The first day of Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 was the easiest for me to negotiate because there were fewer scheduling conflicts than on other days. While on one hand it is wonderful for an animation festival to be jam-packed with excellent films and events, on the other hand it forces hardcore animation devotees like myself to make difficult screening choices.
As with the original Hiroshima International Animation Festival, the central venue was JMS Aster Plaza with its two large concert halls and community spaces. The new festival opened up screening venues to include local businesses and institutions such as the Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library, Yokogawa Cinema, and Salon Cinema. I had hoped to be able to squeeze in seeing some of the anime classics on the big screen such as The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治, 1963) and The White Snake Enchantress (白蛇伝, 1958), but it was simply impossible. Even though I was unable to partake in these offsite screenings, I feel that it was a good idea to include local businesses. These screenings were more likely than the central venue to draw in local crowds and engaging with the local community is an important part of any festival. From what I understand, many of these events were well-attended, which bodes well for future collaborations with local establishments.
The first thing I noticed on Day 1 was that instead of stalls run by animators and artists from elsewhere in Japan, all of the vendors were local businesses selling their crafts and other wares. One really big problem for the festival is that the JMS Aster is not close to many restaurants and the one in-house restaurant takes its Obon summer holiday during the festival. It was great to see stalls selling coffee, baked goods, and even fresh hamburgers, so that we could grab a quick bite between screenings.
I began the festival with one of the Hiroshima Animation Season Classics screenings: Karel ZEMAN’s Inspirace (水玉の幻想, 1949) and Invention for Destruction (CZ: Vynález zkázy / JP: 悪魔の発明, 1958). Inspirace had no dialogue and needed no subtitles and Invention for Destruction was shown with Japanese subtitles only. There were several screenings without English subtitles that offered a “whispering” where one could sit in a section of the theatre where an interpreter would live “whisper” the proceedings in English to those who could not understand the Japanese. As someone with sensitive hearing, I found this really obnoxious. Even though I sat far from the whispering section, I could still hear the whispering and it felt like someone was rudely talking during the screenings and events where it was happening. I don’t understand Czech and I can’t read Japanese quickly enough for the subs, but as I was familiar with the film, and I just focussed on enjoying the animation on the big screen. Zeman’s films may be more than 60 years old now but they have not lost their ability to inspire wonder at their technical brilliance.
After briefly considering hopping on a streetcar to the Cinematography Library to see The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, I decided to listen to my stomach instead and headed to the legendary local restaurant Otis! with its delicious Tex-Mex and vegetarian dishes. The walls are filled with the signatures and drawings of animation guests past as the venue opened in 1987 and is an easy walk from the JMS Aster. I was delighted to find the interior and the hosts unchanged from my last visit in 2014, and I found fellow animation researchers Jason Cody Douglass (Yale) and Chris Taylor (John Hopkins) at a table inside. We discussed our viewing plans for the festival and just as I was about to pay my tab, I heard my name spoken behind me by the stop motion animator Masaaki MORI (森まさあき).
I first discovered Mori’s work when he participated in the Kihachirō KAWAMOTO omnibus work Winter Days (冬の日, 2003) with his delightful clay pig figures. Mori retired from Tokyo Zokei University last year and I went to see his retirement exhibition on the Zokei campus (see the above instagram post). Since joining JAA late last year, I have encountered Mori often and we seem well on our way to becoming fast friends. In Otis!, Mori introduced me to Yoshimi KAKURAI (加倉井芳美) and Masaaki OIKAWA (及川雅昭) , the PR rep and producer for TECARAT studios. Unfortunately, director and stop motion animator Takeshi YASHIRO (八代健志) could not come to Hiroshima due to the production of Hidari – you can follow the exciting progression of this new stop motion animation on Tecarat’s Instagram.
I had not yet met Yashiro, but my Nippon Connection selection for this year featured his Noburō Ōfuji Award-winning short animation Pukkulapottas and Hours in the Forest (プックラポッタと森の時間, 2021) and I had been fascinated by his adaptation of Nakashi NIIMI’s Gon, the Little Fox, which I saw at a stop-motion animation in Kichijoji shortly after I moved back to Japan in 2019.
Even though Yashiro was not at the festival – I was able to meet Gon the fox! Such a beautifully crafted puppet:
After getting to know more about Tecarat Studios, we headed to the Opening Ceremony and Golden Carpstar Award Ceremony, which I will discuss in my next post.
Coming Soon: Hiroshima Animation Season: Day 1 Opening Ceremony
2022 Cathy Munroe Hotes
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
