The Water Seed (水のたね, 1975)

The Water Seed (水のたね/Mizu no tane, 1975) is a unique animation by Tadanari Okamoto.  He designed it for the Okinawa Kaiyouhaku no Kayoubunkan: the Oceanic Culture Museum at Expo ’75 in Okinawa.  The theme of the exhibition was: “The sea we would like to see” (海－その望ましい未来/Umi - sono nozomashii mirai). 

The film was projected onto the dome of the planetarium in the Ocean Culture Museum.  At the original screening, the animation was projected using two 35mm projectors, a 16mm projector, 1 large slide projector and 2 small slide projectors which were computer controlled.  The work was later adapted so that it could be projected in a standard 35mm format.  This is the version that appears on Volume 2 of the Tadanari Okamoto Box Set (Geneon Universal, 2008).  During the transfer process they tried to maintain look of the cinemascope technique using letterboxing.  Thus the 4:3 format sections of the film are also letterboxed with black matte so that they appear smaller than the wider cinemascope sequences.  

The story is based on the retelling of a traditional Okinawan folk tale by Miyoko Matsutani, a Tokyo native who is famous for her retellings of folk tales from all over Japan.  She has written more than 300 stories and founded the Miyoko Matsutani Folklore Research Center.   The story is narrated by the renowned actress Kyoko Kishida, who in addition to famous cinematic roles (Woman of the Dunes, An Autumn Afternoon, Manji, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter), did the narration for some of the top Japanese puppet animation of the past half century: (Towards the Rainbow, The Book of the Dead, etc.).

In keeping with the Okinawan origins of the story, Okamoto and his animation team made the backgrounds for the film using bingata – the resist dyed cloth method that the Ryūkyū Islands are famous for.  The puppets and the background images were painted on kiwata cloth which is similar to what in English would be called muslin.

The story is that of a young rice farmer whose fields are suffering a drought.  He prays fervently at his small rural shrine and is blessed with a heavy rain shower that fills his 48 ponds and he rushes to plant his rice seedlings.  One day, while on an errand, he encounters a group of children torturing a snake.  He offers to buy the snake and they refuse.  He then offers more money, throwing it on the ground.  While the children scurry for the money, he rescues the snake and releases it into the water. 

Night falls, a fog descends upon him, and a mysterious woman appears out of the mist.  She tells him that she is a princess by night, but by day she takes the form of a snake.  It was she whom he rescued from the children.  To reward him for his good deed, she invites him to visit her undersea realm.  They travel out to sea on her royal vessel and the screen shifts to widescreen.  The princess shows him her wondrous underwater kingdom.  They spin on starfish, ride shrimp like they were horses, hunt dolphins (!), play blind man’s bluff, and play ball.  Then the farmer is treated to a sumptuous feast on a revolving table.  When served a bowl of rice he suddenly remembers that he is neglecting his rice terraces.  The farmer insists that he must return to his farm and the princess takes him to her treasure chambers to allow him to choose a souvenir to take with him.  He is not enchanted by her jewels or gold, rather his eyes are drawn to some seeds that remind him of home.  These are water seeds (mizu no tane), she tells him, and he takes one with him.

They start their journey home on the backs of dragons but then the scene shifts into a dream-like sequence of a starry sky.  At the end of this sequence – which must have looked spectacular on the dome of the planetarium at the original screening – the man wakes up in his futon on the floor of his humble home.  Did he really meet a princess and go to her magical undersea realm?  Has she really given him a gift that will bring him water for his fields?  Or was it all just a dream? 

The Water Seed also screened at the 4th Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet-Anime Show in October 1975 and it won Okamoto his fourth Noburo Ofuji Award in 1975. 

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits

Director/Screenplay

Tadanari Okamoto

Narration

Kyoko Kishida

Cinematography

Minoru Tamura

Editor

Naoko Aizawa

Art Department (Figures/Puppets)

Sumiko Hosaka

Hiromi Wakasa

Sumie Ishii

Art Department

Takashi Komae

Masami Tokuyama

Eiji Sashida

Chizuko Hosokawa

Yuko Onaka

Animation

Ryo Ozaki

Hiroshi Taisenji

Satoru Yoshida

Hirokazu Minegishi

Music

Akio Omori

Ryohei Hirose (composer)

Assistance

Emiko Okada

Click here to learn more about the Noburo Ofuji Award Winners.

Praise Be to Small Ills (南無一病息災, 1973)

With Praise Be to Small Ills (南無一病息災/Nanmu Ichibyo Sokusai, 1973), Tadanari Okamoto wanted to retell a traditional tale in a way that brings together traditional and contemporary storytelling styles.  Based on the short story by Ryusuke Sato, Okamoto collaborated with the folk singer Kōhei Oikawa to come up with a narration that mixes song and spoken word with a guitar accompaniment.  The sequences vary in style. One narrated sequence is chanted with percussion, while a melancholy sequence depicting a funeral is accompanied by a flute.

The central motif of the film is ema (絵馬):  votive pictures painted or drawn onto small wooden tablets that are hung in Shinto shrines in prayer.  Common prayers today include for success when writing exams, for a safe childbirth, for the recovery of someone who is ill, or for luck in love.  “Ema” literally translates as “horse picture” because of the ancient tradition of giving the gift of a horse to a temple when asking for help from the gods.  Over time, this tradition evolved into the giving of a picture of a horse.  Today, the pictures or writing on the ema vary (see title card at top).
 

The film begins with a montage of traditionally painted ema.  Kōhei Oikawa then begins to sing in the role of a father telling a bedtime story to his daughter Hiroko.  Hiroko is curled up in her futon bed looking at a picture book featuring drawings of a skinny blue oni (demon) and a powerful-looking red oni.  The father cautions his daughter not to be scared by the tale.

In the story, the blue demon takes up residence in the belly of a humble farmer.  His presence in the man is troublesome.  It causes the man to cough from time to time and brings him bad luck in both farming and hunting.  The man; however learns to live with the oni and in spite of the ill luck the oni brings him, the farmer enjoys a moderate success in life.  He marries well and has many children and he teaches his children to be grateful for the small rewards that come from hard work by giving a prayer of thanks every morning.

In contrast, the red oni takes up residence on the property of a big, strong farmer.  Initially, the red oni brings the man good luck.  His crops are plentiful and he has much success in hunting.  Rather than give thanks to the gods, the man overindulges by eating loads of rice and sake.  He too marries and has a child but his overindulgence leads to the rather brutal demise of the man and his family.

Praise Be to Small Ills is a morality tale aimed at teaching children the benefits of working hard and being grateful for what they have.  In conclusion, the narrator father sings to his daughter Hiroko that that one should put up with small irritations – represented by the blue oni – in order to enjoy a long and fruitful life.  Overindulgence in the sudden success a red oni can bring will only lead to tragedy.

Tadanari Okamoto is famous for using different materials in each of his films.  For this film, the cutouts are made using the wood of the what the Japanese call sugi (cryptomeria japonica) – a tree native to Japan.  The cryptomeria is sometimes called the Japanese cedar in English although it does not belong to the cedar family.  Sugi is the national tree of Japan and is commonly seen in temples and shrines.  The wood of the cryptomeria was chosen for Praise Be to Small Ills because it is traditionally the wood of choice for making ema.  It gives the characters a sort of roughly hewn look unique to this film. 

As with all Okamoto animated shorts, the film has been flawlessly put together.  I would personally hesitate to show the film to the young children for whom the moral message was intended because of the violent death of overindulgent man.  However, it is quite a useful film for teaching older children about Japanese folk tales and religion.

This film won the Noburo Ofuji Award for 1973: Okamoto’s third of seven wins of this prestigious award.  Kōhei Oikawa  also features in another of Okamoto’s Ofuji award-winning films: Towards the Rainbow (虹に斑って, 1977).  The film appears on Volume 1 of the Okamoto Box Set (JP only).

 © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Director, Producer, Screenplay, Song Lyrics:

Tadanari Okamoto　岡本忠成

Original Story:

 Ryusuke Saito  斎藤隆介

Cinematography:  

Minoru Tamura　田村実  

Ken Yoshioka　吉岡謙

Editing:  

Naoko Aizawa　相沢尚子

Masako Sakama　坂間　雅子

Art Department (figures/puppets):

Sumiko Hosaka　保坂純子

Hiromi Wakasa　若佐ひろみ

Masami Sudo       数藤雅三　

Art Department:

Takashi Komae　小前隆

Masami Tokuyama徳山正美

Animators:

Seishiro Fujimori 藤森誠代

Seiichi Araki 荒木靖一

Hiroshi Taisenji　泰泉寺博

Narration, Music (composition, lyrics, performance):

Kōhei Oikawa　及川恒平 

Musicians:

Akio Omori　大森昭男

Masazo Nakagawa　中川昌三

Ritsu Murakami　村上律

Osamu Nakajima中島御　

Sound:

Isamu Kattō甲藤勇

Click here to learn more about the Noburo Ofuji Award Winners.

The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店, 1991)

Very early in his career as an independent animator, Tadanari Okamoto decided to try out new modes of expression and technique for each of his short films.  From coloured yarn together with paint on glass in Are wa dare? (1976) to painted cedar cutouts in Praise be to Small Ills (1973), Okamoto went to great lengths to match the aesthetic of the animation to the story that he wanted to tell.

Okamoto’s final film, The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店/Chūmon no Ooi Ryōriten, 1991) looks nothing like the 30+ films that preceded it at Echo Productions.  The film is an adaptation of a famous short story by the early Shōwa writer and poet Kenji Miyazawa.  Miyazawa’s writing has been a fruitful source of inspiration to animators, as the fantastic and surreal elements of his writing are well suited to the medium of animation.   

Two hunters dressed in British-style hunting gear – one man tall and slender, the other short and stout –  drive furiously into the forest to go deer hunting.  They set off into the woods, dragged along by their hunting dogs.  The dogs chase off after some deer but do not immediately return.  As the men stop for a break, they hear one of the dogs squeal as if in pain.  They run off in search of their dogs and find that they have strangely dropped dead.  

A chilly wind blows eerily and foggy weather sets upon the men.  Without their dogs and unable to find their vehicle again, the men grow hungry and weary.  One has the impression that these two could not survive in the wild for long on their own.  Out of the fog, they suddenly glimpse the lit windows of the Wild Cat Restaurant.  They are greeted, not by a host but by a sign which welcomes them in.  It is all very odd, but the men are terribly hungry so they enter.

They ring the bell in the lobby, but again no one appears.  They look around the lobby and discover a shooting game.  After many attempts, the tall and slender man finally “kills” one of the deer in the game.  After much waiting they spot another sign which bids them to enter further into the building.  They encounter a room with a sink where a sign asks them to use the products provided to clean themselves up.  The men are a bit taken aback by this request but imagine it must be a pretty fancy establishment with beautiful women so they do as they are told.    

They then enter a church-like space with giant stained glass windows depicting scenes from nature.  A giant spider startles the men and they shoot the glass.  In a brilliantly animated sequence the shards transform into butterflies which overwhelm the men before flying away.  After several more adventures in this labyrinthine building, they do eventually find a table set for dinner in a cavernous room.  But are they really the guests in this establishment or is there a more sinister plot underfoot?

This is my favourite kind of film: one which does not rely upon narration or written text but instead tells a story using visuals only.  The original Miyazawa story did have dialogue, so this is an aesthetic decision made by Okamoto.  The lack of voice-over narration increases the impact of the short notes that the two hunters encounter in the unusual restaurant of many orders.  In addition to the stained glass/butterfly sequence the dancing sequence in which wraith-like women transform into wild cats is also quite remarkable.  The depth of field and the attention to detail in each frame is truly stunning.

For the look of the film, Okamoto wanted to make a 2D film that nevertheless had texture and came up with the idea of having the film resemble a moving copper plate engraving.  In order to achieve this look he asked Reiko Okuyama to join his animation team.  Okuyama had recently retired from Toei Dōga after nearly 3 decades as an animator and had taken up the art of copper plate engraving.  If one compares The Restaurant of Many Orders to the animated short that Okuyama, with the assistance of her husband Yōichi Kotabe, contributed to the collaborative film project Winter Days (Kihachirō Kawamoto, 2003), one can see that Okuyama contributed a great deal to the look of Okamoto's last great work.

According to Anipages, The Restaurant of Many Orders was intended as a warm up for Okamoto’s first feature-length film which he intended to call Hotarumomi.  Unfortunately, this prolific animator’s future plans were cut short by liver cancer and The Restaurant of Many Orders was left in limbo upon Okamoto’s passing on Febrary 16, 1990.  Fortunately, fellow puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto took up the task of seeing his close friend and Puppet Anime-Show collaborator’s final film through to completion.

The Restaurant of Many Orders won high praise from both critics and fellow animators.  In fact, it won a many prizes including the prestigious Noburo Ofuji Award.  Okamoto continues to hold the record to this day for the most Noburo Ofuji Awards won.  Okamoto himself was even awarded a special prize posthumously by the Mainichi Film Concours for his outstanding contribution to animation in Japan.  The Restaurant of Many Orders ranked #115 on the Laputa 150 poll in 2003.

This film is available on the DVD The Collected Works of Tadanari Okawamoto, vol. 3 and in the Box Set (both JP only).  This review is part of my ongoing series dedicated to the Noburo Ofuji Award. 

©cmmhotes 2012

Related Posts:

Anime Adaptations of Kenji Miyazawa’s Stories and Poems

Reviews of Okamoto’s Home My Home, Are wa dare?, A Wonderful Medicine, and MORE….

Direction:

Tadanari Okamoto　岡本忠成

Kihachirō Kawamoto  川本喜八郎

Screenplay/Producer:

Tadanari Okamoto　岡本忠成

Original Story:

Kenji Miyazawa　宮沢賢治

Production Assistant:

Yoshihiro Shinohara　篠原義浩

Cinematography:

Akihiko Takahashi   高橋明彦

Mikio Nakaide　中出三記夫

Editing:

Fusako Shuzui　守随房子

Music:

Ryohei Hirose　広瀬量平

Sound:

Isamu Koufuji  甲藤勇　

Art Department:

Noriko Kawashita　川下倫子

Setsuko Onowzawa　小野沢節子

Masami Tokuyama　徳山正美

Animation:

Nobuko Abe　阿部信子

Reiko Okuyama　奥山玲子

Keizo Kira　吉良敬三

Satoru Yoshida　吉田悟

Takako Yokokawa　横川たか子

Eiko Miyabayashi　宮林英子

Mitsuko Ōya  大宅光子　

Tamaki Kōbe  神戸環　

Kazuo Tashiro　田代和男

Katsushi Boda　保田克史

Hiroshi Kagawa　香川浩

Shin'ichi Suzuki　鈴木伸一

Hiroshi Taisenji　泰泉寺博

Katsushi Wakui   和久井克史　

Mitsuhiro Kimura　木村光宏

Setsuko Kagawa　香川節子

Lighting:

Yuzuru Sato　照明


Click here to learn more about the Noburo Ofuji Award Winners.

Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (1999)

Takashi Namiki (なみきたかし, b. 1952) of Anido has been documenting the world of animation both at home and abroad since the 1970s through his writings, photographs, and by collecting materials for his private archive.  Last fall, I wrote about his book Animated People in Photo, which is a photo essay of his encounters with animators and animation festivals over the years.  His 1999 documentary film Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (人形と生きる〜川本喜八郎の世界) screened on Day 3 of the Kawamoto-Norsteinevent at Forum des Images in Paris.  It was introduced by Ilan Nguyen (Tokyo University of the Arts), who said that he believed that it was the first time for the film to screen outside of Japan.

The subject of the documentary is not Kawamoto the puppet animator, but Kawamoto the puppet maker and puppet theatre director.  Starting in 1972, Kawamoto joined forces with his good friend Tadanari Okamoto to host a number of puppet animation festivals known as the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows.  As they did not produce enough animated shorts to fill a full programme, Kawamoto came up with the idea of including live puppet theatre performances.  Not only would this lengthen the programme, but live shows could also incorporate the humorous aspects of puppet performances.  Apart from his first independent animation The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Kawamoto’s animated works tend to be more serious and contemplative.  Yet everyone who knew Kawamoto personally speaks of his warm sense of humour.  The live puppet shows demonstrate this other side to his personality.

The Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows ceased in 1980, and with Okamoto passing away in 1990, a revival of the event seemed unlikely.  However, 27 years after the first Kawamoto + Okamoto event, Kawamoto decided to put on the puppet show one more time.  Namiki’s film documents the event from the cramped rehearsals in Kawamoto’s tiny Sendagaya studio to the one night only performance at the Mitsukoshi Theatre in September 1999.  The show featured a parade of the puppets from the NHK drama Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国志/Sangokushi) as well as performances of four original theatrical works written by Kawamoto:

Hito mo Migakite no Chi ni Koso (人も磨き手後にこそ)

This puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972.  It features an old, tattooed man in a sentō (communal bath house).  When bathing in Japan, one first squats with a shower or water in a basin.  One must wash oneself thoroughly before entering the communal hot bath.  The tattooed man sits with the wash basin blocking the view of his penis from the theatre audience.  This is a wordless drama in which the comedy comes from the fact that the man’s movements are in time with the accompanying classical music.  As the tempo increases, so too do his movements with dramatic pauses being made comical by him tipping the wash basin towards his private parts.  At one point, the increase in tempo and volume results in him quite vigorously scrubbing his penis which caused a great deal of laughter.  Another uproarious moment occurs when he stretches out his arm and plays it like a fiddle – in the style of an air guitar performance. 

There is also the humour of familiarity in this piece, as public bathing is an important cultural tradition with etiquette that all of the audience members would recognize.  Thus another funny sequence involves the old man trying to get from the wash basin to the hot bath in a dignified manner by trying to hold the small white towel over his private parts.   He then sticks his toe into the bath and jumps back in shock at how hot the water is, before easing himself in.

If I had seen this puppet play before hearing Ilan Nguyen and Serge Éric Ségura’s lecture on the life and career of Kawamoto, I would have presumed that the old man was a yakuza because of his ornately tattooed body.  Nguyen and Ségura revealed that Kawamoto himself had elaborate tattoos on his back and upper arms that he acquired in the late 1950s / early 1960s in order to mark himself as an individual.  With this in mind, it is likely that there is an element of autobiography to this amusing piece.

Kurui toki no Kami da no mi (くるしいときのカミだのみ)

This puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972.  Like

Hito mo Migakite no Chi ni Koso, this puppet play is a wordless physical comedy set to music.  It features a salaryman going to the toilet – quite literally “toilet humour”!  The title suggests that the struggle that one sometimes has on the toilet can be a religious experience.

                                                                                                                                  

Good Night, I said!  (おやすみなさいったら！/Oyasumi-nasaittara!)

This comic puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972.  It is also set to music.  All parents struggle with getting their kids to bed at night.  In this puppet drama the struggle is multiplied as a mother tries to convince four babies to go to sleep.  The piece is performed to the German lullaby “Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf’ ein” by Mozart.  The mother dozes off herself while waiting for her little ones to sleep and the babies crawl around under the blankets.  The large bed is vertical on the stage and leaning slightly backward so as to accommodate both the spectators watching the action and the puppeteers.

Scheming World from Inside and Out (世間胸算用近頃腹裏表/ Seken Munazanyou Chikagoro to Tatemae)

This puppet play was performed at the fifth Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1976 and was also a part of the reprise event in 1979.  In an  introductory interview Kawamoto explains that audiences found the subject matter of this play quite shocking when it was first performed.  Times have changed in the ensuing quarter century and he thinks that the audience in 1999 will find it fairly tame.

This puppet play does have dialogue and concerns the inner workings of a Japanese home.  Traditionally in a Japanese family, when the eldest son marries he becomes the head of the family.  This usually means that three generations of a family will live together under one roof.  Unsurprisingly, this often results in the new wife and her mother-in-law butting heads on the way in which the household is run.  Mother-in-laws tend to have very fixed ideas about how to manage the home having been in charge of their own homes for at least two decades.  The young wife may bring modern ways or even different ways of doing things learned from her own mother into the home.  No matter what one's cultural background, we can all recognize that this is a recipe for trouble.

This puppet play reenacts the strife that results from his scenario with the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law being sweet to each other’s faces but saying things to each other that are either sarcastic or have a double-meaning.  Behind each other’s backs they complain about each other and take out their frustrations with having to live together on the chores.  The mother-in-law takes out her frustration on the laundry.  She even goes so far as to spit on her daughter-in-law’s shirt before ironing it.  Her main complaint is that she things her daughter-in-law is lazy and unskilled in housework. 

The daughter-in-law is mainly upset at the restrictions her mother-in-law imposes on her life.  On this day,  her mother-in-law has chosen not to go out, and this means that the daughter-in-law must also stay at home at do chores when she would rather be gossiping with her friends.  She cannot allow the mother-in-law does not do all the chores and take all the credit for the housekeeping.  The daughter-in-law takes out her frustration on preparing supper.  She attacks the fish with all her pent up rage.  At the end of the play, the mother-in-law pretends to enjoy the food her daughter-in-law has prepared and the daughter-in-law feigns delight with her neatly shirt.  The masks of domestic harmony are back up again and the women continue in their struggle to live together for the sake of the family.

One only gets a taste of these puppet plays for the original theatrical performance lasted 3 hours and the documentary is a comfortable 40 minutes.  The puppeteers, in the tradition of Bunraku, perform entirely in black with the faces also masked in black.  It was hard to tell if they were also using 3 puppeteers for each puppet as I was so wrapped up in the performance that I forgot to pay attention.  The puppets were large and did have a minimum of 2 puppeteers – as you can see in the screencaps of the performances. 

Kawamoto wrote, directed, produced, and performed in the puppet dramas.  He talks at some length about the craft of the puppet theatre and the challenge of preparing the puppeteers for the performance – they were quite young and many were new to puppeteering.  Most of Kawamoto’s original collaborators had either passed away or had moved on to other things in their lives since the 1970s.  He mentioned one puppet master in particular named Koga who had passed away and whom he greatly missed.  They spent two months rehearsing for the performance.  In order to bring the puppet convincing to life, Kawamoto explained that the performers need to have mutual respect for each other and work towards being in harmony with one another.  Although they made a few errors during the live show, Kawamoto seemed content with the final result.

The documentary is a very low resolution video with amateur English subtitles.  However, the singularity of the subject matter makes the film must-see viewing for fans of Kawamoto and scholars of Japanese puppet theatre.  It reveals a very different side of Kawamoto as not only a puppet designer and creator, but also a comic writer, theatrical director, and media personality.  It is impossible to recreate the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows of the 70s now that the key figures have passed away, but this documentary gives us a glimpse of what the theatrical portion of these shows must have been like.  There is also footage from a TV talk show that shows Kawamoto having a comical exchange with his good friend the actress and TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.  She teases him about how tiny his studio is and wonders how he could possibly work in such a cramped space.  Kuroyanagi did voice acting for several Kawamoto puppet animations: The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Rennyo and his Mother (1981), and The Book of the Dead (2005).

Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto is available for loan from Anido.  Click here for more information.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965)

This 15-minute stop motion animation is an important landmark in Japanese animation history.  A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) is the first independent film by Tadanari Okamoto (岡本忠成, 1932-90) after he founded his own studio Echo Productions (Echo Kabushiki-gaisha) in 1964.  It is also the first stop motion / puppet animation to win the Noburo Ofuji Award, which for 1965 was jointly awarded to Okamoto and experimental animation pioneer Yōji Kuri.  Okamoto was to go on to win this prestigious award more times than any other animator.

A Wonderful Medicine is an adaptation of the short-short story Nusunda Shorui (盗んだ書類) by novelist Shinichi Hoshi (1926-1997), acclaimed for his “short-short” science fiction stories – many of which were illustrated by another Ofuji award-winning animator Makoto Wada and one of Kuri’s fellow Animation Sannin no Kai members Hiroshi Manabe.  Short-short stories belong to the genre flash fiction, and as such tend to be not only short but also boast fresh, innovative storylines and unexpected endings. 

The evil genius imagines the medicine giving him powers of defying gravity / the winding road leading up to the scientist's lab

In an opening reminiscent of To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955), an open top convertible winds its way up a coastal hill to a lookout point.  But instead of Cary Gant and Grace Kelly, the car holds a tall, skinny, evil genius with a Poirot moustache and his short, checked-cap-wearing lackey.  The two men are targeting a moustachioed elderly scientist who quirkily has a boy assistant and a talking crow. 

Posing as a potential customer, the evil genius spies on the scientist and overhears him making a new discovery.  Believing this new “wonderful medicine” to be something useful for his plans for world domination, the evil genius and his lackey plan a bold mission to steal the “wonderful medicine.”  Comical at every turn, they are almost foiled by the alarm systems and the talking crow, but in the end their cunning allows them make off with their prize.  In a hilarious twist at the end (spoiler alert), the lackey – who is coerced into being the guinea pig – takes some of the “wonderful medicine” which turns out to be a cure for turning a wicked heart into a good and wholesome heart.  Overcome by his new-found sense of morally upstanding principles, the lackey confesses his crime to the scientist, who is delighted to learn that his new medicine works as intended.

Examples of special effects

Compared to Okamoto’s graduate work Mirror (1960), one can see an improvement in the fluidity of character movement and general expressiveness of the characters – skills which Okamoto acquired during his period working under Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions.  In an amusing touch, the scientist and the evil genius, whose mouths cannot be seen, both talk via their moustaches going up and down.  The establishing shots, both exterior and interior, set the scene beautifully.  The most innovative sequences occur when the crow tries desperately to prevent the thieves from taking the medicine.  Scribbles and even foam have been overlaid on top of the scene in order to depict the chaos of the fight in a dynamic fashion – I am guessing that as with Eastern European puppet films of this period (hugely influential on Okamoto throughout his career), and indeed as with Kihachirō Kawamoto’s early puppet films, this film was shot on the horizontal surface of an animation table with the camera looking down from above.  This would have allowed Okamoto to add depth and special effects on plates of glasses placed at different camera distances above the puppets.

A Wonderful Medicine appears on the first DVD of the Collected Works of Tadanari Okamoto (JP only), which I reviewed for Midnight Eye.  This review belongs to my series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012