“Fires and quarrels are the flowers of Edo,
yet the greater essence is the fireman”
The ancient
city of Edo was known as the City of Fires because of the frequency and
ferocity of its fires. This was due to a
combination of factors from the high flammability of the densely built wooden nagaya (長屋/row
houses) to arson. Between 1601 and 1867
alone, the city suffered nearly 1800 fires – 49 of them considered “great fires”
that killed hundreds, if not thousands of people.
The record
of these fires appears in paintings, wood cuts, and scrolls – many of which can
be viewed on the Institute
for Fire Safety and Disaster Preparedness website – and the popular legends
surrounding many of the fires have inspired everything from kabuki plays about the arsonist Yaoya Oshichi of the Great Fire of
Tenna to Laura Joh Rowland’s mystery
novel The Fire Kimono, which is set
during the Great Fire of Meireki. Popular
manga-ka and animator Katsuhiro Ōtomo
and his design team at Sunrise used
woodblock print artists the inspiration for his unique
animated short Combustible (火要鎮/Hinoyōjin, 2012).
Set in the
18th century, the story begins with the unfurling of a cloth-bound emakimono (scroll painting). The camera tracks slowly left, in the direction
that one reads a scroll, over a highly detailed depiction of 18th
century Edo from the busy river, over the working class Shitamachi (low city)
to the more affluent Yamanote (“foot hills” – or “high city” as in Edward Seidensticker’s 1984
book). A male chorus sings a kiyari – a ritual song which was sung by
hikeshi (Edo firefighters). Traditional kiyari would list the tools needed by the firefights but with the
words all drawn out like a chant.
During the
slow tracking shot, a hinomi-yagura (fire
lookout tower) appears in the foreground to foreshadow the events to come. The camera pauses in a large garden of the
affluent home of a young girl called Owaka-chan (Saori Hayama). Bored on her
own in the garden, her spirits are lifted by the appearance of the boy next
door, Matsuyoshi (Masakazu Morita),
on the tiled garden wall. A lyrical
sequence ensues showing their varied play together, their agile figures dissolving
in and out to show the passage of time as the garden subtly changes seasons.
The children’s
cheerful voices become a memory of the past as the camera dissolves to a red
room with a hanging scroll painting of the garden on the wall. Owaka is now a young lady in a formal kimono
sitting with her mother. The women’s
response is interrupted by the sound of hanshō
(alarm bells) in the distance. Owaka’s
mother sends a boy up onto the roof to the lookout to discover the location of
the fire. All across the black sky of
Edo, men have climbed onto their roofs to observe the fire – all except
Matsuyoshi. He surprises the women by
climbing the wall, running through their garden to escape from his family.
The next
scene shows Owaka as the dutiful daughter, serving her family’s guests under
their watchful eyes. As soon as she is
in the privacy of her room, she weeps.
Owaka is much more adept at hiding her displeasure from her family than
Matsuyoshi whose father has become violent with rage. Matsuyoshi kneels on the floor in front of
his father, his shirt sleeve torn off to reveal a tattooed arm. The hikeshi
firefighters – who normally came from the lower classes – were as heavily
tattooed as today’s yakuza with water
symbols such as dragons to give them courage and bring them good luck on the
job. It seems that Matsuyoshi has run
away from home to become a heroic firefighter.
We hear
Owaka and Matsuyoshi talking about the contrast between their childhood and
their present situation against still scenes from Owaka’s empty house and
garden. Owaka is then seen reclining in
apparent misery next to her koto –
the stringed instrument she has doubtless had to learn to play in part of her
training to be a nobleman’s wife. Night
falls and Owaka sits in her room with a beautiful wedding kimono and her elaborate trousseau.
A voice-over of her father’s bragging tells
us that they are just waiting on the final touch: the obi for her wedding kimono.
Owaka sighs in misery and throws a fan across the room. She doesn’t notice until it is too late that
the fan has landed in her lantern. Before
long, the lantern bursts into giant flames.
Owaka’s first instinct is to run for help but then she reconsiders. Perhaps this fire can alter the inevitability
of her fate? The drums and hanshō thrum loudly as the hikeshi firefighters gather to fight the
fire as it rages through the Yamanote district.
Matsuyoshi is one of the brave men who nimbly ascend tall ladders onto
the rooftops to assess the situation.
Will he be able to rescue Owaka or will her foolishness lead only to
tragedy and devastation?
Isao Takahata
Watching Ōtomo’s
short but masterful film, I was reminded of Isao Takahata’s fascinating illustrated book 12th Century Animation (十二世紀のアニメーション,
1999) which examines how the composition of Heian picture scrolls prefigure the
techniques used in modern animation. It
even includes examples from picture scrolls that dramatically depict Heian era
fire – a scroll that Ōtomo may be referring to in an
interview with Asian Beat last summer.
Using a complex mixture of traditional and CGI animation techniques, Ōtomo
and his team have created a film combines the quiet beauty of 18th
century emakimono (picture scrolls)
with the dynamism of CGI movement. I particularly love the added touch of the letterboxing using traditional Japanese cloth instead of black bars.
This duality
is expressed in the dramatic structure of the film. As Ōtomo explains in Asia
Beat, the first half of the film represents “stillness” and the second half
“movement” with its “intense fire and action sequences”. The slow tracking camera using mostly long
and extreme long shots used in the first half contrasts with the fast cutting
action shot from a variety of angles in the second half. Similarly, the quiet sounds of garden birds
of the early scenes are replaced by the drums and bells of the traditional
dance music employed during the fire sequence as the film rages towards its
abrupt end. My two favourite shots in Combustible employ very different
techniques: the glorious slow tracking opening establishing shot of Edo and the
exciting CGI sequence of Matsuyoshi and his fellow firefighters flying up onto
the rooftops by ladder. As our POV
ascends the tall building like a weightless crane shot, I believe I even said “wow”
out loud at the sight of the rows of houses up in flames. Fire and water are notoriously challenging
for animators to get right and this film is a tour de force in the animation of
fire.
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Available on the Short Peace DVD (JP only)
Short Peace BD (JP only)
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Katsuyoshi Ōtomo
won the Noburō
Ōfuji Award for Combustible at
the Mainichi Concours last year. The
film was also shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Animated Short and was
nominated for the prestigious Annecy Cristal.
Although it started making the festival rounds in 2012, Combustible was theatrically released as
part of the omnibus Short Peace
alongside Shuhei Morita’s
Oscar-nominated animated short Possessions
(九十九/Tsukumo, 2013) as well as shorts directed by Hiroaki Ando and Hajime Katoki. Short Peace was released on
DVD and BD
in Japan this month. No word yet on any
English DVD/BD/download release dates.
For fans of animation, the special
limited edition BD is well worth the investment if you don’t mind the lack
of English.
Catherine
Munroe Hotes 2014
Direction/Screenplay:
Katsuhiro Ōtomo
Music:
Makoto
Kubota
Cast:
Masakazu
Morita (Matsuyoshi)
Saori Hayama
(Owaka)
Character Design:
Hidekazu
Ohara
Animation Director:
Tatsuya
Tomaru
CGI Director:
Shūji
Shinoda
Animation:
Hidetsugu
Ito
Hiroyuki
Horiuchi
Koji
Watanabe
Kouichi Arai
Mari Tominaga
Masaaki Endou
Shuichi Kaneko
Takahiro
Tanaka
Background Art:
Junichi
Taniguchi
Yoshiaki
Honma
Effects Animation Director:
Takashi
Hashimoto
Visual Concept:
Hidekazu
Ohara
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