Renowned animator Rintarō (りんたろう, b. 1942) premiered his latest animation at the debut Niigata Animation Film Festival (NIAFF) in March 2023. It seems fitting that he should have been a guest at the first NIAFF, because he started off his career as an in-betweener on the first colour anime feature length film The White Snake Enchantress (白蛇伝/Hakujaden, 1958), also known in English as Legend of the White Serpent.
One of the reasons that Niigata was chosen as a location to host an animation festival for feature length films is that Niigata is the birthplace of two animation pioneers who worked on Hakujaden: Hiroshi ŌKAWA (大川博, 1896-1971) and Kōji FUKIYA (蕗谷虹児, 1898-1979). Ōkawa (sometimes transliterated as OHKAWA), who has been called “The Man Who Aimed to Become Disney” by historian Nobuyuki TSUGATA, was the producer of Hakujaden and Fukiya contributed to the early technology used at Tōei Animation during the making of Hakujaden. In honour of their achievements, NIAFF awards the OHKAWA/FUKIYA PRIZE for technical contributions to animation.
Rintarō calls his work a manga eiga – an earlier term for animation – literally “cartoon film” and it takes its inspiration from early Japanese cinema and animation history. Manga Cinema dedicated to Sadao Yamanaka: Nezumikozo Jirokichi (山中貞雄に捧げる漫画映画『鼠小僧次郎吉』, 2023) is an adaption of the story of the legendary Edo period thief and folk hero, sometimes called Jirokichi the Rat in English. It is based on the script of Nezumikozō Jirokichi Zenpen: Edo no maki (鼠小僧次郎吉 前篇 江戸の巻, 1933), the first of a trilogy of films written and directed by Sadao YAMANAKA (山中 貞雄, 1909-1938). Yamanaka was a pioneering film director whose brilliant career was cut short when he was drafted into the army and died in Manchuria. All but 3 of his early films, including this trilogy were lost, and with this work Rintarō and his team, including character designer Katsuhiro ŌTOMO (大友克洋) and composer Toshiyuki HONDA (本多俊之), sought to pay homage both to Yamanaka and to the art of silent cinema.
In this clip from the NIAFF 2023 Video Archives, Rintarō talks to animation expert Ryūsuke HIKAWA (氷川竜介) about why he decided to do this project. Some of the highlights of the discussion are how much animation has changed so much since Rintarō first started in the industry, how young people today don’t know a lot about silent cinema – a medium that Alfred Hitchcock called the purest form of cinema, and his collaboration with Toshiyuki HONDA on the music for the film. Please use the captions auto-translate function for the language of your preference.
In the run up to the second instalment of NIAFF in March 2024, the festival is sharing highlights of last year’s festival every Tuesday on its YouTube Channel. Subscribe to see more.
Nezumikozo Jirokichi is distributed internationally by MIYU.
Gakken Publishers are celebrating their 70th anniversary
this year.Since the company’s establishment in 1947, Gakken has
become well known for its educational books and other educational materials.In the run-up to their anniversary last year,
Gakken began uploading their back catalogue of educational stop motion
animation biweekly onto their YouTube
Channel.This is an overview of the
first ten films, which were released between 1958 and 1960.
The first film is an adaptation of a well-known story by popular late Taishō
/ early Shōwa
writer Kenji
Miyazawa.“The
Restaurant of Many Orders” has a
particularly important place in Japanese animation history because the story
served as the inspiration for animation pioneer Tadanari Okamoto’s final
film, which was completed posthumously by his friend, Kihachirō
Kawamoto.
The other short films are adaptations of folk and fairy tales from
Japan and Europe.Some are adapted in a
traditional fashion, while others are modern interpretations.In addition to puppets, cutouts and some
experimental techniques are used.
The two most prominent stop motion animators to establish themselves in
Gakken’s animation department were Jinbo Matsue (神保まつえ, b. 1928) and Kazuhiko Watanabe (渡辺和彦, 1932-1997).Matsue joined Gakken in 1953 after graduating
from college in Yokohama with a degree in education.After initially working on picture books for
children, she moved into filmmaking. Watanabe became interested in puppet animation
after seeing the works of the legendary Czech animator Jiří Trnka
while a student of Western painting at Tokyo University of the Arts.
Gakken’s films were distributed to
schools and libraries in Japan and in the United States (via Coronet Films)
initially on 16mm, moving to video in the 1980s.This is the first time the films have been distributed
in digital format.Links to the films
and to reviews of the films are below.They are currently only available in Japanese, but I hope the summaries
that I have been writing with the reviews will aid non-Japanese speakers in
following the storylines.
1958 The Restaurant of Many Orders 注文の多い料理店à Chūmon
no Ōi Ryōriten dir. Gō ONO / 小野豪 pr. Namisaburō TŌHEI / 藤平浪三郎 original story: Kenji MIYAZAWA / 宮沢賢治watch
film read review
1959 The Dove and the Ant ありとはと Ari to Hato dir. Shinichi KAMIHAYASHI / 神林伸一 pr. Kazuhiko WATANABE / 渡辺和彦 original story: Aesop Fable / イソップ寓話 watch
film read
review
1959
Inemuri Būchan いねむりぶうちゃん dir. Shinichi KAMIHAYASHI / 神林伸一 pr. Matsue JINBO / 神保まつえ original story: foreign (non-Japanese) tale /外国むかし話 watch
film read review
1959 Kozaru no Buranko こざるのぶらんこ dir. Shinichi KAMIHAYASHI / 神林伸一 pr. Matsue JINBO / 神保まつえ original story: Hirosuke HAMADA / 浜田広watch
film read review
1959 Polon Guitar ポロンギター dir. Gō ONO / 小野豪 pr. Shinichi KAMIHAYASHI / 神林伸一 original story: fairy tale / 創作童話 watch
film read review
1960 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse いなかねずみとまちねずみ Inaka Nezumi to Machi Nezumi dir. Kazuhiko WATANABE / 渡辺和彦 pr. Shinichi KAMIHAYASHI / 神林伸一 original story: Aesop Fable / イソップ寓話 watch
film read review
1960 Kasa Jizō かさじぞう dir. Yūhei WATANABE / 渡辺隆平 pr. Haruo ITOH / 伊藤治雄 original story: Japanese folk tale / 日本むかし話 watch
film read
review
1960 The North Wind and the Sun きたかぜとたいよう Kita-kaze to Taiyō dir. Kazuhiko WATANABE / 渡辺和彦 pr. Haruo ITOH / 伊藤治雄 original story: Aesop Fable / イソップ寓話 watch
film read
review
1960 The Elves and the Shoemaker くつやとこびと Kutsuya to Habito dir. Matsue JINBO / 神保まつえ pr. Haruo ITOH/ 伊藤治雄 original story: Grimm fairy tale /グリム童話 watch
film read review
1960 Town Musicians of Mori もりのおんがくたい Mori no Ongakutai dir. Matsue JINBO / 神保まつえ pr. Haruo ITOH / 伊藤治雄 original story: Grimm fairy tale / グリム童話 watch
film read
review
Since it was
first published in 1845, Hans Christian
Andersen’s tragic tale “The Little Match Girl” (Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne) has been adapted into a wide
variety of media from theatre to manga.Director
Kazuhiko Watanabe and
screenwriter/producer Matsue Jinbo’s
adaptation, The Little Match Girl (マッチ売りの少女 / Machi Uri
no Shōjo, 1967), was Gakken Film Company’s latest in a series of puppet
adaptations of international fairy tales.Since 1958, they had already adapted many Japanese folk tales, as well
as several by the Grimm brothers and Aesop.In 1970, they would go on to adapt another popular Andersen tale “The
Ugly Duckling” (Den grimme ælling) – The Ugly Duckling (みにくいあひるの子/
Minikui Ahiru no Ko).
Plot
The
adaptation is quite faithful to the original story.It begins with the little girl asleep in her
bed in a cold room on New Year’s Eve, with the wind blustering in through a
broken window.She looks to a portrait
of her late grandmother for comfort.Her
father, depicted only by his shoes and his stern voice, tells her to get up and get to work, warning that
she should not come home if she hasn’t sold any matches.The streets are busy with people shopping for
Christmas.One woman notices the girl
and is about to buy matches, only to be distracted by a friend.A kindly grandmother with her impatient
grandson trigger the little girl to recall her own grandmother.
The tragedy
of the little girl’s situation is emphasized by a scene contrasting her life
with those of children playing in the snow.The girl passes forlornly by the park as the children laugh and throw
snowballs at each other.The original
author of this tale gets a nod in this scene as the park features a bust that
looks very much like Hans Christian Andersen himself.In a dramatic sequence the girl almost gets
run over by a horse-drawn carriage, causing her to lose her shoes (a dog takes
off with one of them) and scattering her matchsticks on the ground.
Night falls,
and the girl’s luck does not improve.She wanders the city streets a lonely figure peering in at the warm
interiors as doors and curtains are closed in her face.She shivers under a streetlight, recalling
her father’s words telling her not to bother coming home empty handed.She curls up shivering on a step and lights a
match.In the match’s light she sees a
vision of a warm hearth.The match blows
out so she lights another and sees a vision of a Christmas feast.A third match brings up a vision of a
Christmas tree covered in candles.The
candles transform into stars and she sees a shooting star.In a terrible premonition of the girl’s fate,
she recalls that her grandmother used to say that a shooting star means that a
soul is travelling to heaven.The match
girl lights her remaining matches in the desperate hope of seeing her
grandmother again.The sequence ends
with the girl embracing her grandmother.
The next
day, the townspeople wake to a lovely winter’s day, bright with sunshine.The promise of the day is blighted by a
gathering crowd around the girl’s body.They react with shock and pity, and the film does not shy away (as many
adaptations do) from showing the girl lying still on the ground.
Review
The
elaborate sets and costume design for this puppet animation are simply
wonderful.Great care has been taken to
recreate a 19th century European city.The attention to detail can be seen in
particular in the scene when the girl walls through the city as night falls. A whole city street was built including lit
interiors with moving puppets in each of the windows or open doorways.The camera moves through the city at ground
level following the girl in a very complicated sequence.
In fact, no
expense seems to have been spared as each scene appears to use a new set. The most
brilliant sequence technically is the scene when the girl almost gets run over
by a horse-drawn carriage.This is shot
from the perspective of the girl, with the horses running straight at the
camera.Compared to the earliest Gakken puppet
animations, this sequence shows to what a high standard the level of puppet
animation at Gakken had achieved by the late 1960s.It conveys the heightened drama of the moment
using the same camera shots as a classical Hollywood live action sequence.
The other
marker for me of the level of sophistication of the cinematography is the way
in which the night sequences are filmed.In particular, the little match girl sitting under the streetlight in a
spotlight that seems to emanate from the streetlight itself, followed by a very
sophisticated shot of her top lit with snow gently falling.
The icing on
the cake is the lyrical score by Hikaru
Hayashi (林光, 1931-2012).Hayashi scored over 100 films in his career, including over 30 collaborations
with the renowned filmmaker Kaneto Shindō
(新藤兼人, 1912-2012).In fact, before The Little Match Girl, Hayashi had already composed the brilliant
soundtracks to Shindō’s The Naked Island
(1960), Kuroneko (1961) and Onibaba (1964). He had previously worked with Gakken for the
puppet animations Poron Guitar (1959)
and Taketori monogarai (1961).For The
Little Match Girl, Hayashi took a classical European approach, using strings
and woodwind instruments to express the emotional context of the drama.
In Context
Gakken’s
adaptation holds up extremely well in comparison with the three most well-known
animated adaptations of the tale.The
character design is much better than that found in Charles Mintz’s 1937 animated short which was produced as part of
Columbia Pictures’ Color Rhapsodies
series – the studio’s attempt to emulate Disney’s Silly Symphonies.It was
made using a two-strip Technicolor process and puts the emphasis on an extended
dream sequence that suggests the little girl is going to heaven.The colours are kitschy and the little girl’s
features are so exaggerated as to be distracting.It was however nominated for an Oscar in 1937,
but was no match for the Disney classic The
Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson, 1937).
Tōei Dōga
included the story in its 1968 anime The
World of Hans Christian Andersen (アンデルセン物語 / Anderusen Monogatari) directed by Kimio Yabui.It alters the
story by adding more characters and presents a romanticized, melodramatic take
on the story.Although this is a very
good, if schmaltzy, take on the story, I prefer the subtlety and nuance of
Gakken’s version.
The Disney
adaptation The Little Matchgirl (Roger Allers, 2006) – with “Matchgirl”
written oddly as all one word – was originally intended to be included in the
canceled project Fantasia 2006 (aka Fantasia III).Although the music score is beautiful, the
animation does not “dance” to the music as it did in the original Fantasia (1940).It transfers the story from 19th
century Denmark to 19th century Russia, doubtlessly because they
chose to pair the story with the music of Alexander
Borodin.It paints a grey and bleak
picture of the little match girl’s world.Colour only seeps into the picture when the girl strikes the match and
has visions of an idealized Christmas with her late grandmother. Even more so than the Gakken adaptation, it
allows the visuals to speak for themselves, but it does so in a way that
assumes the audience has some knowledge of the story.The girl’s death is depicted in such a way
that the less keen observer might believe the girl is being rescued at the end.
Legacy
The Little Match Girl was acknowledged with an
award by the Ministry of Education in 1967 as well as an award at the 22nd
Mainichi Film Awards.It also screened at
festivals in Europe winning the Golden Mermaid Award at a festival in
Copenhagen in 1975 to celebrate the centenary of the passing of Hans Christian
Andersen.The film was dubbed in English
and distributed to schools and libraries in the USA by Coronet Instructional
Films in 1968.
Director / 演出 Kazuhiko
WATANABE渡辺邦彦
Producer and Screenplay /プロデュース + 脚本 Matsue
JINBO神保まつえ
Production / 製作 Shōji HARA 原正次
Design / 企画 Shigeki
ISHIKAWA 石川茂樹
Original Work / 原作 Hans
Christian ANDERSEN ハンス・クリスチャン・アンデルセン
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