When I first moved to Japan from Canada
in 2000, I was struck by the prevalence of traditional brooms made of straw or
reeds used not only in homes but by city workers cleaning the streets. Called “hōki” (箒/ほうき), hand-made brooms of bamboo reed and millet
straw are considered the best way to clean tatami mats. Due to modernisation, broom-making workshops have
become rarer, but there are still many people who continue this traditional handicraft. In her graduate film from Tokyo
University of the Arts (Geidai class of 2012), animator Aya Tsugehata chose the setting of a
traditional broom-making workshop.
The Sakuramoto Broom Workshop (櫻本箒製作所 / Sakuramoto Hōki Seisakusho, 2012), like Tsugehata’s first year
Geidai film Imamura Store (今村商店 / Imamura shōten, 2011) – click here
to read my review of it – is based on a real space and the
artisans who work and live there. In fact, at Nippon
Connection 2013, Prof. Mitsuko
Okamoto described Tsugehata’s puppet animation as examples of “animation
documentary” because of her use of documentary recorded sound. The
Sakuramoto Broom Workshop is based
on the workshop of the same name which is run by the elderly couple Kakutarō
and Setsuko Sakuramoto. There is no
dialogue in this film, but the sound effects were recorded in their workshop as
well as in Murai’s Broom Works and Yoneda’s Broom Shop.
The age of the Sakuramotos is
established before we even see Tsugehata’s puppets of them by a series of shots
showing the absence of modern conveniences in the workshop. An ancient electric stand-alone electric
heater, a traditional tray bearing tea for two, a pair of zabuton (floor cushions) are the meagre creature comforts in this
traditional Japanese space. Outside, brooms lean against the building, drying in the sun. Inside, the husband and wife face each other
on the barren wood floor, kneeling on zabuton
as they work. The wife makes small
bundles of straw, tightening them with a rope and tying them together with a
short piece of wire. Her husband then
takes these bundles and weaves them into the shape of a broom using thread to
bind them.
There is a sense of harmony between
these two individuals and one senses that they have sat here for decades,
performing these daily tasks. They work
with the ease and steadiness of experts, until the husband notices a subtle
difference in his wife’s performance.
Glancing down, he notices that one of the bundles is not as neatly done
as the others, as if his wife had struggled with the task. Later that night, the wife wanders out of her bed in their neighbouring home and back into
the workshop. Concerned for her
well-being, the husband follows to find her back at work binding straw. One can deduce from the subtle visual
storytelling that the wife is likely suffering from the early signs of dementia. The film expresses a feeling of melancholy that this
couple’s productive life together is entering its twilight years.
Tsugehata’s style of storytelling is
reminiscent of that of the legendary filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu in its use of a
series of cutaways to tell the story
not only of the characters themselves, but also of the Japanese space. Like Ozu, many shots are taken from a low
angle, such as the view of the woman from behind as she kneels on the
floor. I was reminded of Tokyo Story (1953), in particular, in
the way that Tsugehata depicts harmony between an elderly husband and wife. In doing online research for this post, I
discovered a
short interview with Tsugehata in the run-up to graduation in 2012, where
she says that she “finally saw the works of Yasujiro Ozu” in the past
year. There is no context or follow-up
question to this, but it suggests that someone must have recommended Ozu to her. Her first year Geidai film, Imamura Store, was shot in a similar way,
but I have not seen any of the work she did as an undergraduate so it is hard
to judge if she naturally adopted an Ozu-like aesthetic before seeing his work. As Ozu’s aesthetic was, for him, a practical
response to shooting Japanese spaces, it is highly possible that Tsugehata did
the same. It seems likely that seeing
Ozu’s work may have helped her to hone her cinematographic approach to these
spaces further. Tsugehata’s use of
puppet animation to record people and spaces from her hometown is certainly
unique and I very much look forward to seeing more work from her.
This is an auteurist work in that Tsugehata
not only directed the films, but also designed the puppets, sets, lighting, wrote
the screenplay, did the cinematography, and edited the film herself. Music was composed for the film by Keisuke Kimoto and the sound design was
by Choi Woong.
Aya Tsugehata
(告畑綾, b. 1987) is an up-and-coming stop motion
animator from Saitama Prefecture. She
graduated from Tama Art University in 2010 and then continued to develop her
puppet animation skills under the supervision of Yūichi Itō (伊藤有壱, b.1962) at Tokyo University of the
Arts. This film can be found on the DVD Geidai
Animation: 3rd Graduate Works 2012. See behind-the-scenes photos at the Geidai
03 Talk blog and learn more about traditional Japanese broom-making at Tokyo
Chuo Net.
Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014
