Wagorō Arai: His World of Silhouette Animation

Wagorō Arai: His World of Silhouette Animation

荒井和五郎～影絵アニメーションの世界～, 2013)

At Hiroshima International Animation Festival 2014, I had the pleasure of meeting the famous train photographer and animation expert Masatoki Minami (南正時, b. 1946).  He gave me a screener of his short documentary Wagorō Arai: His World of Silhouette Animation (荒井和五郎～影絵アニメーションの世界～ / Arai Wagorō – Kage-e Animēshon no Sekai – , 2013) which he made with the support of the JAA (Japan Animation Association).  The 16-minute film screened at JAA’s Into Animation 6 event in August 2013.

Wagorō Arai (荒井和五郎, 1907-1994) was an early Japanese animation pioneer and contemporary of Noburō Ōfuji (大藤 信郎, 1900-1961).  Inspired by the films of German animator Lotte Reiniger, whose  pre-war films were shown extensively in Japan (Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, p.247), Arai and Ōfuji each developed their own brands of silhouette animation in the tradition of Japanese shadow plays and 19th century utsushi-e (写し絵 / magic lantern shows).

Minami first encountered the work of Arai at the 2^nd Hiroshima festival in 1987.  He saw a screening of Madame Butterfly’s Fantasy (お蝶夫人の幻想, 1940), a 12-minute silhouette adaptation of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904) and was moved by the experience.  Speaking to Arai at the festival, he discovered that the elderly gentleman was working on a new film and on October 15, 1987 he traveled to Arai’s atelier in Shinmachi (today incorporated into Takasaki-shi) in Gunma Prefecture for an interview.

For the next 2 decades, this VTR material stayed in storage and was not publicly screened.  It wasn't until Minami showed the footage to a fellow animation expert that he learned just how rare and valuable the material was, and so plans were set in motion to turn the footage into a documentary with the support of the JAA.  The screenplay was planned with the assistance of the late Prof. Masahiro Katayama (片山雅博, 1955-2011) of Tama Art University. 

The documentary uses the VTR footage of Arai in his atelier in 1987 answering Minami’s off-camera questions and intercuts it with National Film Center footage of his original films.  Salient details about his life and career are also given through the use of title cards and other onscreen text.  The footage is not of the highest quality, but this really does not matter because the fact that footage exists at all of Arai talking about his craft is remarkable.  I have looked for years for information about Arai and his career and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.  Minami’s short documentary illuminates many details I previously had not known about Arai from why his career as an animator was so short to how he made his films. 

Born in 1909, Arai trained as a dentist.  His passion for silhouette animation led him to make his first film, The Gold Key (黄金の鈎 / Ougon no Kagi) in 1939.  He continued to work as a dentist and made the animation in his spare time.  His next project, Madame Butterfly’s Fantasy (お蝶夫人の幻想 / Ochōfujin no gensō, 1940) together with Jack and the Beanstalk (ジャックと豆の木 / Jakku to mame no ki, 1941) and Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫 / Kaguya Hime, 1942) solidified his place as one of the top independent animators of the early anime period.  He is unique in Japanese animation history for his dedication to silhouette animation.  The only other animator to experiment with the medium at this time, Ōfuji, also made animation in other styles, most notably cutouts using washi paper (See: Song of Spring, The Village Festival). 

Minami’s interview reveals that two of his animation staff, including assistant director Nakaya Tobiishi (飛石仲也), died during World War II and their deaths were what caused him to stop making animation. In the late 1980s, he decided to make an animation called Mukashi-banashi Nagori no Futomeno (昔噺名残之太布).  This story is better known as Tsuru no Ongaeshi (鶴の恩返し), “The Crane Returns a Favour” or Tsuru Nyōbō (鶴女房), “The Crane Wife”, a popular folktale about a man who rescues a crane from a trap and the crane repays him by coming to him in the form of a beautiful woman whom he marries.  This is the project that Arai was working on when Minami went to interview him in October 1987.  In the documentary, Arai sits in a wheelchair at his animation table with various silhouettes prepared for filming and others in envelopes within easy reach.

On Madame Butterfly’s Fantasy:

• 3 people, including Arai himself, made it over the course of 1 year
• Arai’s animation crew were either students of dentistry or working actively as dentists, they weren't people looking into becoming animators full-time, it was something they did in their spare time
• Wilhelm Plage (ウィルヘルム・プラーゲ, 1888-1969), the notorious German copyright hound, made it difficult for Arai to get the rights to use Puccini’s music, because the music was not yet 50 years old.
• fortunately, the soprano Tamaki Miura (三浦環, 1884-1946), celebrated for her international performances as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, lived in his neighbourhood and supported his efforts and even performed on the soundtrack. 
• critics praised him for his depiction of the evening light in the film.

On his New Work Mukashi-banashi Nagori no Futonuno and his Techniques: 

• Arai vociferously declares his dislike of colour in silhouette films.   Fascinatingly, he gives the example of Ōfuji’s The Phantom Ship (幽霊船, 1956) as an example of the style of silhouette animation that he does not like.   This is particularly fascinating as not only has Ōfuji received high praise internationally for The Phantom Ship – it received an Honourable Mention for Experimental Film at the Biennale in 1956 (learn more in my discussion of the film) – but Lotte Reiniger, who is said to have been Arai’s role model (she is not mentioned in this documentary), used colour in her films – though I believe it was mostly colour tinting (at least for her films of the 1920s) not cellophane cutouts as Ōfuji used in The Phantom Ship and Whale (くじら, 1952). 
• Arai laughingly says he wants to submit Mukashi-banashi Nagori no Futonuno to some world competition for animation
• he puts heavy lead on the paper so that it doesn't move easily
• he uses a multi-plane animation table to create depth of space
• his animation table is 40 years old – in the documentary he is using his original animation table
• everything is handmade
• the camera is placed looking down from the ceiling
• the tiny figures for walking from a distance have no movable parts.  He makes a series of small cutouts and keeps replacing them for each shot
• he is using the exact same methods as he used to
• he finds it difficult to make the cutouts exactly identical, but on that day they got the face exactly the same (his hands look as though he is suffering from arthritis so I am sure this was no easy task for him)
• he puts the kimono on top of the naked body, so that when they walk you can see the gap opening in the kimono –such realistic details are important to him
• he wants to express the softness of the kimono material, wants it to look natural
• Arai discusses with Minami his negotiations with a shop in Asakusa for Kabuki music for the opening title sequence – he seems particularly interesting in the distinctive Kabuki percussion sounds 
• Arai likes cute or beautiful faces, not rough faces
• he wants to improve his techniques from the past and has been looking to Ningyō jōruri, also known as Bunraku, for ideas about how to handle his figures
• Minami concludes the interview by encouraging him to finish the animation as soon as possible

In the afterword, Minami writes that Arai did indeed complete the film and submit it to Hiroshima

Arai died of a heart attack on 4 January 1994 at the age of 87.

Although the film is brief –  it would have been wonderful to hear more about Arai's life and times – it gives a rare insight not only into Arai's career, but also into his personality.  He comes across as someone who takes his craft seriously, but also has a sense of humour.  If it hadn't been for the tragic deaths of his animation team during the war, I feel sure we would have had many more delightful silhouette animations from this early master.  

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

The Phantom Ship (幽霊船, 1956)

In September, the Tokyo International Film Festival unveiled digitally restored versions of 3 masterpieces by early anime pioneers Kenzō Masaoka and Noburō Ōfuji:  The Spider and the Tulip (1943), Whale (1952), and The Phantom Ship (幽霊船 / Yuureisen, 1956).  They also screened a newly discovered animated short by Ōfuji: Noroma na jiji (のろまな爺, 1924) – there is not an official English title yet, but I would suggest Foolish Old Man based upon plot descriptions I have read – and a test version of his incomplete final film Princess Kayuga (竹取物語/Taketori Monogatari, 1961).  In 1924 Ōfuji (大藤 信郎, 1900–1961)  had joined Sumikazu Film Studios (スミカズ映画創作社) where he was being mentored by Kōuchi Junichi (幸内純一, 1886-1970).   Noroma na jiji was Ōfuji’s first attempt at animation at Sumikazu.  The film was restored by IMAGICA West who transferred the film to black and white film stock in order to do the restoration, then tinted the film to match the original film (Source:  Kobe-eiga).  The films were introduced by Kōji Yamamura, who discussed the restoration process at the event.

NIPPON NO ART ANIMATION OOFUJI NOBUROU

I am looking forward to seeing these restored and rediscovered classics – particularly Whale and The Phantom Ship.  I have both of these film on the terrific DVD Animation Pioneers: Noburō Ōfuji Lofty Genius (アニメーションの先駆者 大藤信郎 孤高の天才, 2010). Although the transfer from film to DVD is well done, the film image had darkened with age and both films have the usual scratches and flecks that 35mm develop over time.  The films are silhouette animations which use coloured cellophane to add layers and visual interest.  With digital restoration, I imagine that the improved clarity of the coloured cellophane would look stunning.  Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, 1926), which was a huge influence on Ōfuji, was digitally restored and released on Blu-ray/ DVD in the UK this past August.  Although this film is tinted rather than using coloured cellophane, the colours and detail in the digital restoration are simply spectacular.   

The Phantom Ship (幽霊船 / Yuureisen, 1956), a film both directed and written by Ōfuji, opens with tantalising glimpse at the master at work: Ōfuji’s hands cutting waves out of coloured cellophane.  The opening title sequence is written in English, which suggests that he made the film with his international audience in mind.  His films Taeisei Shakuson (大聖釈尊, 1948) and Whale screened at Cannes in 1952 and 1953 respectively in the official selection for short films.  Ōfuji’s name is Romanised as “Ohfuji” in the opening credits.  The renowned composer and professor of music Kōzaburō Hirai (平井康三郎, 1910-2002) composed the soundtrack.  There is no dialogue or narration in The Phantom Ship; instead, the story is told purely through visuals and music (choir, strings instruments, percussion).   

During the opening credits, the camera rotates over a map of East Asia coming to stop over the Yellow Sea – the northern part of the East China Sea which lies between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula.  After a closer shot of the Yellow Sea, suggesting that this is where the story takes place, the opening sequence fades to black and opens with the parting of two wavelike silhouettes.   We see a rugged seascape which, combined with the low vocalising of the choir creates a feeling of unease.  Then, the shadow of a phantom ship appears.  The ship is a ruin, with its brightly coloured sails in tatters.  It is a ghastly scene.  One crew member hangs from his feet from the ship’s bow.  Another man stands impaled to the mast by a sword.  A pirate symbol seems to have been scrawled upon one of the tattered sails.  After a montage of the corpses, the camera returns to the pirate symbol.  The wordless chorus increases in volume and pitch as the boat magically comes back to life. The sails mend themselves and the crew of noblemen, armed with swords, also magically return to their formal selves.  They thrash their swords and look ready for a fight. 

The scene shifts to a more peaceful ship filled with elegant figures.  Women dance around a smiling figure of a Buddha. Some of the dancing scenes are set against a kaleidoscope of whirling colours.  A sentry walks the deck alert to any trouble.  Just as a pair of lovers look as though they are about to embrace, the phantom ship appears and interrupts their peace. The trouble begins with the shot of a cannon and soon the phantom pirates are invading the peaceful ship attacking both men and women indiscriminately.  Although the peaceful ship seems overwhelmed, they put up a valiant fight, with even the elegantly dressed ladies picking up swords and duelling with the invaders.  The pirates toss people overboard and set the ship alight.  The phantom pirate ship then quietly sails away.

In the next scene snow is falling, then a short montage suggests a shift in time from winter into the spring.  A white phantom ship approaches the pirate phantom ship.  The pirates shoot at it in vain, then shake with fear as the white phantom sailor approaches, his rapier brandished high.  Behind him sits a white lady.  It is the ghosts of the pirates’ noble victims.  The white phantoms now seek their revenge, in a marvelous sequence that uses an experimental technique of overlaying animated swirling lines and other shapes.  There are also overlaid images of white feet stomping on the pirates and hand prints slapping at them.  It is a nightmare sequence complete with images resembling dripping blood.  Even the waves seem determined to grab the pirates and dash them into the sea.  The white phantoms do not rest until the magic is undone and the pirates return to their original state as corpses on a ruin of a pirate ship.   

It is truly a spectacular film, and one of the top animated shorts of 1957.  At the time, there were no established international film festivals for animation – the oldest such festival, Annecy, would get off the ground in 1960.  The Oscars at this time were giving awards to “cartoons” – i.e. it was mainly a competition between Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, and UPA – Norman McLaren famously won an Oscar for Neighbours (1952) in 1953, but it was for Best Documentary Short because pixilation/stop motion techniques did not qualify as “cartoon” (i.e. drawn) animation.  Thus other animation techniques at international festivals like Berlin and Cannes were lumped into vague categories such as “Culture Films and Documentary”.

Many books and articles claim that The Phantom Ship won the “Grand Prix” at the 17^th Venice Film Festival in 1956 which I have always found suspicious because of its wording.  To begin with, the Venice Film Festival’s grand prix is not called “Grand Prix”, but the Golden Lion. Secondly, no Golden Lion was awarded in 1956. Jury members were divided in opinion between Kon Ichikawa’s Harp of Burma and Juan Antonio Bardem’s Calle Mayor and so in the end did not give the award to anyone. The jury president that year was John Grierson (UK) with jury members including André Bazin (France), G.B. Cavallaro (Italy), Friedrich Ermler (USSR), James Quinn (UK), Kiyohiko Ushihara (Japan), and Luchino Visconti (Italy).  This was reported in English by Fred Roos in his article “Venice Film Festival, 1956.” [The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television, 11.3 (Spring 1957)]  The Special Jury Prize and Silver Lion were also not awarded in 1956.  But then, these aforementioned  prizes are also intended for feature films.  In the 1950s, short films received less press than they do today for the prizes that they receive so it is difficult to dig up spectator's impressions of the films.  Even in the QFRV, Roos only mentions that 14 prizes were awarded to documentary and children films, but he does not give their titles.  He praises the Chinese and the Czechs as being “particularly outstanding in their use of puppets and animation” (253), but he does not mention Noburō Ōfuji at all.  Digging through French film journals in the library of the Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt, I have also been unable to find information about reaction to The Phantom Ship at Venice in 1956.

So I dug deeper and found that according to the Venice Film Festival’s digital archives, The Phantom Ship was awarded an Honorable Mention for Experimental Film (Menzione per i film sperimentali).  This is not the grand prix, but a runner-up to Peter Foldes’s animated short film, A Short Vision, which won the award for Best Experimental Film (Premio per il miglior film sperimentale).  Foldes’s anti-Atom bomb film, which the BFI calls “one of the most influential British animated films ever made, had caused a huge sensation when it screened on May 27, 1956 on the popular variety show The Ed Sullivan Show in the US.

I think that the mistaken attribution of a grand prix at Venice to Ōfuji likely came from an error of translation somewhere along the line, and the difficulty of checking the name of the award without access to physical archives.  The Biennale’s online digital archive only became available in recent years and is currently only available in Italian, so it was difficult to check without going to an archive.  Also, the multiple spellings of Ōfuji’s name in the Latin alphabet (Ofuji, Ohfuji, Oofuji, etc.) make searches of online databases challenging.  In the trailer released by the NFC in September for the screening event at TIFF (Tokyo), the award Ōfuji received as Tokubetsushō (特別賞) – lit. special award – which matches the Italian well.

The Phantom Ship is indisputably a special film – one of the best animated shorts to come out of Japan in the 1950s, and when one takes into account Ōfuji’s other silhouette animations, he ranks as one of the top silhouette animators of all time alongside Lotte Reiniger, Bruno J. Böttge, and Michel Ocelot.  While pouring through old journals in the library, I discovered a forgotten nugget of information: The Phantom Ship was screened in the UK in 1957.  According to Bernard Orna, writing in the now defunct journal Films and Filming, The Phantom Ship was one of the films that at the First International Animated Film Festival, nicknamed the “Festival of Cartoons”, at the National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank) in London.  He describes Ōfuji’s “open[ing] the door on an exciting variant of a kind of film known to us otherwise through the work of Lotte Reiniger.” (3.7 April 1957, p.33).  The door has indeed been opened, and I do hope that more young animators – like Aki Kono in her film Promises – choose to follow Ōfuji’s lead and experiment with the medium of silhouette animation.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Promises (約束, 2011)

On an autumn day, a woman kneels under the scarlet leaves of trees mourning the loss of her infant son.  As she cries, the winds picks up the remains of her child and leaves only a dark shadow behind.  This dark shadow, the spirit of her dead child, whispers to her that she can take his shadow home with her.  The woman does so, looking after this transparent shadow of a child in the same way she would a living, breathing child.   She lives happily with her secret until one day, a kind of shinigami (spirit of death) in the form of an elderly man comes knocking and asks for the shadow of the child. 

After the man leaves, the woman folds the child’s shadow into the shape of a bird in order to hide him from the shinigami.  Soon, there comes another ominous knock at the door.  The shinigami has returned and asks for the shadow of the bird.  He informs her that he is a representative of kami (god) and he has been directed to collect the soul that she has been keeping in her home.  Tears run down her face, and the shinigami offers to make a deal with her.  He asks her to sew herself a doll in the shape of a child and to put the shadow in it.  At first it seems that she has made a deal with the devil as she runs fearfully holding the doll, but could it be that the shinigami is offering her child the chance of resurrection?

Promises (約束 / Yakusoku, 2011) is Shikoku-born animator Aki Kōno’s first silhouette animation.  Her earlier films Youth (青春 / Seishun, 2008) and A brightening life (2010) were stop motion animation using puppets and objects.  This animated short is her graduate work for the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) animation programme, where she was supervised by Yuichi Itō (Knyacki, Norabbits Minutes).   Promises is actually a blend of silhouette and stop motion animation techniques.  The silhouettes are not as flat as the techniques of pioneers like Lotte Reiniger and Noburō Ōfuji – though there was some texture and layering to their films as well.  Kōno’s silhouettes are constructed in three dimensional spaces with other objects being used for special effect such as liquids, string, cloth, and beads. 

The choice of silhouette animation suits the shadow theme of the film.  The figures have a roughly hewn feel to them (in contrast to the precisely cut figures of a Lotte Reiniger film) which I think adds to the emotional impact of the film.  The mood of the film is also elevated by Kōno’s striking use of bold background colours, such as flaming reds and cool blues/greens/purples, which reminded me of Ōfuji’s use of background colour in The Phantom Ship (幽霊船/ Yūreisen, 1956).   

Kōno wrote the script for Promises in addition to directing and animating it.  It has been seen at both domestic and international festivals and made the Jury Selection at the 2011 Japan Media Arts Festival.  I saw the film at Nippon Connection 2013.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

This blog post was made possible by:

#nippon13 #nc2013

The National Anthem: Kimigayo (国歌 君か代, 1931)

In 2010 Kinokuniya released a DVD dedicated to the works of animation pioneer Noburo Ofuji (大藤信郎, 1990-61).  At 161 minutes, this is only a selected works of this early master of chiyogami and silhouette animation.  Many more of Ofuji’s films have been preserved and the animated short The National Anthem: Kimigayo (国歌 君か代/ Kokka Kimigayo, 1931) appears on Digital Meme’s Japanese Anime Classic Collection with subtitles in English, Chinese, and Korean.  This release of the film includes a soundtrack of Kimigayo performed by Joichi Yuasa.

The national anthem, Kimigayo, is believed to be one of the oldest – and lyrically among the shortest – national anthems still in use today.  At the time at which this animated short was made, it was the national anthem of the Empire of Japan (1867-1947).  As such, the film’s key motif is the chrysanthemum.  The emperor’s throne has been known as the Chrysanthemum Throne for centuries with the Imperial Seal of Japan being a yellow chrysanthemum.  One encounters the chrysanthemum regularly in Japan as it appears on everything from 50 yen coins to traditional cloth.

Ofuji depicts the chrysanthemum using his trademark chiyogami cutout animation style.  As he only had black and white film stock to work with in 1931, the result is not nearly as striking as his postwar films such as Whale (1952) and The Phantom Ship (1956), but his techniques are still very impressive in this film. 

The chrysanthemum chiyogami sequence is followed by a mysterious silhouette animation sequence bathed in mist which depicts the famous dripping spear scene from the Japanese creation myth.  The gods Izanagi and Izanami are said to have stood on a floating bridge of heaven and stirred in the sea with a spear.  The brine that dripped from the spear formed into the first island, followed by the other islands which created the Japanese archipelago (Kuniumi). 

The film appears to have been designed to accompany a performance or a recording of the national anthem. This is made clear by a sequence in the middle of the film where the song`s lyrics appear on the screen character by character in traditional Japanese writing order (up→down, right→left).  At this time, Ofuji was making many animated sing-along films for children including the chiyogami record talkies The Village Festival (1930), which employs a follow-the-bouncing ball technique, and Song of Spring (1931).

After the sing-along section, Ofuji returns to symbolic national symbols and stories.  In another beautiful silhouette animation sequence he depicts part of the legend of the sun goddess Amaterasu who, after a deadly attack on her property and attendants by her brother, hides inside the Ama-no-Iawato (heavenly rock cave) which causes the sun to be blocked out.  Ofuji depicts the moment when Amaterasu is persuaded to leave the cave, returning the sun to the world. 

 This is followed by a sequence depicting symbolism associated with Emperor Jimmu – the legendary first emperor of Japan.  Although the imperial house of Japan has traditionally claimed its descent from Jimmu in about 60 BC, most researchers see his tale as being based more in myth than in historical reality.  According to Shinto belief, Jimmu is said to be a direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu.  In addition to the continuing to use the sun motif, this sequence adds symbolism associated with Jimmu: his emblematic long bow and the famous three-legged crow yatagarasu which is said to have been sent from heaven to guide Emperor Jimmu. 

I was struck by the similarity of the dark bird with spread wings to the eagle which is the national symbol of Germany.Of course, Japan and Germany were not yet military allies in 1931 – the National Socialists were not yet even in power; however, film was already being used as a medium to further nationalist ideology in both countries.  During the Meiji period, the government proclaimed 11 February 1966 as the foundation day of Japan and in the 1930s Kigensetsu (Era Day) was celebrated annually as the day that Jimmu ascended the throne.   This was halted for a time when Japan lost the war but since 1966, the date continues to be observed as National Foundation Day but with less fanfare than the overt nationalism of the 1930s and 40s.   According to the Japanese Movie Database, Ofuji’s Kimigayo was released on May 1^st, 1931.  Nationalist propaganda was pretty prevalent in Japan at this time because Japan during the run up to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931.  

In a much more positive connection to Germany, this is the earliest film by Ofuji that I have seen where the influence of Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) is obvious.  Reiniger started making silhouette animation shorts in the 1910s and her feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed was released in 1926.  Her films were shown in Japan in the 1920s inspiring both Ofuji and another early animator Wagoro Arai (1907-94), to try their hand at silhouette animation.  The results are simply astonishing, with their films additionally demonstrating the influence of traditional Japanese traditions of kirigami /kiri-e (paper-cutting art) and silhouette/kage-e (影絵/shadow art).

The National Anthem: Kimigayo was made by Ofuji at his independent studio Chiyogami Eigasha. To learn more about Ofuji, check out my reviews of his other films and my ongoing series about the films awarded the prize named in his honour.          

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Other Ofuji reviews:  Whale (1952), Song of Spring (1931), The Village Festival (1930)

Ofuji on DVD (JP only):

NIPPON NO ART ANIMATION OOFUJI NOBUROU

Animation

Noburo Ofuji’s Whale (くじら, 1952)

Some of the most beautiful early anime from Japan are the silhouette animations of Noburo Ofuji (大藤 信郎, 1900-61) and Wagoro Arai (荒井和五郎, 1907-94).  Inspired by the films of Lotte Reiniger – whose pre-war films were shown extensively in Japan (Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, p.247) – and drawing on the Japanese traditions of shadow plays and 19^th century utsushi-e (写し絵 / magic lantern shows), Ofuji and Arai created some of the most beautiful silhouette films of the 20^th century.

In his later years, Ofuji became interested in Buddhist and ocean themes.   The animator Kōji Yamamura  cites the themes of death, eros, and the human ego as examples (Shirarezaru Animation).  Ofuji's artistic masterpiece Kujira (くじら/ Whale, 1952) is one such film.  Like Kihachiro Kawamoto’s puppet films, which share Ofuji’s interest in Buddhist themes, Kujira features the themes of female suffering, natural phenomena that allude to Buddhist themes, and transformation.

  

Ofuji first made Kujira (鯨/Whale) in 1927 as a silent black and white film.  Inspired by the possibilities of colour film, he remade the film in the early 1950s using not only shadow puppets (silhouettes) but also cutouts of transparent coloured cellophane (影絵とセロファン切り絵).  The cutouts were assembled on a multi-plane animation table.  The backlighting of the animation table used in combination with the transparent cellophane allowed Ofuji to create highly complex layering of forms.  It is a breathtaking experience to watch and has beautifully rendered movement and transitions.

This 8 minute short opens with foreboding music that foreshadows the dark and mysterious events to unfold.  The story begins with the creak of a mast being raised on an ancient sailing ship.  Seagulls fly overhead as the ship navigates calm seas.  Aboard the vessel, men clap and guffaw and women's voices ring with laughter as geisha entertain the men with music and dancing.  

Ofuji dissolves between camera shots of varying shot compositions which, combined with the ghostly layering of transparent waves and clouds, give the film a dream-like quality.  A storm descends upon the ship.  The wooden ship creaks and groans as the sea violently tosses it about.  A giant tail of a whale emerges from the ocean and the whale seems to be following the ship as if in anticipation of the ship’s demise.  The ship’s crew struggle in vain to regain control of their vessel, but with a series of loud cracks and women’s screams, the ship sinks into the murky waters.

When the sea calms, a number of survivors float, their heads downcast, upon the wreckage.  One of the men finds the body of a woman floating in the water who appears to be dead.  Suddenly, the mysterious female form begins to move, terrifying the men.  As the woman cries out as she stretches herself into a standing position and one of the men immediately clutches her by the hair and drags her to him.  The more the woman struggles to escape, the more desperate the men become, tearing the clothes from her body and fighting each other to be the first to claim her.  The men’s fighting, as depicted by Ofuji’s shadow cutouts, begins to resemble a dance – their arms outstretched and curved move up and down like an interpretive dance depicting the waves of the ocean. 

The tension rises, stoked on by the crescendoing orchestra of the soundtrack, to a fever pitch.  At which point the black tale of the whale rises and the woman screams out in terror.  The whale, as in the ancient tale of Jonah, swallows the woman and her tormentors whole.  This leads to the most dazzling and abstract sequence in the film as the people float around the shadowy belly of the whale, desperately trying to escape.  The men are so consumed by fear that they have forgotten their desire to rape the woman.

An exterior shot of the whale shows him to be contentedly bobbing up and down in the ocean.  He blows water out of his blowhole and with it the woman and her three tormentors.  They land on the whale’s back, but it doesn’t take the men long to recover from their shock and resume their attack on the woman.  The woman resists, screams in terror, and races up and down the whale’s back in a bid to escape.  Two of the men fall off the whale and disappear and the one remaining man continues to chance the woman until his evil plan is foiled by the whale who raises his tail and flings the man to certain death in the sea.  A female narrator concludes the story, telling us that since this incident the woman has been spotted in the form of a mermaid.

Until this final narrative voice, the story has actually been told entirely through a combination of the visuals, the music of composer Setsuo Tsukahara (romanized as Tukahara in 1952), and the sound effects.  By sound effects, I mean not just creaks of the ship and the thunder but also the gasps and laughter of the human characters.   The dialogue in Kujira is also more incidental than narrative in nature.  Although the characters are clearly meant to look like ancient Japanese people the story itself seems to be influenced by a combination of Asian and European influences.  The mermaid, for example, resembles the mermaids and sirens of European mythology more than she does the hideous ningyo of Japanese folklore.  The idea of a whale swallowing people whole also has very famous precedents in Western literature.  Yet, as with the famous tales of Jonah and Moby Dick, the whale is intended to be symbolic not realistic.    I think there are many possible readings that can be drawn from Kujira.  For me, Ofuji is exploring the dark side of human nature with the woman, who is the most virtuous character in the tale, being reborn in a new form at the end of the film.

Correcting historical facts about Kujira

In 1953, Ofuji’s Kujira (on the programme as “La Baleine”) was part of the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival (under the name Noburo Ohfuji).  Kujira is reputed to have received much praise from the Jury president Jean Cocteau and festival attendee Pablo Picasso.  Although it has been reported in many publications that the film won an award at this festival, the official Cannes website does not indicate this. Many people have claimed that Kujira won “Second Prize” at Cannes – but as Cannes has no such prize this seems odd.  I have yet to find a reliable contemporary Japanese or French source that confirms the events that took place in Cannes that year – I may have to dive into the old French film periodicals in the Frankfurt Museum archives again soon.   I will update when I do.

It has also been often reported in error that Kujira appeared at Cannes in 1952.  The Japanese Movie Database and other online Japanese sources indicate that the film had its premiere in Japan in December 1952 – much too late for it to screen at Cannes in the spring of 1952.  The case for Kujira screening at Cannes in April 1953 is backed up not only by the festival’s official website, but also by the fact that Jean Cocteau was the president of the jury in 1953.  This would give more credence to the oft-mentioned anecdote about Cocteau praising the film.  The suggestion that Picasso saw the film at Cannes is also likely true, as Picasso had a studio in the nearby commune of Vallarius – as seen in this famous photograph of Brigitte Bardot visiting Picasso in his studio during Cannes 1956.

A good transfer of Kujira is available on the Kinokuniya DVD Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai.  Ofuji's original films are held in the archives of the NationalFilm Center.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai

The Ghibli Museum Library

As collectors of animation on DVD well know, Japan is one of the best countries in the world to find beautiful editions of rare world treasures. In fact, you are more likely to find more Eastern European animation on DVD in Japan than in the home countries of the artists themselves, let alone elsewhere in Europe or North America. The down side is that the Japanese releases tend to only have only Japanese subs or dubs, yet many fans of animation are simply so grateful just to be able to see these great classics at all that they collect these editions anyway.

One company that has been instrumental in giving new life to world animation classics is Studio Ghilbi. The animators at Studio Ghibli are known for their admiration of American, Canadian and European animators – in particular Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata are known to be big fans of the work of German-Canadian animator Frédéric Back (b. 1924) who won the Academy Award for Animated Short film in 1982 for Crac! and again in 1987 for The Man Who Planted Trees. You can read about Miyazaki’s views on other animators in my recent post Hayao Miyazaki’s Taste in Animation.

A number of years ago Studio Ghibli began a partnership with Disney and Cinema Angelica to create the Ghibli Museum Library (三鷹の森ジブリ美術館ライブラリー /Mitaka no Mori Jiburi Bijutsukan Raiburarī). They have used this label to release subbed/dubbed DVDs of world animation classics from Dave Fleischer’s Mr. Bug Goes to Town (USA, 1941) to John Halas and Joy Batchelor’s Animal Farm (UK, 1954). The label also represents modern animation classics including the works of Nick Park and Michel Ochelot. They event support theatrical releases of great world animation in Japan – most recently Sylvain Comet’s The Illusionist (UK/France, 2010).

Studio Ghibli has also acquired the distribution rights to anime classics that Miyazaki, Takahata and other Ghibli animators worked on before the formation of Studio Ghibli. Some of these feature on their Ghibli Classics label, but the Ghibli Museum Library umbrella includes the theatrical feature of  Anne of Green Gables and the first TV series of Lupin III.

Here are the highlights of the collection. Clicking on the images will take you to cdjapan where these titles are available for international purchase:

Japanese Animation

Anne of Green Gables - the Path to Green Gables

(赤毛のアン~Green Gables no Michi~, Isao Takahata, 2010)

American Animation

Mr. Bug Goes to Town

(aka Hoppity Goes to Town / バッタ君町に行く,Dave Fleischer, USA, 1941)

Russian Animation

My Love

(春のめざめ, Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 2006)

The Little Grey Neck

(灰色くびの野がも, Leonid Amalrik/Vladimir Polovnikov, Russia, 1948)

The Humpbacked Horse

(イワンと仔馬, Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Russia, 1947/1975)

The Snow Queen

(雪の女王, Lev Atamov et al., Russia, 1957) 

Cheburashka

(チェブラーシカ, Roman Kachanov, 1969-83)

British Animation

Halas and Batchelor

Animal Farm

(動物農場, John Halas/Joy Batchelor, UK, 1954)

Nick Park

Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death

(ウォレスとグルミット ベーカリー街の悪夢, Nick Park, UK, 2008)

Wallace and Gromit: 3 Grand Adventures

 

(ウォレスとグルミット 3 クラッキング・アドベンチャーズ)

•  A Grand Day Out ( チーズ・ホリデー, 1989）
• The Wrong Trousers (ペンギンに気をつけろ！, 1990)
• A Close Shave (危機一髪！, 1994）

Shaun the Sheep  

(ひつじのショーン, TV series 2007-2010)

French Animation

Paul Grimault

The King and the Mockingbird

(王と鳥 やぶにらみの暴君, France, 1948)

Sylvain Chomet

The Triplettes of Belleville

(ベルヴィル・ランデブー, France/Canada/UK/US/Belgium, 2003)

The Illusionist 

 Just opened in cinemas in Japan March 26

(イリュージョニスト, UK/France, 2010)

Michel Ochelot

Kirikou and the Sorceress

(キリクと魔女, France/Belgium, 1998)

Princes and Princesses

(プリンス&プリンセス, France, 1999)

Azur and Asmar
 

(アズールとアスマール, France, 2006)