浅野優子『蟻の生活』(1994)【excerpt】 from KRAUT FILM on Vimeo.
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When a loved one passes away in Japan, their remains are ceremonially cremated. After the cremation, the remaining remnants of bone ( 骨/hone) are picked out by relatives using long chopsticks and passed from chopsticks to chopsticks and placed into a large urn. This practice is called kotsuage (骨揚げ). Newcomers to Japan often learn about it when they are admonished at dinner for making the faux pas of trying to pass food to another person directly by use of chopsticks.
Homami YANO (矢野ほなみ)’s latest animated short, A Bite of the Bone (骨嚙み/ Honekami, 2021), concerns the lesser known tradition of honekami (骨嚙み), when members of the family actually consume some of the bones during the funeral ceremony in order to a keep a part of their loved one inside them. This was famously done by the actor Shintarō KATSU (勝 新太郎, 1931-1997, star of the Akumyō, Heitai Yakuza, and Zatōichi series), with the bones of both his beloved older brother, Tomisaburō WAKAYAMA (若山 富三郎, 1929-1992, star of the Kozure Ōkami series), and his father.
With A Bite of the Bone, Yano revisits the traumatic childhood experience of having refused to consume her father’s bones when he died. As she explains in her director’s note, “The bone I did not eat stayed with me, as if stuck in my throat, and I found myself unable to express the experience in words nor forget it.”
The tale is narrated by the young female protagonist and opens with the sound and images of her father’s funeral. The nonsense funereal sutra is performed by Yano’s mentor and producer, Kōji YAMAMURA (山村浩二) . The scene then transforms into a loving recollection of life growing up in a small island community. The narrator and her sister playing with an inner tube in the water, her father taking them on hikes in the hills, and the haunting memory of an abandoned WWII ammunition dump.
Yano uses a pointillist style – the many colourful dots giving the memories a shimmering, dreamlike quality. There is a poetic moment when the girl’s father is pruning the pine trees of the island into the shapes of clouds and waves against a pinky-red evening landscape. The sadness of the theme of the death of her father is softened by the sweet childhood memories of her dog and the stunning nature of the island.
Yano’s short animations have always delved into profound issues about love and life, but with A Bite of the Bone, she has reached a level of maturity in her animation style. The constantly changing perspectives and transitions between scenes show the influence of her mentor, renowned award-winning animator Kōji Yamamura, who produced with film at his studio Au Praxinoscope in Setagaya. During the pandemic, I happened upon Yano working on the film when I stopped into the studio shop to browse the DVDs. It is wonderful to see that such a beautiful work of art could come out of such dark times.
A Bite of the Bone has won numerous awards at festivals in Ottawa, Chitose, Raindance, to name but a few. It has also been entered for consideration at the Oscars. Thank you to the New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival for making this year’s short film selection available for screening online for those of us who are still restricting their travel.
To learn more about Homani Yano, visit her website: https://honamiyano.com/
2021 Cathy Munroe Hotes
Strawberry Candy (いちご飴 / Ichigo Chigo, 2020) was the film that made the biggest impact on me at the Geidai Animation 11 Neo screenings in February in Yokohama. It is a powerful short film that tells sensitively tells the story of familial child abuse from the perspective of a young girl.
The film begins innocently enough with the central protagonist, a Chinese girl of about kindergartner age, talking about her likes and dislikes. She likes playing hide-and-seek with a cardboard box used for storing pears, she doesn’t like the new telephone because her mom makes her call people; she likes her red marble that her father gave her on Children’s Day, but she doesn’t like the boys next store who took it from her; and so on.
As she continues telling us her likes and dislikes, the director, Nianze Li, masterfully builds a sense of unease. This innocent child is dealing with a secret that she doesn’t fully understand. She is able to express her distress at the situation her finds herself in and Li’s beautifully rendered animation shows how a child’s animation can be a coping mechanism. The boundaries between dreams (or nightmares) and reality can blur together until it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.
It is a powerful film, that will no doubt be distressing to viewers with personal experience of domestic abuse, but it is a very important tale to tell. It reminds us that we really need to listen to the stories children tell us and take seriously when they express that something is wrong. The story is beautifully illustrated with colourful pencil drawings, in an elegant evocation of the most common medium of children’s art.
According to her “Making Of” blog, the story came out not of personal experience but of research Li had done into the subject of child abuse. She studied films and books that gave her insight into the psychology of abuse, and wanted to give an empathetic portrayal from the point of view of the victim.
The film is playing this weekend and next at the Image Forum Festival where I will be watching it again. I am sure it will be picked up at other international film festivals around the world in the coming year.
Nianze Li (李 念澤, b. 1995) did her undergraduate education at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute New Media Art Department (2017) and completed her master’s at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media earlier this year. You can follow her on twitter, Instagram, and Vimeo.
2020 Cathy Munroe Hotes
Waiter (2014)Popping, Mixing (2012)LaLaLa Brothers (2011)Keita SANO’s ‘Mad Love’ (music video, 2017)King Gnu’s ‘Prayer X’ (music video, 2018)Doodle Project II (2019)Kicell’s ‘Hitotsu dake Kaeta’ / キセル「ひとつだけ変えた」(music video, 2018)Natsu to Suisei’s ‘27th’ / 夏と彗星「２７ｔｈ」 (music video, 2020)WONK’s ‘Cyberspace Love’ (music video, 2017)Hunter (2017)handshake (2018)Firehead (2019)
See also:🏠おしごと🏠— ささきえり🏡Eri Sasaki (@mss_753) April 2, 2020
studio CLIP(@studio_clip)さんの
サステナビリティの考え方をやさしく伝えるアニメーションをつくりました🧒👩
FUNSUS(ファンサス)
「明日も、たのしいといいな」https://t.co/sDHC3l07CV
たのしくかわいくつくりました！
ぜひご覧ください。
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