Little Black Sambo (ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ, 1956)

Tadahito Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo (ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ, 1956) is a significant film in the history of animation, because it was the screening of this film at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1958 that brought Mochinaga to the attention of Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass of Videocraft International (later Rankin/Bass).  This led to Rankin/Bass partnering with Mochinaga’s MOM Productions in the making of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and other holiday classics.  (See: MOM Productions and the making of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

The puppet animation in Little Black Sambo is superior by the standards of the 1950s; however, it is difficult to praise the animation because of the deeply offensive nature of the original source material.  Little Black Sambo was Mochinaga’s first independent project when he returned from China.  After a couple of years making commercials for Asahi Beer, Mochinaga founded the Puppet Animation Studio (later MOM Productions) in 1956.  This project was an adaptation of the turn-of-the-century children’s book by Helen Bannerman, The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899), which was very popular during the first half of the 20^th century.   Although the original story caricatured a southern Indian or Tamil child, the book quickly became synonymous with racist pickaninny caricatures of black people.  In fact, the name “sambo”, which originally meant a person with African heritage, by the mid-20^th century had become an offensive slur. 

Today, the book rarely appears in the English speaking world outside of studies on racism, but Japan has had a troubled history with the story.  (See:  Mulatto Diaries, Asahi, Black Tokyo)  Shockingly, the Sambo stories have been republished as recently as 2005, and merchandise featuring the racist illustrations was being marketed in Japan as recently as 2007 (See: Japan Probe).  When these allegations of racism raise their head, people are often quick to excuse the Japanese claiming that they are merely “ignorant” or “insensitive” (See: Chicago Tribune article from 1988), which may have been true in Mochinaga’s day, but it is an excuse that has worn thin in the 21^st century. 

Mochinaga’s Little Black Sambo is presents a fascinating picture of the ignorant views of black people that Helen Bannerman’s book and others like it exported to Japan.  Sambo and his parents are depicted as being African.  As I mentioned in my review of the sequel Little Black Sambo and the Twins (ちびくろのさんぼとふたごのおとうと, 1957), the puppets, which were designed by Kihachirō Kawamoto, have lost the offensive big-lipped portrayal of Frank Dobias’s caricatures in the original Japanese translation.   In fact, Sambo’s face looks very similar to puppets of Japanese children in Mochinaga’s other works, but with a darker skin tone and Bambi-like eyes.  Sambo’s father no longer resembles Dobias’s pickaninny stereotype with a straw hat.  Instead, he has been given a North African / Ottoman appearance, complete with a fez hat.   The body shape of Sambo’s mother adopts the fat “Mammy” stereotype of Dobias’s book but like Sambo, her face has been adapted into a more kawaii Japanese aesthetic.   The racial stereotypes in the film are those of cultural ignorance, and give an accurate picture of the unsophisticated view of Africa and black people in the 1950s not just in Japan but in Europe and North America as well. 

While the character design brings together influences from as far afield as the United States and the Middle East, the set design confuses things even further.  The film opens with Sambo’s father coming home through the desert.  Since the characters appear “African”, one would presume that this desert is the Sahara, but it features cacti that belong in the Americas.  It seems likely that American westerns, which were very popular in Japan from the 1930s onwards, influenced this look for the desert.  When Sambo goes for a walk, he goes into the jungle – which of course, comes from the fact that the original story was set in southern India, but is certainly unlikely to be found on the edge of a desert. 

This image is from the sequel, Little Black Sambo and the Twins

The story itself follows that of the book fairly accurately, adding a pair of friendly monkeys who interact with Sambo.    Sambo’s mother sews him a brand new red coat and a pair of blue trousers.  His father comes home from the Bazaar with an umbrella for his son.  Delighted with his new clothes and umbrella, Sambo decides to go for a walk in the jungle.  Along the way, he meets a cheerful pair of monkeys who ask if they can play with the umbrella.  Sambo says that they can if they promise not to wreck it. 

The monkeys promise, but then immediately start playing wildly with the umbrella.  Sambo fears they will damage it, but the monkey’s play is interrupted by the sound of a roar.  A tiger appears and Sambo is terrified.  The tiger announces that he will eat Sambo, but thinking quickly, Sambo offers him his new jacket.  The tiger accepts this bribe and leaves.  The scenario repeats itself with two other tigers, with Sambo giving away his trousers and his umbrella.  Bereft of all his new things, Sambo cries and the monkeys try to comfort him, suggesting that Sambo should ask his father to get new things. 

Just then, there is more growling announcing the return of the three tigers.  Sambo and the monkeys hide up a tree while the tigers confront each other.  They put down their new possessions in order to fight each other.  The three tigers chase each other in a circle around the tree until they churn themselves into butter (ghee in the original tale, because it was set in Southeast Asia).  Sambo collects his things and runs off to tell his father what has happened.  His father collects the butter and brings it home so that Sambo’s mother can make donuts (pancakes in the original tale).  The film ends with the family eating all the tiger-striped donuts. 

When the film is evaluated in terms of its animation alone, one can easily see why it caught the eye of Rankin and Bass at VIFF 1958.  Anachronistic and racial elements aside, Sambo himself is very cute, and I’m sure would delight an audience of children.  The character movements, such a challenge in frame-by-frame stop motion animation, are beautifully done and impart a great deal of character information.   The pair of rascally monkeys have clearly been added by Mochinaga for comic effect.  We also learn a lot more about Sambo’s friendly nature from his interaction with the monkeys.   Sambo is also depicted as having a loving, idyllic relationship with his parents.    

The film keeps costs low by have a limited number of effectively designed sets.  It creates visual interest by varying camera distance and using Classical Hollywood editing.  The film also takes advantage of music to complement the action of the film – and music would become the hallmark of a Rankin/Bass holiday special.  The print shown by Ilan Nguyen at RICA Wissembourg last month was not the best transfer, and I have not heard of the film having been digitally restored yet.  A proper DVD set of Mochinaga’s works has not yet surfaced, although five of his works do appear on the DVD Japanese Art Animation Film Collection 7: The Animation Group of Three and Experimental Anime (日本アートアニメーション映画選集7　アニメーション三人の会と実験アニメ, 2004), which can be found in the video archives of university libraries such as Musabi and Tamagawa.  The entire 12 DVD collection日本アートアニメーション映画選集　全１２巻 can be ordered from Kinokuniya, but it is unfortunately well out of the price range of the average individual. 

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

To read more:

The Florence White Williams illustrated edition of Little Black Sambo can be downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg.  This version uses pickaninny and Mammy stereotypes. 

To learn more about Mochinaga, read Kosei Ono’s short biography: “Tadahito Mochinaga: The Japanese

Animator Who Lived In Two Worlds” AWN 4.9 (Dec 1999).

Film Credits:

Running Time: 18 minutes / 18分

Release Date: November 1956

Director: Tadahito Mochinaga (持永只仁)

Producer: Kiichi Inamura (稲村喜一)

Original Story: Helen Bannerman (ヘレン・バンナーマン) with illustrations by Frank Dobias (フランク・ドビアス)

Screenplay: Haruo Mura (村治夫)

Music: Mitsuo Katō (加藤光男)

Cinematographer: Jirō Kishi (岸次郎)

Art director: Junji Eguchi (江口準次)

Puppets: Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本喜八郎)

Karma (カルマ, 1977)

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

- from “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (1867)

I first became aware of the work of Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011) through his collaborative experimental animated shorts made with legendary pop artist Keiichi Tanaami. Their styles complemented each other well, but one could always distinguish which sequences had been done by Aihara by his distinctive use of swirls and waves.  Even the poster Aihara designed for Hiroshima 2010 used a fresh take on his swirls, bringing together the iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Hokusai, c.1830/3) with colourful figures representing the many nations that come together at the international festival. 

In his early experimental short Karma (カルマ, 1977), Aihara uses water as his central motif.  The film is hand drawn and appears to be shot on 16mm using a blue filter.  At first we can only see tiny specks on the screen, coming and going like snow flurries.  The specks gradually grow larger and take the shape of bubbles, then even larger into rivulets of water on a transparent surface.  The illustration technique is so expertly rendered that it almost looks like a photograph of a window on a rainy day.   

A close up on a large drop is timed to splash when the music kicks into high gear.  The soundtrack (uncredited) is the atmospheric  “Aegean Sea” by Greek psychedelic / progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child from their double album 666 (1972).  As with all music by Vangelis, the composition is designed to create a certain mood and evoke certain imagery in one’s imagination.  This is why Vangelis has had such success as a film composer (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, etc).  “Aegean Sea” conjures up imagery of the ebb and flow of tides with the way the music crescendos and decrescendos and the way the memorable electric guitar melody weaves in and out of the otherwise tranquil instrumentation.

Just as the music ebbs and flows, so does the animation in this experimental film.  Aihara transforms the droplets of water into large spheres and that multiply like organic cells dividing.  Some of the spheres are empty, some are coloured blue, and still others are filling with patterns of waves.   It’s a constant flow of wave inspired imagery which climaxes with a full screen like a kaleidoscope of shapes unfolding then folding back on themselves until the imagery gradually ebbs away, concluding on the simple outline of a circle which itself slowly fades away. 

The title of the film adds an extra layer of meaning to the film, which Aihara has left us to deduce for ourselves.  Karma, the law of moral causation, is one of the fundamental doctrines in Buddhist thought.  According to Buddhism, nothing is purely accidental.  Everything that happens to an individual, is the direct result of past or present actions.  In Aihara’s animation, the way in which drops of water and spheres flow into one another creates an unending sequence of cause and effect.  It is a visual interpretation of the flow of karma from past lives into the present, and onwards, unceasing into the future. 

On February 27^th, 2007, Osaka-based sound artist Tetsuya Umeda (梅田哲也, b.1980) performed in collaboration with a screening of Aihara’s Karma as part of a CO2 exhibition (CO2=Cineastes Organisation Osaka). Instead of “Aegean Sea”, Umeda created sound using a floating sphere and a fan.  Footage of this event can be found on YouTube and still images of the event have been posted on the blog New Manuke.  

Karma was shot on 16mm and appears on the DVD Japanese Art Animation Film Collection 11: The Animation Group of Three and Experimental Anime (日本アートアニメーション映画選集11　アニメーション三人の会と実験アニメ, 2004), which can be found in the video archives of university libraries such as Musabi and Tamagawa.  The entire 12 DVD collection日本アートアニメーション映画選集　全１２巻 can be ordered from Kinokuniya, but it is unfortunately well out of the price range of the average individual. 

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

Stone (1975)

Oh peace in our day, peace in our day

Our day in the sun

You got lost in a time gone by

A day in the sun

- the last lines of “Prayer”, by Spooky Tooth and Pierre Henry, 1969

Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011) is a unique individual in Japanese animation history.  In the early part of his career he worked as an animator on many renowned anime series and films from Obake no Q-tarō (Masaaki Ōsumi, 1965-67) and Kaibutsu-kun (Masaaki Ōsumi, 1968-69) to Gauche the Cellist (Isao Takahata, 1982), Night on the Galactic Railroad (Gisaburo Sugii, 1985), and Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988).

At the same time; however, he was active in the avant-garde art and experimental film scene, frequently travelling overseas to meet like-minded artists.  Stone (1975) is an early experimental work by Aihara that he made during a six-month visit to Sweden.  It opens with a montage of Rorschach-style inkblot paintings.  As the camera distance widens between the camera and the paintings, we see that the paintings are not being shot in a studio, but are taped to a large stone with a forest in the background.  The camera distance continues to change with great regularity, as does the lighting as the series was clearly shot over an extended period of time.  Clouds pass through the sky, winds increase, and the camera continues to widen the expanse of landscape, eventually tipping up to a pixilation view of the sky altering sky shot through a fisheye lens.   The sky darkens and opens on another day.  We can see hints of a person, perhaps the artist, slightly off camera.  The camera eventually moves back into a close-up of the series of inkblot paintings and the soundtrack alters from other-worldly sounds to the lyrical strum of a guitar.

The haunting soundtrack is uncredited, but it is the song “Prayer” by UK progressive rock band Spooky Tooth in collaboration with the French electronic and objet trouvé (found-object) composer Pierre Henry.  It is the final track on their join album Ceremony (1969), which was designed to be listened to as if it were a church service.  The lyrics to “Prayer” are derived from “The Lord’s Prayer” with the additional refrain: “Deliver us, we pray, from every evil / that's here, and to come, through the Virgin Mary / peace in our day, our day in the sun”. 

The camera changes locations to a square structure made of large stones.  Figures come and go, appearing to paint colourful abstract art on the stones using a ladder.  The third setup uses the side of a red barn for the pixilated drawings.  This time the camera goes in close enough for us to see that the artists are actually using chalk rather than paint.  As the camera moves back from a close-up on the chalk to a fourth setup.  This time it is a tall brick house with the date 1926 on its façade.  Over the course several days, the chalk drawing continues with the artists coming and going.  A young blond girl dressed in typical 70s fashion with a poncho and headscarf, dances occasionally in and out of the house.  She helps with the chalk drawing, dances in the street, and runs up to put her face into the camera.  It is in this sequence that it becomes obvious that Aihara did not take each frame at a constant rate.  Sometimes the girl appears to move at a regular 24 fps, while at other times the frames are temporally much further apart. 

The film is an expression of art and temporality.  The ephemeral nature of chalk art is contrasted with the more enduring qualities of natural stones, brick houses, and the heavens above.  Yet, as the use of pixilation demonstrates, these things that seem permanent are also changing over time.  The film reminded me very much of Lejf Marcussen’s similarly named Stones (Sten, 1982), which also screened at RICA Wissembourg 2014 as part of an hommage to the late Danish animator.  Instead of drawing directly on the stones, Marcussen superimposed images on stones – finding animal and human shapes and faces among the natural faces of rock.  As Henry David Thoreau is oft quoted as saying: “This world is but a canvas to our imagination” (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849). 

I have not been able to find any information about the choice of music for the soundtrack. I think it was chosen more for its style than for the Christian text of the poem.  Aihara regularly used psychedelic and progressive rock for his soundtracks.  That being said, the feeling of spirituality that the music evokes likely appealed to Aihara.  The refrain “You got lost in a time gone by / A day in the sun” also poetically expresses the interplay of time in this unique experimental work.

Stone was shot on 16mm and appears on the DVD Japanese Art Animation Film Collection 11: The Animation Group of Three and Experimental Anime (日本アートアニメーション映画選集11　アニメーション三人の会と実験アニメ, 2004), which can be found in the video archives of university libraries such as Musabi and Tamagawa.  The entire 12 DVD collection 日本アートアニメーション映画選集　全１２巻 can be ordered from Kinokuniya, but it is unfortunately well out of the price range of the average individual. 

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976)

The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976) is an independent animated short by Shin’ichi Suzuki.  Suzuki belongs to the first generation of post-war indie animators who pushed new boundaries in animation in the 1960s and 1970s.  His short film Dot (点, 1971) played at the 8^th and last of the Animation Festivals held at Sōgetsu Hall alongside films by fellow innovators such as Goro Sugimoto and Keiichi Tanaami.

A “gourd bottle”, or hyōtan in Japanese, is a bottle made from the calabash fruit (lagenaria siceraria).  It is also variously called “bottle gourd”, “opo squash” or “long melon”.  It is an edible fruit when harvested young, but if left to mature it can be dried and made into a bottle.  In some Asian countries it is also used for making utensils or pipes.

For The Gourd Bottle, Suzuki uses his pared-down caricature style that fans of his manga will be familiar with.  It is a comic tale with a simple, but absurd conceit: a drunk salaryman with a bow-tie is at a bar. He notices that his glass is empty, but rather than ordering another one, he pulls out a gourd bottle from under the table.  The man sitting next to him gets sucked into the bottle, like a reverse of the genie coming out of the lamp in Aladdin, and the drunk shakes the bottle and drinks its liquid.  The barkeep spots the drunk with his own liquor bottle and orders him to leave.  The barkeep also gets sucked into the bottle.  The process repeats itself with others the drunk encounters along his way: a sexy lady, a cop, a dog peeing against the side of the bottle, until he accidentally leaves the bottle on the ground and finds the tables turned on him.

On the whole, it is a relatively simply executed animation, with its minimalist style allowing the audience to focus on the humour.  There are two brief, but brilliant animation sequences: 1) the man pointing the cop’s gun at the “camera” and shooting the gun straight at the spectator and 2) the final sequence in which a car runs over the gourd.  The best gag in the film is when the guy sucks the dog up into the gourd bottle, and when he drinks its liquid wets his own pants.  It’s a comic classic its era in the vein of Marv Newland’s Bambi Meets Godzilla, (1969), Makoto Wada’s Murder (1964), and the films of Yoji Kuri and Taku Furukawa.  Tongue-in-cheek sense of humour meets unadorned, expert animation.

Crew:

Kōichi Fujita / 藤田紘一

Katsumi Ōnishi / 大西克実

Masatoshi Mizumachi / 水町正俊 (Sound)

Akio Bando / 坂東昭雄 (Camera)

Eiko Nishide / 西出栄子 (Editor)

Shin’ichi Suzuki (鈴木 伸一, b. 1933)  http://sam.or.jp/

Born in Nagasaki, Suzuki began his career as a manga-ka when he was a high school student, submitting his works to magazines such as Manga Shōnen. In 1956, he joined Otogi Pro under the mentorship of anime pioneer Ryuichi Yokoyama where he worked on the series Instant History (later renamed Otogi Manga Calendar, 1961-64).  Together with his fellow manga-ka Fujio Fujiko, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Jirō Tsunoda, Fujio Akatsuka, and others, he established the short-lived Studio Zero (1963-1971).  He has been involved in the production of a variety of animation from indie to mainstream.   Some of the big name projects he worked on include Phoenix 2772 (Taku Sugiyama, 1980), Akira (Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988), and Legend of the Forest (Osamu Tezuka, 1987).  Suzuki is one of the founding members of the Suginami Animation Museum and since 2005 has been its director.  

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4: Auteurs of the 2nd and 3rd Generations

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4: Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations

« L'animation japonaise d'auteur » presented by Ilan Nguyen

Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations (1900s – 2000s)

Auteurs de la 2e à la 3e génération (des années 1980 aux années 2000)

Original Programme :

Banana (Hitoshi Takekiyo, 1991)

A Gum Boy / くちゃお (Masaki Okuda, 2010b

Muybridge’s Strings / マイブリッジの糸 (Kōji Yamamura, 2011)

Hitogata / ひとがた (Osamu Sakai, 2011)

Scenes  /情景 (Kunio Katō, 2012)

Anomalies (Atsushi Wada, 2013)

Actual Programme:

Banana (Hitoshi Takekiyo, 1991)

A Gum Boy / くちゃお (Masaki Okuda, 2010

Digital / デジタル  (Osamu Sakai, 2012)

Scenes  /情景 (Kunio Katō, 2012)

Mechanism of Spring /春のしくみ (Atsushi Wada, 2010)

Muybridge’s Strings / マイブリッジの糸 (Kōji Yamamura, 2011)

There is no question that the greatest auteur of the second generation of Japanese indie animators is Kōji Yamamura (山村浩二, b. 1964).   Not only has he been producing top notch animation since the early 1990s, but as a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts (aka Geidai) he is nurturing current and future generations of animation talent.  His renown has attracted not just the cream of the crop from across Japan, but also talented young animators from China and South Korea who want to follow in his footsteps.  Nguyen chose to end his RICA programme with Muybridge’s Strings, a film that Nguyen felt has been underrated compared to highly favoured works like Mt. Head (2002) and Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor (2007).  Muybridge’s Strings is a very complex film with many layers, and its selection fit well in the overall RICA 2014 programme which featured many other NFB productions and co-productions in both the official competition and in the special screening events. 

Nguyen pointed out that Yamamura considers himself an auteur, following in the footsteps of animators he admires such as Jacques Drouin, Ishu Patel, Yuri Norstein, and Priit Pärn.  He is also an advocated for animation. In addition to his teaching, he set up the collective Animations: Creators and Critics, in order to raise awareness about independent world animation. 

Nguyen also presented the works of two animators who were mentored by Yamamura.  Masaki Okuda is a very talented young filmmaker and his award-winning film A Gum Boy (read review) shows a strong Yamamura influence.  Atsushi Wada is a self-taught Kansai-based animator who had already developed a recognisable individual style (thinly drawn lines, a muted colour palette and animal motifs) before attending the Geidai graduate programme.   The Geidai programme took his work to the next level with his acclaimed graduate film In a Pig’s Eye (2010).  Nguyen showed Wada’s Mechanism of Spring, which is one of Wada’s most exuberant films to date. 

The selection opened with Banana (1991) by Hitoshi Takekiyo (竹清仁, b. 1967).  A graduate of Kyushu Institute of Design, Takekiyo founded the KOO-KI collective of designers and directors in Fukuoka in 1997 and his most recent success was the animated comic short After School Midnight (2005) which was extended into a full-length version After School Midnighters in 2012.  He parted ways with KOO-KI in 2012 and founded a new independent production company Mt. Blanc Pictures.  Takekiyo’s specialty is computer animation.  His early work Banana, which won a Special International Jury Prize at Hiroshima 1992, is part of the MoMA collection.  It brings Chinese characters to life through movement and sound, performing the words that they signify.  People, 人, rush about busy streets, while hands 手 perform actions, and so on.  It’s a great little film that really ought to be shared more widely and not hidden away in an archive.

Next, Nguyen presented the work of two graduates of Tamabi (Tama Art University).  Tamabi’s animation programme, under the guidance of the late Prof. Masahiro Katayama and current mentor Prof. Tatsutoshi Nomura (野村辰寿, b. 1964), has produced many outstanding animators including Akino Kondoh, Mizue Mirai, and Oscar-winning director Kunio Katō (加藤久仁生, b. 1977).  Katō is of course most famous for La maison en petits cubes (2008), but Nguyen presented a series of steam-of-consciousness short-shorts called Scenes that Katō made for his travelling exhibition in 2012.  Read my review here. 

Osamu Sakai (坂井 治, b. 1977) is Nomura and Katō’s colleague at their company ROBOT.  Although his films regularly screen at international festivals his work is lesser known abroad.  In Japan his work has been seen on the popular, long-running NHK programme Minna no Uta.  Nguyen had hoped to screen Hitogata, but due to availability we were shown Digital instead.  Digital is a montage of hand drawn geometric shapes.  The film made the 2013 Official Selection at Annecy.  Samples of Sakai’s work including Digital cane be screened on his YouTube channel.

On the whole Nguyen presented an engaging programme of films, many of which I had not had the opportunity to see before, and posited some interesting ideas about auteurism and animation in Japan.  My only criticism was that the programme did not feature any women animators.  For the first generation of indie animators, women tended to take a backseat to their male colleagues.  To be fair, Nguyen did mention that Renzō Kinoshita was not an individual auteur but an artist who worked in a partnership with his spouse Sayoko Kinoshita, and he also mentioned the team effort of Tadanari Okamoto’s studio, which featured the talents of puppet maker Sumiko Hosaka and puppet maker / animator Fumiko Magari.  However, the final programme of animators from the 2^nd and 3^rd generations of indie animators did not reflect the fact that a growing number of women have been making a name for themselves as auteurs.  The Germany-based stop motion animator Maya Yonesho (learn more) has been exporting her unique brand of animation worldwide with her Daumenreise (Thumb Travels) workshops and although lesser known overseas, Reiko Yokosuka’s sumi-e animation is truly beautiful. 

The most exciting news is that the promise held by the current generation of women animators.  For example, Yoriko Mizushiri, a graduate of Joshibi University of Art and Design, has been a festival favourite in recent years and Akino Kondoh makes amazing animated shorts.  I also observed at Hiroshima 2014 that Geidai’s post-graduate programme in animation, where Nguyen works, has a majority of female students.  Some auteurs in the making include Saori Shiroki, who was in the first cohort of graduates alongside Atsushi Wada, as well as Yuanyuan Hu, puppet-animator Aya Tsugehata and Maho Yoshida from the 3^rd graduating class.  Yewon Kim and Yangtong Zhu are two real stand-outs from this year’s crop of graduates.  I was delighted to discover that Kansai animator Mika Seike, whose work I discovered at Image Forum in 2006, has joined the Geidai animation programme.  That means we can expect two short films from her in the next two years. Her works have a unique aesthetic that really appeals to me. 

As Nguyen said during his presentation of animation auteurs of recent decades, there has been a veritable explosion of talent on Japan’s indie scene since the turn of the century. Every year brings exiting new films and interesting young talent.  Nguyen’s presentation gave a peek at some of Japan’s hidden gems both past and present, and whetted my appetite to see more works by many of these fascinating artists.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 3: Tadanari Okamoto

Second Screening / Programme 2e partie                   25 Nov- 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

The 1970s to the Present / Des années 1970 à nos jours

A Great Unrecognized Figure: Tadanari Okamoto

Une grande figure méconnue : OKAMOTO Tadanari

Ten Little Indians /十人の小さなインデイアン (1968)

December Song / 12月のうた (1971)

Chikotan / チコタン ぼくのおよめさん (1971)

The Monkey and the Crab (excerpt) /日本むかしばなしさるかに (1972)

The Soba Flower of Mt. Oni (excerpt) /鬼がくれ山のソバの花  (1979)

Making of: "Are wa dare" (1985)

The Magic Ballad / おこんじょうるり(1983)

Order: Tadanari Okamoto Zensakuhin Shu DVD Box

Ilan Nguyen’s second programme of Japanese Auteur Animation opened with the animation of Tadanari Okamoto (岡本 忠成, 1932 – 1990), an animation genius whose work has been little recognised overseas.  As Okamoto made educational films aimed at Japanese children and adaptations of Japanese folk tales and legends, many of which are challenging to translate, Nguyen speculated that this may have been the reason his films were not distributed overseas.  In Japan, Okamoto is recognised as one of their top animators, having won the prestigious Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation more times than any other animator.   

Nguyen presented an overview of Okamoto’s career, beginning with his decision to return to university (an unusual thing to do in Japan, even today) to study filmmaking after seeing Czech puppet animation.  After completing his studies at Nihon University, Okamoto was mentored by Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions where he worked on the Rankin/Bass productions The New Adventures of Pinocchio (ピノキオの冒険, 1960-1) and Willy McBean and his Magic Machine (1965).  He then set up his own studio Echo Productions in 1964 where he was to make nearly 40 films before his untimely death at the age of 58.  Nguyen spoke about the dedicated team of people who Okamoto employed at Echo Production who worked well together and contributed to the excellence of his films.  This team included puppet artisan Sumiko Hosaka (保坂純子, b. 1930), puppet maker / animator Fumiko Magari (真賀里文子), who both teach at the Laputa Art Animation School, and cinematographer Minoru Tamura (田村実).

Order: Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

Nguyen also spoke about the special friendship between Okamoto and his fellow puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本 喜八郎, 1925-2010), with whom he collaborated on the Kawamoto+ Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows (1972-1980).  Kawamoto is an internationally recognised animation auteur, but as his work is widely available on DVD, Nguyen chose to shine his spotlight on Okamoto for the RICA audience.  He did; however, show a five-minute clip from a recording of a theatrical presentation of a scene from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国志/Sangokushi, 1982-4) which was performed as part of the homage to the great puppet master after his death in 2010. 

All of the Okamoto films Nguyen presented were on 35mm, which was a special treat.  Although the complete box set of Okamoto presents the films in their restored glory, there is something wonderful a about seeing the films in their original format.  The films were not subtitled, so Nguyen did live French interpretation.  The short documentary Making of Are wa dare , is a real treasure because it demonstrates in brief how Echo Productions makes a film from storyboard to character and set design to filming on an impressive multi-plane animation table in order to create depth of space. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014 

Coming Soon:

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 4 : Auteurs of the 2^nd and 3rd Generations

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 2: The Invention of the Animation Auteur

Japanese Auteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 2: The Invention of the Animation Auteur

« L'animation japonaise d'auteur » presented by Ilan Nguyen

Continued from Part 1: The Beginnings of Auteurism

Screening One / Programme 1ère partie                  22 Nov. 2014, La Nef, Wissembourg

The Invention of the Animation Auteur

L'invention de "l'animation d'auteur"

Clap Vocalism / Human Zoo /人間動物園 (Yōji Kuri, 1962)

Love / 愛  (Yōji Kuri, 1963)

Mermaid / 人魚 (Osamu Tezuka, 1964)

The Flower /花 (Yōji Kuri, 1967)

The idea of a Japanese animation auteur was arguably invented by experimental artist Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, 1928) in the 1960s.  A member of the Animation Group of Three (アニメーション三人の会), who inaugurated a series of animation festivals at the Sōgetsu Art Center in Tokyo, Kuri was also the first indie animator to actively promote his work at international festivals.  Kuri was a part of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and his avant-garde, racy animated shorts shocked and delighted festival audiences in equal measures.  Nguyen screened Kuri’s 1962 film Clap Vocalism, which won the Special Jury Prize at the third Annecy (1963) and the bronze medal for animation at the 24^th Biennale in Venice (1963).  Click here to read my full review of the film.  The programme also included the Kuri classics Love (read review) and Flower (review forthcoming).  Nguyen described Kuri’s style as anti-commercial and minimalist, with musique concrète.  His style and themes need to be understood in the context of the 1960s era of counter-culture that were formative for him. 

Whereas Kuri sought to shock and surprise with his art, his fellow animation auteur Osamu Tezuka (塚 治虫, 1928-89) sought to impress.  When the Animation Group of Three expanded into the 1^st Animation Festival, Tezuka was one of a handful of animators to present their cutting edge works.  Nguyen showed Mermaid, one of two films that Tezuka presented at that festival.  Inspired by Claude Debussy’s symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (arranged by Isao Tomita), Mermaid is an Orwellian tale of a young man’s unwavering desire for freedom in the overwhelming face of modernism.  The character design in minimalist, with Shigeru Yamamoto doing the original art and Kiyomi Numamoto assisting with the animation.

Independent production of the 1970s 

La production indépendante dans les années 1970

Made In Japan (Renzō Kinoshita, 1972)

Stone (Nobuhiro Aihara, 1975)

Karma / カルマ (Nobuhiro Aihara, 1977)

Coffee Break  / コーヒー・ブレイク(Taku Furukawa, 1977)

Pica-Don   / ピカドン (Renzō Kinoshita, 1978) 

Bubble   / バブル (Shin’ichi Suzuki, 1980)

Another artist acutely aware of the changing face of Japan was Renzō Kinoshita (木下蓮三, b. 1936-97) who founded the Hiroshima InternationalAnimation Festival in 1985 together with his wife and artistic collaborator Sayoko Kinoshita (木下小夜子, b. 1945) (learn more about him).  Kinoshita’s films are concerned with social issues and Nguyen chose to open and close this section of his talk with key works by this innovative cutout animator.   Made in Japan (1972) is Kinoshita’s critique of the rapid modernisation of Japanese culture.  With tongue firmly in cheek, this film mocks the commercialism of 1970s Japan and explores controversial themes such as the Americanisation of Japanese culture, the destruction of traditional values in the pursuit of money. 

Made in Japan was followed by two films by Nobuhiro Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011), an experimental animator who hit his stride in the 1970s.  Although Aihara loved to travel overseas and meet fellow artists abroad, his works are rarely shown outside of Japan. The only works that are readily available are the collaborations he did with pop artist and colleague at Kyoto University of the Arts Keiichi Tanaami, which appear on DVDs released in Japan and France.  Stone (1975) is an experimental animation shot using pixilation and other avant-garde techniques during a six-month stay in Sweden.  Key images include Rorschach paintings on paper shot on natural stones and a time-lapse sequence of a brick house being painted shot with a fisheye lens.   Karma (1977) has a more psychedelic feel to it, thanks in part to the soundtrack – “Aegean Sea” by Greek psychedelic / progressive rock band Aphrodite’s Child.  The swirling, mandala-like imagery is a characteristic motif of Aihara’s work, appearing in many of his animations, paintings, and illustrations (see: Hiroshima 2010 poster).  Learn more about Aihara in the obituary that I wrote in 2011.

Taku Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) is one of the best known independent animators in Japan.  He began his career being mentored by Kuri, but then went on to found his own studios.  His pared-down caricature style was heavily influenced by the style of the New Yorker cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg.  Furukawa won the Special Jury Prize at Annecy in 1975 for his innovative film Phenakistoscope and the Bungeishunjū Manga Award for his publication The Takun Humour in 1978.  A few years ago he succeeded Kihachirō Kawamoto as the president of JAA (the Japanese Animation Association).  Nguyen presented one of Furukawa’s classic work Coffee Break.  Read my review of it here.

Shin’ichi Suzuki, who featured in the first part of Nguyen’s presentation for his work at Otogi Pro, went on to found his own production company Studio Zero in 1963.  Nguyen was unable to get his animated short Bubble as originally planned, so he showed The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976) instead.  It’s a very funny, caricature style short about a drunk with a magic gourd bottle (aka calabash – a squash-like fruit that can be dried and used as a bottle).  Suzuki has been the director of the Suginami Animation Museum since 2005.

Nguyen chose to close the 1st of his 2 programmes with Kinoshita’s 1978 film Pica-don.  I thought that this was a good idea because the experience of watching Pica-don, an animated depiction of the bombing of Hiroshima based upon witness testimonies and drawings, is very intense.  One really needs some quiet time afterwards to process the horror that the film evokes.  Read more in my full review of the film and accompanying picture book. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Next:

JapaneseAuteur Animation at RICA Wissembourg, Part 3: Tadanari Okamoto