Saori Shiroki’s MAGGOT (2007)

A house stands against a pitch black sky surrounded at the end of a field of tall grass.  The house is surrounded by a tall, imposing wall. Suddenly, there is a movement in an upper storey window and a young boy escapes the house down a rope. As he exits the gate, he crouches down and begins to hop like a bunny rabbit down the path. He pauses for a moment, kneeling in order to pick up something small and put it in a jar, and then he continues to hop down the path.

In the next moment, we see that he is chasing little maggots as they crawl about under the light of a street lamp. He follows the little white worms to the base of the streetlamp and they lead him to a cardboard box. Opening the box, he discovers the carcass of a rabbit, its stomach wide open as if it has been disembowelled in a lab experiment.

In the reverse shot of the boy’s reaction to his discovery, we suddenly find ourselves back in his room. He delightedly pulls out the rabbit, holding it up in his arms as if he were a child discovering The Velveteen Rabbit at Christmas. He lays the rabbit on a table and gets out his jar of maggots and pours them into his gaping belly then sews up the rabbit. The maggots begin to devour the flesh of the rabbit, causing its surface to writhe. The boy widens his eyes in wonder and delight.  He embraces the rabbit, as if in a scene out of a storybook and a tear falls from his eye. In the final shot of the film before the credits, a maggot falls, replicating the moment of the tear, against a black background and crawls off screen.

I first saw MAGGOT as part of the CALF Animation Special at Nippon Connection 2011. It was the only film on the programme that was completely silent. There was some unease in the audience because we thought there was a technical problem, but the lack of a soundtrack was an intentional decision on the part of the animator Saori Shiroki. I contacted her to find out why she decided to leave the film silent.

The first reason is that she was concerned that the music would distract or mislead the audience in their interpretation of the film. Shiroki experimented with several different options for the sound design of the film, but none was satisfactory. Using realistic sounds of the maggots would distract from mood of the piece as the boy himself is the emotional centre of the film. Shiroki explained to me that she felt there would be no music in the boy’s head because he is so intently concentrating. She wanted to create the impression of the child as an innocent and adding music may have taken away from the impression she wished to create.

The second reason relates to Shiroki’s love of silent movies. Of course, silent movies were never really completely silent as they had musical or benshi accompaniment, but silent movies do draw our attention to the importance of sound in a film. Particularly, how the accompaniment can alter our interpretation of the film. Shiroki’s passion for silent movies also explains the colourless nature of her films. Instead, she  is drawn to the stark contrasts of black and white composition. The absence of colour means that the textures of the brush strokes are central to creating mood.

For me, MAGGOT gives the impression of a lonely child. In order to interact with the world, he must escape from the confines of his room. There is something so tragic about the innocent delight he takes in collecting the maggots and holding the rabbit corpse in his arms. It makes such a contrast with the classic children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit in which the velveteen rabbit first competes with other toys for his boy’s affection and then seeks to become real through love. MAGGOT is this story in reverse: the boy appears to have no toys and seeks to bring to life a real rabbit that has been killed. It’s a heartbreaking series of images and not for the faint of heart. . . nor the weak stomached.

This is part three in a four part series examining the work of Saori Shiroki (銀木沙織, b. 1984). Click on titles in the filmography to read more.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Filmography

2004　Fumoto no Machi (麓の町, 6‘15“)
2005　Night lights (夜の灯/Yoru no hi, 3‘45“)
2005　The funeral (1’53”)
2007　MAGGOT (2’45”, silent)
2010　Woman who stole fingers (指を盗んだ女/Yubi wo nusunda onna, 4’15”)

Ashes to Honey (ミツバチの羽音と地球の回転, 2010)

On the isolated heart-shaped island of Iwai-shima in Yamaguchi prefecture, the residents – the majority of whom are elderly – have been fighting the construction of a nuclear power plant for close to 30 years. Long before the disaster in Fukushima brought the danger posed by nuclear power facilities in Japan to the world's attention, director Hitomi Kamanaka has been documenting the grassroots efforts to put local communities and the environment ahead of political and corporate interests. Her documentary film Ashes to Honey (Mitsubachi no Haoto to Chikyū no Kaiten, 2010) is currently in hot demand around the world because of the issues it raises about Japan’s nuclear industry.

What is the issue?

The electricity company Chugoku Denryoku, with the support of government officials, has planned the building of a nuclear power plant on the shores of Tanoura, one of many islands in the Seto Inland Sea. This is a relatively poor area with an aging population and the power plant would bring jobs to the area. The residents of the other islands in the region have been coerced into agreeing to the building of the plant, but the people of Iwai-shima have refused to be paid off and are standing their ground in the face of immense political pressure. They argue that the nuclear power plant will destroy the unique local ecosystems and ruin the environment in a way that would make it impossible for them to continue in their traditional ways. This would not only be because pollution from the plant would destroy their organic farming status, but also because the land reclamation plans would destroy the bay and hot water that the plant would emit into the sea would destroy fragile sea life.

Who are the protestors?

The core group of protestors are local people who carry on family traditions of fishing and farming. Their efforts have been supported by environmental activists from around the country such as the Rainbow Kayak Squadron.

In Kamanaka’s previous film Rokkasho Rhapsody (2006), I was particularly struck by the apathy of a late middle-aged couple. When they were asked about their opinion on the building of a nuclear reprocessing facility in their community, they said that they didn’t care because they were old. Meaning that they would be long gone from this earth when the effects of the facility would be noticed.

In Ashes to Honey, the loudest and most dedicated voices in the anti-nuclear movement are those of elderly women. Like most rural communities in Japan, most of the young people have left their ancestral villages for urban areas leaving behind the elderly. The average age of the islanders on Iwai-shima is 75, and the vast majority of these are women. These are no ordinary women. They are a tenacious bunch who have carried on the fight against the nuclear plant for decades. It has been a difficult battle, but they have come together to support one another in their “Happy Grandmas Café”.

The younger generation is represented in the film by Takeshi Yamato, a young man who has returned to the community in order to carry on the traditions of living off the land and the sea. He is a reluctant hero in the documentary. He and his family did not ask for this attention, they are having enough trouble just trying to get by as it is. It is inspiring to see his commitment to his community and how this camera-shy man bravely stands up for what he believes in.

Why are their voices not being heard?

The better question is “Why is no one listening?” The simple answer is corruption and greed. For decades in Japan, government bodies at both a local and a national level have been coming up with radical schemes in order to stem the tide of young people abandoning the countryside for urban areas. Some have enjoyed a moderate success, while others have been doomed to failure. The most risky of these schemes have been the construction of nuclear power plants in remote coastal areas.

There are two really powerful scenes in the film that really shine the spot line on the corruption at work behind the scenes. The first is when the Kaminoseki town council meeting where they are to vote on whether or not the land reclamation for the plant should go ahead. More than 200 people come to participate in the process and are informed that only 20 of them can enter. The select few are chosen by a drawing of straws. They shout their protest, but their voices go unheard and the vote goes ahead with an 8-4 decision to approve the filling in of the bay.

The most powerful image in the film; however, is the sight of those elderly women sitting in boats in a stand-off with officials trying to start filling in the bay. The plan is to sit in the boats for 50 days.  At which point, the land reclamation permission granted to Chugoku will expire and they will have succeed in at least delaying the inevitable. A young man with a megaphone tries to make the protestors feel guilty (Why are you against something that will bring jobs to the region?) and false promises. The grandmas are not having any of it shouting back that they will never give up:  “We know what we are doing is right!”

What are the solutions?

For a glimpse of what life could be like in Japan if a concerted effort were made to support sustainable energies, Hitomi Kamanaka goes to Sweden to learn about their plans to become to first oil-free economy. Through the use of wind power, solar power, biofuels, and other inventive methods, Sweden has become a world leader in the movement towards a sustainable future. The biggest move that they made was to break up the electricity companies’ monopoly on the market. Swedish citizens can now choose the source of their electricity. By allowing consumers to decide the cheapest and most ethical energy company for them, companies have had to become more innovative in their approaches to energy.

The most amusing scenes in the film come when the Swedish interviewees express shock when they learn from Kamanaka about the more restricted situation in Japan. “You don’t have a deregulated market?” says one astonished man. Another says that there were warning signs many years ago and that even Sweden should have taken action sooner. He then looks straight into the camera and proclaims: “Japan! Start Now!”

The directness of the Swedes in the film is an amusing contrast to the Japanese politicians who avoid answering questions directly. Not only does this excursion to Sweden provide alternative solutions to Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy and foreign oil, it’s a stark reminder that the problem Japan is facing is not local, but global. My native country of Canada is also well behind when it comes to renewable energy because we have relied for so long on the exploitation of our natural resources and have allowed electricity providers to enjoy a monopoly on the market for too long.

What can you do?

Follow the Ashes to Honey page on Facebook to learn updates on the situation in Iwai-shima or to find out about upcoming screenings near you. (EN)

Follow the Ashes to Honey blog (JP)

Write to your local television broadcaster to recommend that they air this film.

The soundtrack can be ordered at itunes. (US link only)
 

I will update when the film becomes available on DVD on cdjapan. In the meanwhile, Hitomi Kamanaka’s other DVDs are available to order now:

Rokkasho Mura Rhapsody (English Subtitles)

Hibakusha Sekai no Owari ni

(May be Japanese only)

Nippon Connection 2011

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Midori-ko (緑子, 2010)

The grotesque, painterly animated works of Keita Kurosaka (黒坂圭太, b. 1956) unfold in surprising and unusual ways. The first surprise in Kurosaka’s long awaited film Midori-ko (緑子, 2010) is the cute, brightly coloured style of the opening scene. As if watching an NHK children’s animation, we are introduced to young kawaii Midori-chan and learn that she loves to eat vegetables. Meat repulses her, for she cannot bear to think of the suffering of animals.

Midori-chan wishes on a star to be transported to a land of vegetables, and soon the watercolour blue sky with yellow blotchy stars transition into a more ominous land of shadows. We are introduced into a kind of post-apocalyptic Japanese city where a now grown Midori sells vegetables from a stall and lives in a strange ramshackle residence inhabited by mutant people – some seem more human than others. Under her building runs a river of waste where manure is manufactured. The building also contains a sentō (public bath) which promises cleanliness and relaxation but often contains surprise visitors of an old man and a fish.

Other strange inhabitants of the building include a quartet of humanoid figures whose heads have been replaced by symbols of the five senses: a hand, an eyeball, an ear, a mouth, and a snout. They first emerge from their laboratory and are involved in the creation of an unusual vegetable shaped like nasu (Japanese eggplant).  In unusual circumstances, the nasu ends up being thrown through the window into Midori’s room. When she tries to examine it with a scalpel, it resists as if it were more animal than vegetable. She soon discovers that it has a face that resembles an infant, and soon it transforms into her nasu-baby: Midori-ko. Midori becomes quite protective of Midori-ko as it becomes clear that it is under threat from other residents of the building.

In terms of the storyline, the film suggests a theme of exploring the reasons for human existence. Humanity has long struggled with the question of what separates us from other forms of life on this earth. Now more than ever, we are re-examining our role of consumers of the wondrous bounty the planet earth has to offer us. Midori-ko offers a bleak perspective of human existence in a world in which one needs to consume or be consumed.

Midori-ko is much longer than Kurosaka’s earlier films, which is due in large part to the fact that the film has much more narrative and dialogue than these works. As Jan Švankmajer, who who was an early role model for Kurosaka, explained when speaking of his 132 min. long feature film Little Otik (Otesánek, 2000): 

Storytelling, whatever the story, has its own laws. It differs from recounting a dream (as in Něco z Alenky). Similarly, when you start using conventional dialogue, you've got to realise that the film will be longer. A film told through dialogue (without a narrator) always works in a roundabout way, which requires time; figurative speech—the language of pictures and symbols—is more direct and consequently shorter.” (Source: Kinoeye)

Concentrating too closely on the storyline while watching Midori-ko is a mistake for Kurosaka considers himself more of a painter than an animator. He studied figure and still life painting at Musashino in the late 1970s and upon graduation in 1979 spent two years in Paris at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts studying oil painting. For Kurosaka, animation has been a tool of adding motion to his paintings.

My biggest problem as an artist was finding a form of artistic expression that would have the same effect as music, but in the realm of painting - the impact of sharing the same time space and physical space among a large number of people. That just happened to turn out to be video, and in terms of specific technique within that framework, animation, but for me animation has never been anything but an extension of my painting work. My films started out abstract, but after a few films they began to evolve in a more concrete direction, until eventually there were even what you'd call dialogue and stories starting to appear in the films, and eventually even characters. So on the surface, my films began to look more and more like what you'd typically call 'animation films', but it feels really off and wrong when I hear people call me an animation artist.  (Kurosaka interviewed by Kiroki Kawa, 2006, Source: Anipages)

The grotesque recurs as a theme throughout Kurosaka’s work. In Midori-ko these takes the form not only of fleshy, unusually shaped characters, but also in surprising and often downright disgusting incidents. For example, after a choking incident, Midori comforts the nasu-baby, but the tender scene suddenly turns horrific as Midori-ko lets loose a torrential bowl movement. In interviews, Kurosaka has said that when he depicts something grotesque, that he doesn’t want the audience to be disgusting. The more revolting the image, the more beautifully he tries to render it (Source: Anipages). Depending on the scene, I found Kurosaka’s use of the grotesque by turns beautiful, horrible, and amusing.

Midori's face compared with a cropped image of  Girl at a Window (Rembrandt, 1645)

Some of the more beautiful moments in Midori-ko reminded me of famous works of art. When Midori is flying down the hill on a motorized contraption in an early scene, the close up profile of her cherubic face reminded me of a Rembrandt portrait, it was so finely rendered. In reading up on his career, I chanced to discover that one of Kurosaka’s early films Metamorphosis Works No. 5 (1986) is actually an exploration of the inner world of Rembrandt. (Source: AWN)

There are times in the film when Midori seems unsure of herself, but on the whole she is presented as a strong, assured female presence. Her strong, direct stare into the camera in one scene reminded me of the wary gaze of the painter Berthe Morisot in Édouard Manet’s portrait of her. The delicate use of shade and light on her face and her full lips only strengthened this impression.  While I do not know that these two portraits directly influenced Kurosaka, I believe that his education as a painter has strongly impacted his style as an artist.

Midori's face compared with a cropped image of  Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (Manet, 1872)

Some of the most humorous moments in the film came when the 5 senses without their masks on, or the 5 senses with old man (Neptune?) and the fish wrestle orgiastically together. In each instance, there comes a moment when they stop suddenly and strike a pose reminiscent of the twisted tangle of limbs and snakes in the famous statue of Laocoön and His Sons.

Laocoön and His Sons comparison

Midori-ko is a multilayered film that requires multiple viewings to truly appreciate the details that has gone into it. After all, Kurosaka spend 10 years creating this masterpiece, one screening of the film can hardly do it justice. I've now watched it twice and feel like I am only scratching the surface of the depths of meaning in the film.  I do hope that Mistral Japan will take this opportunity to release a box set of Kurosaka’s complete works on DVD so that his fans can truly savour his oeuvre as a whole.

For more information, see the official website.  The only animation by Kurosaka that I know of on DVD is his contribution to Winter Days.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Selected Filmography

1984 Metamorphosis Works No. 2 (変形作品第2番, 23’)

1985 Metamorphosis Works No. 3 (変形作品第3番)

1986 Metamorphosis Works No. 5 (変形作品第5番, 28’)

1988 Sea Roar (海の唄, 30’)

1989 Worm Story (みみず物語, 15’)

1990 Personal City (個人都市, 25’)

1991 Haruko Adventure (春子の冒険, 15’)

1992 Box Age (箱の時代, 26’)

1994 ATAMA

1997 Flying Daddy (パパが飛んだ朝)

2003 Winter Days (冬の日, Section 23)

2006 Agitated Screams of Maggots (Dir en grey music video)

2010 Midori-ko (緑子, 55’)

Nippon Connection 2011

Steps (Tochka, 2010)

The animation team Tochka (Takeshi Nagata and Kazue Monno) are famous for their PiKA PiKA or “lightning doodle” animation technique. In the course of their career they have actually practiced a wide range of stop motion animation techniques. In my review of their CALF DVD Tochka Works 2001-2010, I pointed out that the “Jumping” section of their film PiKA PiKA in Yamagata (2008) uses a pixilation technique similar to that used in Norman McLaren’s Neighbours (1952). It was with great delight that I discovered during the CALF Animation Special at Nippon Connection that Tochka was continuing to experiment with this technique.

Pixilation, a term attributed to NFB animator Grant Munro, is a technique in which live actors are animated frame-by-frame together with inanimate objects. Takeshi Nagata told me that for Steps (2010), they took their inspiration from the Norman McLaren and Claude Jutra film A Chairy Tale (1957) in which Jutra has an encounter with a chair that refuses to be sat upon.

Jutra and the chair in a stand off in A Chairy Tale

a similar stand off in Steps

In Steps, we are presented with an empty room with a checkerboard floor pattern and a lone bulb hanging from a cord on the ceiling. Slabs in the formation of steps slide out of the walls, through the room, and back out the opposite wall. The opening sequence ends with the door opening, the steps sliding in with PiKA PiKA lights spelling out the title in the air and a PiKA PiKA stick figure running through the frame.

A salaryman sleeping in his pajamas slides in through the open door and is soon resting on a bed of slabs, with his clothes on a rack nearby. The PiKA PiKA stick figure jumps on his face and soon the man and the stick figure are engaged in a slap stick routine in which the man’s clothes slide out of his reach, and the stick figure taunts him and they fight with each other.

In the next scene, the man returns, as if from work, into the empty room. The PiKA PiKA stick figure slides in slabs and shapes them into steps that the man climbs until he has to duck his head because he is too close to the ceiling. The stick figure first tries to knock him down, then shoves the man – still atop a pile of slabs – out the door.

Tochka’s Steps not only borrows the A Chairy Tale’s pixilation technique but also matches it in its playfulness and innovative design. There are some key differences between the films. In A Chairy Tale, the chair itself was given human attributes: provoking Jutra then later trying to win his affection back again. In Steps, the interplay is between the actor and an animated human stick figure drawn in the air with light. The inanimate objects such as the coat rack and the steps do not acquire any human attributes. Instead, it is suggested that their movement is manipulated by the playful, scalawag PiKA PiKA figure.

Ghostly form of an animator briefly visible

Another big difference is that in A Chairy Tale, the way in which the chair has been animated remains invisible to the naked eye. No matter how much the viewer strains to see if there are strings attached to the chair, the illusion of movement is so complete that it really does appear as if the chair has indeed come to life and is moving of its own volition.

Not so in Steps, where the careful spectator can see the ghostly black figures of the animators in some of the frames. This is characteristic of the PiKA PiKA films, which seek to demystify the art of stop motion animation. It’s a postmodern twist on the NFB style pixilation in which it is not just about the illusion of movement but about our awareness of the hand of the animator(s) in the making of a stop motion film.

This added dimension would have been much clearer in the original presentation of the film which was as part of a video installation.  Exhibition visitors would have watched the film standing in the same room and looking through peep holes on the wall.  See Tochka's Flickr stream to get an idea of the exhibition space at Aichi Triennale 2010.

A brilliant little film, which makes me excited to see what new projects Tochka have up their sleeves. To learn more about Tochka and their PiKA PiKA workshops read about my observations of their Nippon Connection workshop in Frankfurt. The Tochka Works 2001-2010 DVD can be purchased from CALF or within Europe via BAA.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Nippon Connection 2011

Masaki Okuda’s A Gum Boy (くちゃお, 2010)

“Kucha kucha, kucha kucha. . .”, the opening credits of Masaki Okuda’s latest animated short A Gum Boy (Kuchao, 2010), begin with the sound of someone chewing gum loudly and vigorously. The words on the screen themselves quiver and pulse to the rhythm, stretching out long like a wad of gum being pulled out from the mouth and snapping back into shape like an elastic band.

The screen flickers like an old silent movie as a young boy’s voice begins to narrate his story. Sitting in the school cafeteria, the boy talks spiritedly about how he has no friends because he irritates the other children when he chews his food with his mouth agape. Even his teacher tells him off for his rude table manners. Changing his chewing habit is impossible for him, the boy declares, for how can he change the way he is? The grey palette reflects the boy’s foul mood as he waits impatiently for school to end so that he can chew his beloved gum.

The children are now outside releasing helium balloons into the sky, but the boy refuses to let his red balloon go. He imagines the balloon flying up into the sky encountering numerous flying objects along the way. The school bell rings and the scene changes from grey to warm tones as the boy races outside to finally chew the gum that awaits him in his pocket. As he chews his gum, he smiles for the first time and sings about chewing his gum.

Suddenly, holding on tightly to the balloon, he is swept away into a sea of cars, through the sights and smells of the city, and an imaginative montage of other locales. The boy’s chanted story gets progressively faster and louder as he is swept up into a raging storm and the balloon pops and he is catapulted back into reality. Alone and bewildered on the road home from school, he watches regretfully as his balloon floats away into the sky.

Note the grey of the school scenes vs the colour of the after school scenes

I first encountered Masaki Okuda’s work in 2009 when the short that he co-directed with Ryo Ookawara and Yutaro Ogawa Orchestra (オーケストラ, 2008) was featured on the Yokohama Art Navi by Koji Yamamura. Orchestra is a very sophisticated film for student filmmakers, capturing with a minimalistic,  abstract black-and-white drawn animation the dynamism of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra performing a symphony by Beethoven. Last year, I was blown away by Oogawa’s Animal Dance (アニマルダンス, 2009) – it even made my list of the Best Japanese Animated Shorts of 2010. As with Orchestra, Animal Dance reminded me of the way in which animation pioneer Norman McLaren paired music and animated movement together in his hand painted films.

A Gum Boy has much in common with Animal Dance in that they both exploit the ability of animation to poetically interpret music through moving images. A Gum Boy adds the dimension of words to his soundtrack, but this is no ordinary dialogue. The story is recited in the sing-songy way of children’s rhyme punctuated by a dozens of onomatopoetic phrases. Recited in the voice of a young boy, it has the energy of a rakugo performance and is accompanied by a shamisen. The story tears along at a rapid pace and in a whirlwind journey through a child's imagination.

The style of storytelling combined with the layered textures of each individual frame reminded me of Koji Yamamura’s animated rakugo classic Mt. Head (頭山, 2002) and his exploration of the imagination of children in Babel's Book (バベルの本, 1996). In fact, Masaki Okuda (奥田昌輝, b.1985), a native of Yokohama and a Tamabi graduate, pursued his graduate degree at Tokyo University of the Arts where Yamamura teaches. Yamamura’s influence can also be felt in Okuda’s use of abstract elements and depth of frame, but these his influence merely adds polish to Okuda’s very distinctive storytelling style. The text was written by Okuda himself and uses a repeat and variation style common in oral storytelling and in music. The music was composed by Daisuke Matsuoka. The song is by Yushiro Kuramochi and the shamisen is played by Kohdai Minoda.

I saw this film during the CALF Animation Special at Nippon Connection. Of the new films that I saw at the festival, A Gum Boy stood out as one of the best of the bunch. Visit Masaki Okuda’s official blog here (JP) to find out which festival A Gum Boy will be playing at next.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Filmography

2007 The Garden of Pleasure (快楽の園)

2008 Orchestra (オーケストラ)

2010 A Gum Boy (くちゃお)

Nippon Connection 2011

Rokkasho Rhapsody (六ヶ所村ラプソディー, 2006)

In his famous poem “Ame ni mo Makezu”, Kenji Miyazawa writes of wandering bewildered in the summer cold. One does not normally apply the word “cold” to Japan in the summer, but in Tohoku and eastern Hokkaido a cold, wet wind known as Yamase blows in the summer months when a high pressure system comes down from Okhotsk in the north, bringing rain and fog with it.

The Yamase winds make the region ideal for the harvesting of wind power and while some wind mills do dot the landscape, their owners encounter problems with selling the energy to the grid because of the tight relationship between the big electricity companies and nuclear power. In Rokkasho Rhapsody (Rokkasho-mura Rhapsody, 2006), director Hitomi Kamanaka takes her documentary camera north in order to investigate the grassroots protests against the building of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant for spent nuclear fuel.  She interviews a cross-section of the community including people for, against, and unsure.

As the recent disaster in Fukushima has made clear, the nuclear industry in Japan has used its enormous power with government officials at local and national levels to push ahead with the building and maintaining of nuclear facilities in spite of the risks. They deliberately target remote communities with high unemployment in order to curry support from people desperate for any kind of work in order to support their families.

The handful of people who were willing to talk to Hitomi Kamanaka about in-depth about their reservations about the safety of building a nuclear reprocessing plant find themselves labeled as kooks who are standing in the way of progress. In actuality, they are kind-hearted, concerned citizens who fear that their local community won’t realize the mistake they have made acquiescing to the nuclear industry until it is too late. 

Keiko Kikukawa (read more about her) expresses herself through her love of the environment. Her parents resettled in Rokkasho during the war after their home on Sakhalin was burned to the ground. She runs a garden that she calls the Village of Flowers and Herbs and she regularly holds a Tulip Festival as a kind of peaceful protest against the nuclear reprocessing plant. Kikukawa speaks of trying to live her life in the open so that her community can see that she is an honest woman. In spite of her unthreatening appearance, she has endured police surveillance and she has heard that some believe that she is being paid by communists to spread propaganda.

Another voice of protest is the former squid fisherman Mr. Sakai in the Tomari District of Aomori. In the 1980s the local people became bitterly divided on the issue of bringing nuclear energy to the region. Sakai featured prominently in a documentary film that was made at the time called “Tomari is not losing the fight!” Although he is now getting on in years, he continues to hold fast in his anti-nuclear stance and he talks about the extreme pressures put upon his fellow protestors when plans for building went ahead anyway. Those who had been against the proposals lost their jobs. Many of them keep quiet about their beliefs today so that their children won’t lose their jobs. He had to move away. The bottom line was that power and money quashed local protests.

The people supporting the reprocessing plant are not depicted as some kind of evil force, but rather business owners and workers who are putting their practical present concerns ahead of the possibilities that the future may bring. People like the local dry cleaner who hopes to secure a contract with the company cleaning their uniforms, despite the obvious safety concern that he and his workers could come into contact with nuclear residues on the clothes.  The most dangerous opinions expressed by people in this film are the ambivalent ones - like the middle-aged couple who just shrugs and say that they don't care because they are old.

In order to investigate the long-term consequences of living with a nuclear reprocessing plant, Kamanaka travels to Sellafield in Cumbria, England. Here she meets with a local fisherman and a Scottish scientist on the Isle of Man, who talk about the problems of radiation in the Irish Sea. Most striking is Kamanaka’s interview with Janine Allis-Smith, a local activist against nuclear energy. Allis-Smith is of a similar age to Kikukawa-san – and even seems to have the same chubby black-and-white patchwork cat! She speaks about the serious effects the Sellafield plant has had on the health of the locals – particularly those with family working at the plant. Allis-Smith’s son was one of an alarming number of children to develop leukemia. Many of these children did not survive the illness and one common thread that most of them had was a parent working at Sellafield.

Order Now (with English subtitles)

The information about Sellafield forms an important part of the documentary’s message: not only to inform communities like the village of Rokkasho of the realities of living with a nuclear facility, but also that a reminder that this is not just a local but a global issue. Watching this film only five years after it was made I wondered how many disasters like Fukushima do we need to have before people wake up to the fact that we need to look to sustainable resources in order to provide a safe and successful future for the human race? The irony is that the same Yamase winds that make this coastal region ideal for environmentally friendly, sustainable energies such as wind power, will be the same winds that will spread radiation inland if/when disaster strikes.  As one of the scientists points out, it really is just a question of when not if, and sadly we learned in March in Fukushima that he was right.

This film ought to be picked up by public broadcasters around the world so that people can be better informed about the way in which the nuclear industry operates.  It is available on DVD (JP only). Order now from cdjapan.  UPDATE: Now available with English subs from Zakka Films

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Nippon Connection 2011

The PiKA PiKA Workshop at Nippon Connection 2011

 The PiKA PiKA Workshop by Tochka was one of the highlights of Nippon Connection 2011.  I got the chance to have a peek behind the scenes at the set up for the event, watched the workshop in progress, and joined in at the end to participate in the creation of a message of support to the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku.  This final part of the event was in support of Tochka's Safe and Sound Project.

Who are Tochka?

Nara-based artists Takeshi Nagata and Kazue Monno make up the collaborative art team Tochka.  They met at a film club while both were students at Kyoto University of Art and Design.  They have been making animated films, graphics, and manga since 1998 and are particularly famous for their innovative use of stop motion animation techniques.

A message of hope: I'm the turquoise heart at the top in the middle.

What is PiKA PiKA?

PiKA PiKA is the name of the lightning doodle technique that Tochka came up with in 2005.  It is stop motion animation made using coloured flashlights.

The name comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia "pika pika" (ピカピカ) which is associated with flashes of light.  Fans of Pokemon will recognize it as something that Pikachu, whose power involves electricity, says all the time.

What tools does do I need to make PiKA PiKA animation?

In addition to flashlights that have clear coloured paper taped over them, one needs a camera with long exposure capabilities, and a black background.

"Durchhalten" = hang in there - I'm the top "A" :-)

How does it work?

With the camera shutter open, the participants draw shapes in the air with their flashlights for 5 - 10 seconds.  They then repeat this process in order to create a series of images.  When the images are played back at normal speed, the PiKA PiKA animation comes to life. In the Nippon Connection workshop, the camera was positioned on top of a large screen.  After each round of filming, the resulting image was projected on the screen so that the participants could see how the results of their work.

I'm making a turquoise star in this one.

What happens during a PiKA PiKA Workshop?

The Nippon Connection workshop was run by Takeshi Nagata on his own.  He played funky music in order to create a cheerful atmosphere.  After a short introduction, he began with the simple shape of a small circle.  He then had the participants repeat this shape up high and down low, so that when the images were played back the circles of light resembled bouncing balls.  As the workshop progressed, the participants were encouraged to suggest their own ideas for shapes or words that they wanted to animate.

Here is the result of the Nippon Connection PiKA PiKA Workshop:

What makes PiKA PiKA so special?

 PiKA PiKA is a type of animation that anyone can participate in regardless of age or artistic ability.  It is a fun way of teaching the basics of stop motion.  When moving images were first invented many people believed that cinema had the ability to be a universal language. In this vein, Tochka's PiKA PiKA animation demonstrates how animation can be used to connection people from around the world in a positive way.

The best thing about the workshop was how much fun the participants had.

How can I book a PiKA PiKA Workshop?

You can contact them at tochka.jp(at)gmail.com or via twitter.

How else can I support Tochka?

You can support Tochka by purchasing their DVD Tochka Works 2001-2010 from CALF or the British Animation Awards online shop.  Read my review of the DVD to learn more.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Nippon Connection 2011

Colorful (カラフル, 2010)

Suicide has been a growing concern in Japan over the past couple of decades due to a combination factors such as depression, job stress, and other societal pressures. With his latest film Colorful (カラフル, 2010), veteran animator Keiichi Hara (原 恵一, 1959), takes on the complex psychological factors behind suicide in a meaningful way.

An adaptation of a novel by Eto Mori, Colorful (Order DVD) takes us into the spiritual world of the deceased. In the west, we are familiar with the concepts of the afterlife and visitations from spirits or angels being used as a narrative device in stories such as Charles Dickens’s classic tale A Christmas Carol (1843) or Frank Capra’s perennial Christmas favourite It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). The angels or spirit guides in western fiction tend to present a Christian conception of the afterlife and offer the troubled protagonists advice on improving their circumstances so that they can become good Christians with the promise of heaven awaiting them in the next world.

Examples of Hara's photo-realism animation technique

Colorful presents the dilemma of suicide within the Buddhist conception of the afterlife in which the soul is reincarnated. The film opens with the unnamed main protagonist in a kind of in-between realm. As he has no memory of who he was on earth, he refers to himself only as “boku” (masculine form of referring to oneself). His spirit guide is a young boy with grey hair and eyes called Pura-pura who tells him that he is being given the opportunity to return to the realm of the living. A teenage boy named Makoto Kobayashi has committed suicide and his soul is just about to leave his body. The spirit of “boku” will re-enter Makoto’s body and have a limited period of time in which to discover what mistake he has made in his past life, so that “boku” may move on and enter the next life.

"Makoto" sits with his art

“Boku” struggles with understanding why Makoto Kobayashi would kill himself when he seems to have a family that loves him and a comfortable middle class home. It doesn’t take long before suggestions of intense loneliness, parental infidelity, school bullying, and the discovery of Makoto’s high school crush Hiroka’s shocking secret double life give us clues as to the turmoil that had become unbearable to young Makoto. The other clue to Makoto’s state of mind can be found in his paintings. In particular, an unfinished painting in the art club suggests that he felt submerged, and struggled towards the light.

Pura-pura, the spirit guide

Pura-pura is an unusual spirit guide by western standards because he is far from angelic. Also a boy himself, Pura-pura resorts to manipulative tactics such as provoking with words or threat of physical bulliyng in order to push “boku” in the right direction. In the end, the main protagonist must not only look within himself to find a resolution to his situation, but also learn empathy for others. The main message of the film is that people are not monochromatic, they are colourful. We may find some of these colours beautiful and others ugly, but we need to learn to accept both in order to lead happy, productive lives.

As with Hara’s other independent film Summer Days with Coo (2007), Colorful has an animation style that is unique to Hara. A lot of attention is paid to accuracy in the details of spaces such as streets locations and the interiors of homes and the school. As with Coo, I had the impression that some exterior scenes were made using a composite of photographs and animation. Hara does indeed use a full, colourful palette in the film – which is particularly striking in the scene when “boku” as Makoto goes fishing with his father and paints the autumn leaves.

It’s a beautiful film that is a must-see for teenagers in particular because it opens the door to discussions about how to overcome depression and feelings of loneliness and despair.

Order DVD Now

Colorful won the Animation Film Award at the 65th Mainichi Film Awards and was nominated for Animation of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Nippon Connection 2011

ANPO: Art X War (2010)

Shigeo Ishii's 'Decoy'

It is difficult to measure the psychological impact war and occupation have on nations. Most documentaries content themselves with trotting out the facts and figures and interviewing loquacious historians and political figures. In ANPO: Art X War (2010), Linda Hoaglund uses art to tell the riveting story of the emotional impact the American occupation has had on the people of Japan.

For people like me, who were born and grew up in post war North America, the Pacific War seems like ancient history. In the intervening years, the United States has become involved in many other conflicts around the globe and World War II only surfaces as a point of conversation on the anniversaries of events like bombings of Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hiroshi Nakamura with his work 'Base'

For the people of Japan, the continuing presence of American troops stationed across the country is a constant reminder of old political wounds that have never been resolved. Officially, the American Occupation of Japan ended in 1952. However, thousands of American soldiers remain stationed in Japan under the terms of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan – known colloquially in Japan as anpo joyaku (安保条約) or just plain ANPO.

In high school history classes we are taught that Japanese war criminals were tried and executed by military tribunals after the war. However, the truth of the matter is not so straight forward. Many of the men responsible for wartime atrocities managed to escape punishment and even continued to work in politics. One of these men was Nobusuke Kishi, who went on to serve as prime minister and was one of the key architects behind the 1960 extension of the ANPO treaty. Kishi became a puppet of the CIA, who used him in order to achieve their Cold War aims of using Japan as a buffer against communism. The people of Japan had not forgotten the role that Kishi and his militarist peers played in leading their country into war and during the 1950s and 1960s grassroots protest movements began swelling up against the American presence in Japan.

Hoaglund lays out a basic historical framework through interviews with historians such as Masayasu Hosoka (The Truth about the 1960 ANPO Struggle), New York Times journalist Tim Weiner (Legacy of Ashes, a history of CIA covert acticivities), and journalist Kazutochi Hando (The History of Showa), but the real meat of the film is the art itself and the testimony of the artists. This perspective is carefully crafted by Hoaglund, whose childhood in Japan as the daughter of American missionaries and her work as a much sought after translator and film subtitler (Spirited Away, Waterboys, After Life, et al.) gives her unique insights into the relationship between the two cultures. 

Miyako Ishiuchi and her work 'Hiroshima'

Of the dozens of artists, photographers, and filmmakers whose work was shown during the film, some that really stood out for me were the paintings and testimony of Hiroshi Nakamura, Magnum photographer Hiroshi Hamaya’s documentation of the ANPO demonstrations in the spring of 1960, and Yukio Tomizawa’s explosive documentary Rage at ANPO (1960). Some artists used satire as their method of expression, such as influential pop artist Tadanori Yokoo’s illustration of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato which was rejected by Time Magazine in 1970 as too political. Others, such as photographer Miyako Ishiuchi, try to tell the stories of ordinary people destroyed by political events beyond their control, as in her powerful photo series 'Hiroshima' in which she photographed the carefully preserved clothing worn by victims of atom bomb. The art in combination with the testimony of the artists lays bare the long term impact that ANPO has had on the artists themselves and how it has shaped their artistic sensibilities. 

The image that Time magazine commissioned and rejected from Yokoo

ANPO: Art X War captures not only a feeling of outrage at the hypocrisy of the Americans in ignoring the human rights of the people whose land they are occupying, but a greater sense of pain and frustration that the people feel at being betrayed by Japanese politicians who are meant to be representing their interests as citizens. The wide variety of paintings, prints, photographs, and film clips (both documentary and feature films) express these complex circumstances in a way that mere words never could.

I found the experience of watching the film overwhelming at times. It was not only the volume of images – 175 works in all – but the emotional impact of many of the works. Kyoko Ureshino’s photograph “A Little Girl Killed by a U.S. Military Truck” (1965) depicting a toddler moments after being crushed to death with the American soldiers staring at her lifeless body is such a powerful image and is now seared in my memory (see it in the slideshow of images from the film on the Art in America website). The interview with Okinawan photographer Mao Ishikawa is also very impactful. Her frustration at the presence of the American bases on Okinawa is matched by her sadness for the young U.S. soldiers whom she sees as lambs to slaughter. Hoaglund’s film not only looks to the past but also sheds light on the current generation of artists such as Makoto Aida, Sachiko Kazama and Chikako Yamashiro who are also concerned about the ways in which the ANPO Treaty and the continuing American presence in Japan has affected them. 

Talking heads on American television often speak incredulously of anti-American sentiment as if the people who want them off of their lands are somehow lacking in gratitude or just jealous of American might. ANPO: Art X War is the antidote to such simple-minded claptrap, demonstrating as it does the complex ramifications of occupation. I feel sure that if similar films were to be made expressing the suffering of the peoples of Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others through their art, it would give the world a much greater insight into the humanity of the people living those countries. Recognizing that the hopes and dreams of other citizens of this world are not so different from our own is the best way of preventing such conflicts from happening in the future.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Update 17 May 2011: I've been told that this film is currently available on DVD for educators to purchase.  Click here to learn more.

Nippon Connection 2011