Children
have been playing war games for as long as adult have been engaging in war, as
the touring V&A Museum of Childhood touring exhibition War
Games demonstrates. From “cowboys
& Indians” and “cops & robbers” to re-enacting actual battles with
toys, children use these games to role play being a hero. Award-winning experimental filmmaker Isamu
Hirabayashi (A Story Constructed
of 17 Pieces of Space and 1 Maggot, 663114,
Soliton)
explores the relationship between war games and actually engaging in violence
in his animated short Ninja & Soldier (2012).
Against a
backdrop that looks like a traditional Japanese scroll, two crayon-drawn
figures of children introduce themselves.
Ken is a ninja from Japan, while Nito is a soldier from the Democratic
Republic of Congo. At first the two
8-year-old boys try to one-up each other, in the way that children often do in
such games. Ninja and soldiers are very
strong, they proclaim. Ken brags that he
can kill an enemy with his throwing star (shuriken),
while Nito explains that he can kill an enemy with his rifle.
As the kids
continue to describe their exploits, it becomes clear that Ken has only played
at being a ninja in the park, while Nito has actually killed people. The soundtrack becomes distorted when Nito
reveals that he killed his own mother.
Ken accuses Nito of lying, but Nito explains how he was forced to become
a child soldier in the Congo by men who threatened to kill him if he did not
execute his own mother.
Nito’s
horrific story is told against a collage of photographs by Ani
Watanabe. It soon becomes clear that what is just play
to one child is a terrifying reality to another. By comparing and contrasting the children’s stories,
Hirabayashi reveals that all children are susceptible to acts of violence, but
whether or not they commit it themselves is a product of the circumstances in
which they live. In order to highlight
the universality of this story, Hirabayashi has the actors use a made-up
language which is only made comprehensible through childlike scrawls of text “translating”
it.
Ninja &
Soldier has shown at international festivals including the Berlinale 2013 and
Image Forum Fesitval 2013. It appears on the CaRTe bLaNChe / Les
Films du Paradoxe DVD: L'Animation Indépendante Japonaise, Volume
2 (DVD/Blu-Ray release,
FR/EN, 2014).
Director:
Isamu
Hirabayashi
Producer:
Yasuo Fukuro
Drawing & Animation:
Isamu
Hirabayashi
Photographer:
Graphic Artist:
Katsuya Terada
Art Director:
Ken Murakami
Animation Assistant:
Mina
Yonezawa
Voice Actors:
Reigo
Mizoguchi
Shion Noda
Composer:
Takashi
Watanabe
Assistant Composer:
Kina Kuriwaki
Clarinet Ensemble:
Hidenao
Aoyama
Shizuka
Omata
Toshiyuki
Muranishi
Terumichi
Aoyama
Sound Design:
Keitaro
Iijima
Foley Artists:
Yu Arisawa
Momoko
Iijima
Sound Studio:
Kobe
Institute of Computing-College of Computing
Distributor:
Tamaki Okamoto
(CaRTe bLaNChe)
Catherine
Munroe Hotes 2014