’s Japanese Anime Classic Collection 4 DVD Box Set. The film has not been
digitally remastered and shows the wear and tear of time: flecks, scratches,
and even small tears. It begins in the
typical manner of a Japanese folk tale with “Mukashi mukashi. . .” (Once upon a time. . .). As Why is the Sea Water Salty? is a silent
film, the text appears on title cards and the Digital Meme features the added
bonus of narration by benshi Midori
Sawato and soft background music.
Plot Summary
Two brothers,
one rich and one poor, are introduced on title cards. New Year’s is approaching and the younger
brother is lacking supplies. He goes to
ask his older brother for help. He finds
him pounding mochi (glutinous rice).
The older brother looks down on the younger one and dismisses his request
saying that his younger brother is undeserving of his rice cakes. Disappointed, the younger brother heads home with
his head hanging low. Along the way, he encounters an elderly man
who almost falls off a footbridge. He
rescues the man and to thank him for his kindness, the elderly man gives him
some manjū (sweet bean cakes). He tells him that he should take the manjū to the dwarves in the forest to
exchange for their quern (stone mill/ 臼 /usu).
Led by a
dwarf waving a hinomaru flag enthusiastically,
the dwarves are hard at work in the forest building a house. However, they run into troubles dragging the
heavy wood uphill. The younger brother
laughs are their dilemma and offers to help them. They offer him a meal in thanks but the
younger brother shows them his manjū. The dwarves begin salivating at the sight of
the sweet manjū and beg him to share
them. They even offer him money for the manjū and he refuses, asking instead for
their quern. After some discussion, they
agree to this deal and they explain the secret of how to use the magic
quern. When he turns it right and makes
a wish, what he wishes for appears. To
reverse the magic he must turn it to the left.
The younger
brother wishes himself a house, a warehouse, and rice fields, and before long
his wealth exceeds all the others in his village including his older
brother. The older brother is
overwhelmed by jealousy and asks his younger brother if he can borrow the
quern. The younger brother says it would
be useless to the older brother because he is already a wealthy man. So the older brother steals the quern and
leaves the village by sea. As he double-checks
that he has brought everything he needs, the older brother notices that he forgot
to bring salt with him. He then uses the
quern for the first time and wishes for salt.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to tell the quern to stop and the
growing pile of salt causes the boat to sink.
The older brother is eaten by a shark and the quern falls to the bottom
of the sea where it continues to dispense salt into the ocean for
eternity.
Discussion
Chūzō Aoji (青地忠三,
1885-1970) wrote the screenplay for Why
is the Sea Water Salty? Aoji worked
with Murata (村田安司, 1896-1966) at Yokohama
Cinema Shokai where they collaborated on many animated shorts in the 20s
and 30s such as Taro’s Toy Train (太郎さんの汽車,
1929) and Momotaro of the Sea (海の桃太郎, 1932). Although
versions of this folktale have been recorded in many counties (see: D.L. Ashliman’s Folktexts for some examples),
the origins of the tale adapted by Aoji and Murata appears to have roots in both
Norway and Japan.
The Norwegian
folktale “The Mill That Grinds at the Bottom of the Sea” (Kvernen som maler på havsens bunn) is one of the most well-known
salt folktales. It was first published by 19th century folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe in Norwegian Folktales (Norske Folkeeventyr) which appeared in
various formats starting with a slim pamphlet in 1852. The tale was translated into English by Sir George Webbe Dasent and can be
found in his 1888 publication Popular
Tales from the Norse (Project
Gutenberg) under the title: “Why the Sea is Salt” (sic). It is believed that this tale likely found
its way to Japan in the late Meiji or early Taishō period, sometime after its
publication in English. There has also
been some evidence that in Taishō 12 (1923), a similar story to the Norwegian
one was brought to Japan by people who arrived by boat from Russia (Source). The Norwegian tale is set on Christmas Eve,
but the Japanese version changes this to Oshōgatsu
(Japanese New Year), as this was (and remains) the most important holiday in
Japan.
Another
major difference between the Norwegian tale and the Japanese is the addition of
dwarves. In the Norwegian tale, the old
man gives the brother the quern and there is no bartering with dwarves. The dwarf element is likely derived from a similar
story may have already existed in Japan before the arrival of the Norwegian
tale. According to the Japanese
folklorist Misako Kobayashi (小林美佐子), most Japanese tales about dwarves like “Why the Sea
is Salty” (臼を交換し海の水の塩辛いわけ) originate in the Tohoku region. Other such dwarf tales include “The Year’s End”
(年の暮れ) “Tabemono no
Mushin shi” (食べ物を無心し), “Ōzei no Kodomo ” (大勢の小人)
and “Manjū-nado” (饅頭等). (Source)
Animation Style
Stylistically,
Murata has gone with cut-out animation. This was common practice in pre-war Japanese
anime because it saved money for both in materials (celluloid was expensive)
and labour (moving cut-outs is faster than drawing successive images). The cut-out technique used is fairly straight-forward. The animator has used as few set-ups as
possible, with mostly establishing shots and medium-long shots being used. Interestingly, Murata chooses to shoot
dialogues in two separate spaces linked by a pan rather than having the
characters occupy the same frame. I don’t
really see any aesthetic benefit from this so can only presume that this was
done in order to simplify the animation process. In the sequence that narrates about the
wealth the younger brother acquired with the magic quern, I had the impression
that the quern might have been done using stop motion of a real quern. The other interesting stylistic note is the
edit that introduces the dwarf forest.
It is a fan-shaped wipe opening from the top the screen – and matches to
the use of a fan by one of the dwarves in the scene that follows.
On the
whole, the film itself is a straight-forward retelling of a story that has a
complicated oral history. In terms of
originality, for me the best scenes are the one where the dwarves are trying to
get the wood up the hill, and the final scene when the sea creatures are
startled by the arrival of the quern at the sea bottom.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013