Mabo's Big Race (マー坊の大競争, 1936)

Many early animation characters like Krazy Kat and Popeye got their start in newspaper comic strips.  There was a similar trend in Japan, due in large part to the fact that many early animators – such as Ōten Shimokawa and Jun’ichi Kōuchi from the satirical magazine Tokyo Puck – were comic artists.   One of the early popular comic strip characters to make the transition to animation was the young boy Mābō (マー坊).

Two Mābō shorts appear on disc 4 of Digital Meme’s excellent box set Japanese Anime Classic Collection.  The first of these is the 1’44” short-short Mabo's Big Race (マー坊の大競争/Mābō no Daikyōsō, 1936).  The animator, director, and production company for the film are not currently known.  Digital Meme presents the film with an organ soundtrack composed and performed by Jōichi Yūasa (湯浅ジョウイチ) in the typical style of a silent film accompaniment.  The film has not been digitally restored so the film has many scratches due to wear and tear and patches of light and dark due to the film’s age.   

The relationship between the animation and comic strips can be seen in the title card, which reads “Manga: Mābō no Daikyōsō”.  One of the early terms for animation in Japanese was “manga eiga” (cartoon movie).  This strong connection between comics and animation continues to this day in Japan as most TV anime series are adaptations of manga. 

Without any preamble, the film jumps right into Mābō racing in the 5,000m event in a stadium.  The boy is tiny next to the adult participants who look tall and ungainly (and possible female?) in contrast to the hero of the film.  The other competitors are depicted as stereotypically “foreign” with their chubby figures (unlikely at the Olympics) and pointy noses and chins.  Initially they outrun Mābō with their much longer legs, but he fights valiantly to catch up with them.  He is cheered on not only by people but by foreign animals (lion, elephant, hippo, kangaroo) and popular American animation characters (Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat).  Just when Mābō reaches the front of the pack, he stumbles and everyone falls onto him flattening him into a pancake.  A man with a body like Wimpy from Popeye re-inflates Mābō using a bicycle tire pump attached comically to the circle in the centre of the flag on Mābō’s shirt.  Soon, Mābō is floating in the air like a helium balloon.  He flies off after his competitors, spinning as he goes, and before long he is flying by the person in first place, who appears to be skipping as if he (or she?) thinks he has it all in the bag.  The animals in the crowd laugh as Mābō picks up speed and he crossing the finish line in first place – slamming into a board which stops him, then deflates him with spikes that emerge from the boards as if by magic. 

The Japanese flag rises on the centre pole, flanked by two Olympic Games flags.  People cheer and wave Japanese flags in the audience.  Next up, it’s the pole vault.  Mābō’s competitor knocks down the bar on his first run, but Mābō sails over the bar with ease.  In his second try, Mābō runs into trouble, but his pole becomes anthropomorphic and aggressively shoves him over the pole and into first place again.  The image of the Japanese flag-waving flags repeats and the film ends abruptly on a close up of a standalone Japanese flag.

It seems likely that this film was made to promote nationalism in the run-up to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  Many animated films made during the Fifteen Years’ War (1931-45) were made for such propagandistic purposes from Noburō Ōfuji’s silhouette animation The National Anthem: Kimigayo (国歌 君か代/ Kokka Kimigayo, 1931) to the infamous Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲/Momotarō no umiwashi, 1942).  Mābō was one of many boy heroes used to promote imperialism during the war years (see Note 2 below).  The propagandistic message of this film is quite tame compared to that of Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, but it is still flag-waving clear.  The “foreign” characters are not country specific but ridiculous in contrast to cute and nimble Mābō, and the film takes every opportunity to showcase the hinomaru. 

It is unlikely that Disney, the Fleischer brothers, and Pat Sullivan were aware of the cameos of their iconic cartoon characters (Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, respectively).  This film was clearly only intended for domestic consumption.  Furthermore, later films like the aforementioned Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, demonstrate that Japanese wartime animators had no qualms about appropriating American cartoon characters for propagandistic purposes.  (Read my review of Momotaro’s Sea Eagle to learn more.) In Mābō’s Big Race, America was not yet the enemy so Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Betty Boop, and Felix the Cat are merely signifiers of the mostly Western crowds that would be in attendance at the XI Olympics. 

From a scholar’s point of view the film is significant for the way that it demonstrates how a very short, cartoon can be an effective propaganda tool.  It is certainly subtler than the much more overtly didactic Disney shorts Education for Death (1943) and Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943).  The film amuses with slapstick humour, while at the same time squeezing in as many patriotic symbols as possible.  It has also been made in an economic way with the use of cutouts for action and the repetition of shots. 

©2014 Catherine Munroe Hotes

Notes:

1. The popularity of Mābō is attested to by Peter B. High in his book The Imperial Screen: Imperial Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931-1945, Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2003, pp. 473-4).

2.  A discussion of boy heroes in comics and animation used to promote imperialism can be found in Chapter 2 of Michael Baskett’s The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan, Honolulu: U of Hawai’i P, 2008. 

Radioactivists – Protest in Japan since Fukushima (2011)

The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 and the ensuing nuclear disaster were a wake-up call not only for the citizens of Japan but for people around the world living with nuclear energy.  If a catastrophe of this magnitude could happen in a country as technologically advanced as Japan, then surely it could happen closer to home.  The notion that local governments are looking out for the best interests of the people when it comes to nuclear energy has been forever destroyed by this event.

One of the countries most deeply impacted by increased anti-nuclear sentiment in the wake of the Japanese disaster has been Germany, where the government was pressured into announcing a commitment to abandon nuclear power on May 30, 2011. By chance, two young politically aware Germans, Julia Leser and Clarissa Seidel, were in Japan during the catastrophe.  Leser, a student of Japanology and politics at Leipzig University, had just completed a year abroad at Waseda.  Her friend Seidel, a recent media studies graduate, had joined her for a short holiday.  Two days after the earthquake hit, the two returned to Germany where they were frustrated about the lack of media coverage of the growing anti-nuclear movement in Japan that they were following on websites like J-Fissures and Shirōtono Ran.  Inspired by the by this, Leser and Seidel returned to Japan with a camera to make their first documentary: Radioactivists – Protest in Japan since Fukushima (2011)

Radioactivists focuses exclusively on the reaction to the nuclear disaster in Tokyo.  The first Shirōto no Ran (素人の乱/Revolt of the Amateurs) demonstration was held in Koenji on April 10^th.  With an estimated 15,000 people in attendance, it was the largest protest of its kind in Japan since the 1970s.  Seidel and Leser tell the story through lively footage of the protests and the testimony of the key figures organizing the movement:  Hajime Matsumoto, an entrepreneur and activist who founded the Shirōto no Ran movement, the writer Yoshihiko Ikegami who is editor in chief of political magazine Gendai Shisō, and Keisuke Narita, an anarchist, activist, and owner of a DIY-Infoshop in Shinjuku.  The political and social ramifications of this movement are put into context in the film by interviews with the political scientist Chigaya Kinoshita and the sociologist Yoshitaka Mōri.

Matsumoto painting a flag with the word "KAISAN" (解散/dissolution) on the front step of his recycle shop.

For first time documentary filmmakers, I was impressed that Leser and Seidel were able to whittle down  over 20 hours of footage into a neat 72 minute film.  Apart from some inelegant transitions between sections of the film, it is a strong documentary with a nice balance of information and images.  The emphasis is firmly placed on giving voice to the concerned citizens of Tokyo with the filmmakers themselves content to stay behind the lens.  The behind-the-scenes footage of the organization of the second protest in Shibuya in May shows the jocular good-will of the organizers to get as many people as possible to join in the demonstration while at the same time doing their best not to irritate the police or the park attendants of Yoyogi Park. 

Prof. Steffi Richter with Clarissa Seidel and Julia Leser at Japan Week, Frankfurt am Main

See more photos from this event on Google Plus.

The audience at Japan Week for the premier of Radioactivists last Saturday was a lively crowd with many  activists in attendance who had attended Occupy Frankfurt earlier that day.  It was an eye-opening experience for many to realize how lucky they were with their ability to protest openly in Germany compared to the much more tightly regulated protests in Japan.  For example, in Japan the police are able to detain people without charge for up to 23 days – a time period which can lead to innocent people losing their jobs if applied injudiciously by police. 

Although Radioactivists makes the large numbers of police at the demonstrations look out of proportion to the peaceful nature of the protesters and allows Keisuke Narita to share his grievances about police behaviour, on the whole the film tries to maintain a positive impression of the first three Shirōto no Ran demonstrations.  This is not an anti-police or anti-government film, but a documentation of a group of people entreaty to their fellow citizens to join them in their call for an end to the use of nuclear energy in Japan.  The promotion of good will is aided in a large part by the participation of Human Recovery Project, a network of punk and rock bands who do charity work in the Tohoku region.  The musicians add a celebratory, festival atmosphere to the marches.  The most moving moment in the film for me was a heartfelt performance of Kiyoshiro Imawano's anti-nuclear cover version of Eddie Cochran's  "Summertime Blues". 

Radioactivists is really just a snapshot of the anti-nuclear movement in Tokyo between March and June.  Due to budgetary constraints, the makers were unable to travel to cities like Osaka and Kyoto where anti-nuclear protest has also been significant.  The film ends with footage of the third demonstration in June as it winds along the streets of Shinjuku.  Since Leser and Seidel finished shooting the film in June, the demonstrations have continued on a bi-monthly basis with more and more participants at each event.  For more information about the documentary and updates on the protests, you can follow the filmmakers on Twitter or on their blog.  I do hope that the filmmakers are inspired / get the funding to make a sequel.


16 January 2012 UPDATE: This film is now available on DVD with Japanese, English, German, and Spanish subtitles.  Click here for more details.

RADIOACTIVISTS – Protest in Japan since Fukushima

Germany/Japan 2011, 72 min.

Directed + Produced by:

Julia Leser + Clarissa Seidel

Editor:

 Clarissa Seidel

Additional Photography:

Arseny Rossikhin

Associate Producers:

Roger Zehnder

Yoshihiro Akai

Graphic Design:

Clemens Berger

René Hänsel

Original Music:

Junsuke Kondo

We Want Wine

ECD

Translation:

Yasuo Akai

Featuring:

Yoshihiko Ikegami

Chigaya Kinoshita

Hajime Matsumoto

Keisuke Narita

Yoshitaka Mōri

Human Recovery Project 

Radioactivists had its world premiere on 12 November 2011 at:

This event was sponsored by Nippon Connection:

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲, 1942)

World War II inspired many governments around the world to sponsor animated propaganda to rally support on the home front. Some, like the films of Norman McLaren in Canada, were aimed at encouraging people to support the war financially – see V for Victory (1941), Five for Four (1942) , and Dollar Dance, 1943 (NFB Overview). Disturbingly in the United States (see Ducktators), Japan, and Germany (see Der Störenfried), propagandists decided to target children for their campaigns by using characters from popular folk tales and movies. 

   

In Japan, the legend of Momotaro, the Peach Boy, was commandeered by propagandists as a patriotic hero. In the original tale, Momotaro was found by an elderly couple floating down the river in a peach. When he grew up, he became unusually strong. One day, Momotaro decides to Demon Island in order to defeat the demons that are terrorizing the people there and the elderly woman who adopted him gives him millet dumplings to take with him. Along the way, he encounters a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant and he gives them millet dumplings so that they will join him on his mission. They defeat the demons and return home with wonderful treasures. 

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲/Momotarō no umiwashi, 1942) reframes this story in a manner designed to encourage people to celebrate the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor as a victory against evil forces. Unlike the original tale where Momotaro actually engages in battle with the dog, monkey, and pheasant, in Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, Momotaro assumes the role of a military leader who orders his troops of dogs, monkeys, and pheasants into battle while he follows the action from the battleship. “I, your captain,” Momotaro pronounces, “will await your return.” Momotaro towers above the animals who are quite childlike in both appearance and behaviour. 

The film sets up a number of gags to endear young audiences on the side of the Japanese forces. The ground crew are rabbits who use their floppy ears to make signals. On one of the planes, a dog and a monkey play with building blocks that are in danger of collapsing. The Japanese, the film suggests, are on the side of all that is good and natural in the world. At one point, they even befriend a baby sea eagle and his parent in a bizarre sequence that takes place on the wing of one of the aircraft – as if there would be no wind while in flight! 

The conceit is that Hawaii is Demon Island and that the inhabitants there are the demons of legend. When the attack commences, we are disturbingly shown events from the point of view of the people on the ground. The Americans are depicted in human, not animal form, but the horror of the event is subverted into slapstick comedy. The central American character resembles Bluto from the popular Fleischer Studio’s Popeye series. These films were well-known and loved by Japanese children in the 1930s and the character would have been immediately recognizable as Popeye’s nemesis. In the unlikely circumstance that a child did not recognize him as Bluto, he is clearly demarcated as “bad” because he has demon horns and a tail and is associated with heavy drinking. 

Apart from the fact that it is disquieting to see an event in which 2,402 Americans were killed and more than a thousand wounded depicted as if it were an extended slapstick comedy routine, there are a number of historical inaccuracies promoted by the film. Two of the most obvious are the suggestion that some Japanese troops were on the group and set airplanes on fire by hand (a chain of monkeys, like the S-shaped Barrel of Monkeys toy game, descends from an airplane window to do this with matches) and worse, the suggestion that all the Japanese returned home safely. In actuality 55 Japanese airmen and 9 submariners were killed in action that day. 

The attack on Pearl Harbor  with Americans depicted as fat demons.

A great deal of the film is taken up with showing off Japanese military might. It takes many minutes for action to get underway because the opening scenes are so concerned with instilling a sense of awe and pride in the technology of war.  The film was billed at the time as being Japan’s first feature-length animation – which was a bit of a stretch considering that the film is only 37 minutes long. The true recipient of this title was the sequel to this film Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (Mitsuyo Seo, 1944). 

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle is the centrepiece of Zakka Films’ DVD The Roots of Japanese Anime which also includes a bonus extra of posters from the time advertising the film as “A thrilling, unparalleled naval battle that makes the red and blue demons tremble!” The posters also suggest that Momotaro’s army will not only be fighting Bluto but also Popeye and Betty Boop, declaring: “Roosevelt and the American gangster Popeye are no match. They face Momotaro’s troops and end up all wet.” Popeye and Betty Boop do not appear in the film itself.  Most disturbingly, the ads proclaim that the film is not only sponsored by the Naval Ministry but recommended by the Ministry of Education “as a living textbook for your children.” From today’s perspective it is certainly a valuable film to watch in order to teach about how propaganda is produced and disseminated. 

Apart from the troubling nature of the subject matter, the film is historically significant in terms of demonstrating how sophisticated cel animation had become in Japan by the 1940s.  It is important to note that the politics of the film do not reflect that of the director, Mitsuyo Seo (瀬尾 光世, 1911-2011), who actually had left-leaning political sympathies and was pressured into making propaganda films.  Tragically, due to historical forces beyond his control, Seo was saddled with these beautifully animated but deeply propagandistic films as his legacy to animation history.  Seo does at least have the distinction of being the first Japanese animator to use multiplane camera and his work is said to have influenced Osamu Tezuka.  It was also interesting to see puppet animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga listed in the credits for this film.  

The Zakka Films DVD includes informative historical information by Jasper Sharp (Midnight Eye) and Aaron Gerow (Yale U) which help contextualize the film. The Roots of Japanese Anime has optional English subtitles and comes with an informative booklet featuring an historical overview by  and film notes by  Individuals can purchase this DVD for a reasonable price from independent film distributor Film Baby. Institutions should contact Zakka Films directly for purchasing information

Film Credits:

Sponsored by the Naval Ministry 

Production Company: Art Film Production (Geijutsu Eigasha) 

Producer: Einosuke Omura 

Director and DOP: Mitsuyo Seo 

Music: Noboru Ito Animation Technique and Composition: 

Tadahito Mochinaga, Toshihiko Tanabe, 

Tamako Hashimoto, Shizuyo Tsukamoto 

Special Effects: Hajime Kimura

.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

The Spider and the Tulip (くもとちゅうりっぷ, 1943)

Kenzō Masaoka (政岡 憲三, 1898-1988) is considered one of Japan’s leading animation pioneers. Born into a wealthy Osaka family, Masaoka studied Japanese and Western art in Kyoto before landing his first job with a major film studio Makino Productions (マキノ映画製作所, active in the 1920s & 1930s). He started out as a kind of jack-of-all-trades working as an actor, assistant director to Shōzō Makino (マキノ省三, 1878-1929, the founder of Makino Pro), and a set designer for Teinosuke Kinugasa (衣笠 貞之助, 1896-1982), among other things until settling into the direction of his own animated films. He is credited with the direction of the first sound animation in Japan, and with coining the term “dōga” (動画/animated images).

Of Masaoka’s many films, The Spider and the Tulip (くもとちゅうりっぷ/Kumo to Churippu, 1943) stands out as a real gem. Based on a story by Michiko Yokoyama, it tells the tale of a spider who tries to trap a young ladybug (tentoumushi JP / ladybird UK). The ladybug isn’t fooled by his cunning ploys, but has trouble trying to escape his clutches and is aided by a tulip with the face of a young girl.

As Daniel Kothenschulte points out in Ga-Netchū!, the animation is thematically similar to two of Disney’s Silly Symphonies: The Moth and the Flame (1938) and The Old Mill (1937). It is a well-known fact that early Japanese animation was heavily influenced by the Disney style, which was dominant internationally in the 1930s. The strongest legacy of Disney on anime, in my opinion, was the adoption of ‘Bambi eyes’ for human figures – a legacy that continues to this day.


Stylistically in Spider and Tulip the ‘good’ ladybug is contrasted with the ‘bad’ spider through both appearance and song. The ladybug has a kawaii, cherub face common in manga and storybooks of the 1930s. Her character movement is graceful and her song is sweet and cheerful. In contrast, the spider is an amalgam of two unfortunate black stereotypes: the minstrel show and Little Black Sambo. The spider sings in a deep voice, à la “Ol’ Man River” in the musical Showboat (1927), and his face has clearly been influenced by American and British caricatures of Africans such as Little Black Sambo. This is a sour note in an otherwise beautiful animation, but should be kept in the context of the times. Arguably, Masaoka is just copying a character type imported from overseas – in terms of offensive and disturbing imagery in animation, Japanese animation of this period pales next to the sophisticated wartime propaganda of Disney and Warner Brothers (see my entry on Ducktators).


The influence of American movies can also be found in Spider and Tulip in inoffensive touches such as the spider fashioning a lasso out of his string in order to rescue himself during the storm sequence. Western movies, especially those of John Ford, were wildly popular in Japan in the 1930s and influenced many filmmakers – the most famous devotee being Akira Kurosawa.

Spider and Tulip is not only an historically important film for gauging the influence of American animation and movies on early anime, but it also demonstrates how sophisticated Kenzō Masaoka’s technique had become by the latter part of his career (he had to retire in 1949 due to problems with his eyesight). The animation of the little ladybug is absolutely exquisite. Rain is never an easy thing to animate convincingly and Masaoka does it masterfully. Each frame of the film has been carefully considered. Perhaps the most beautiful touches are the short sequence of rain falling on water during the storm as well as the final image of a spider web shining in the sunshine of a tree.

Long before seeing this film myself, I once read a review of it that claimed that for a wartime movie it was ‘delightfully free of the wartime experience’, or words to that effect. I think that reviewer was deceived by the idyllic beauty of the animation. The naïve Japanese child (tentoumushi) singing joyfully must avoid being snared by the African American (kumo) who tries to trick her. The propaganda is subtle but there. A fascinating film which is all sweetness and light on the surface but with hidden depths of meaning.

This film is included on anido’s DVD of Kenzō Masaoka’s complete works. It is also available on the Digital Meme boxset of early anime and the US release Roots of Japanese Anime.

Style of Kon Ichikawa - Art + CM + Animation

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009

Ducktators

I recently watched a Dutch documentary called Duckators (Guus von Wavern & Wolter Braamhorst, 1998) about animated propaganda done in Hollywood during the Second World War. I recall vividly some of the anti-German propaganda by Disney of swastikas crawling like spiders across Europe that I saw when I was a film student. I can’t recall the name of the film let alone the rest of the film, but that iconic image and its intended message branded itself in my memory. The animated propaganda from this period, in places like the States, Canada, and Japan, played a very important role in the home front war effort because they produced entertaining shorts that were extremely memorable.

This documentary, named after a famous propaganda film starring Donald Duck, looks at the output of Disney and Warner Brothers during the war. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, both companies threw themselves whole-heartedly into the war effort not just out of patriotism but, as one of the interviewees emphasizes, because it was profitable for them. By 1943, 94% of Disney’s output involved war-related material.



I really enjoyed the documentary because the filmmakers allow their material to speak for itself. The cartoons themselves are intercut with interviews with Sody Clampett (widow of Bob Clampett), Chuck Jones, Eric Smooden (film historian), Elfriede Fischinger (widow of Oskar Fishinger), Bob Clampett, Jr, and a number of other critics and historians. This lack of narrator really works in the film’s favour because it contrasts nicely with the heavy voice-of-god narration of the times (à la Lorne Greene).

The selection of propaganda footage in Ducktators demonstrates how effective animation, which at this time as TV critic Karl Cohen explains precedes the “ghetto-ization of cartoons to kids only”, was at ridiculing and de-humanizing the Axis forces. They poke fun at Hitler’s concept of himself as being a heroic, superhuman figure, and they deliberately make the Japanese as ugly and inhuman as possible. The Japanese are depicted as being small with buckteeth, glasses, and insect-like.

Here is Tokio Jokio, an example of Warner Brother's anti-Japanese propaganda:



I have read a great deal about the Japanese animation done as a part of their war effort, but have yet to see the films. Ducktators does contain a clip of an anime of the bombing of Pearl Harbor that certainly whets my appetite to search down more of these films.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2008