Eiichi Yamamoto’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

Back by popular demand, individual questionnaire responses from Laputa Animation Festival’s publication of the Top 150 Japanese and World Animation (2003). 

Biographical information about the great animator Eiichi Yamamoto (山本暎一, b. 1940) in English is unusually sparse on the internet considering that he is one of the top anime directors of his generation.  It is somehow fitting that he was born the same year that Fantasia was completed by Disney, for his contributions to animation have been equally bold and groundbreaking as the work done by James Algar, Wilfred Jackson, et al.

Born in Kyoto during the Pacific War, Yamamoto’s father was called up for service and as an infant Yamamoto’s mother and her family moved to Shōdoshima where they stayed for the duration of the war.  The island is famous for its olives, soy sauce, and wild monkeys.  .  .   as well as being the setting of Keisuke Kinoshita’s classic film Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳, 1954).  As a school boy, Yamamoto already dreamed of becoming an animator and upon graduation from high school he got work at Otogi Pro under the anime pioneer Ryūichi Yokoyama (横山 隆一, 1909-2001).  He worked on the productions of Fukusuke (ふくすけ, 1957) and Otogi's World Tour (おとぎの世界旅行, 1960) before meeting Osamu Tezuka (手塚 治虫, 1928-89) in 1960.

In 1961, Yamamoto became one of the founding members of Tezuka’s Mushi Productions and he took on the task of animating Story of a Certain Street Corner (ある街角の物語, 1962) which won much acclaim including the first ever Noburo Ofuji Award at the Mainichi Film Concours.  He worked with Tezuka on the original Astro Boy Series and directed the Kimba the White Lion series (1965-7) and feature film (1966).

Yamamoto is perhaps best known for his work on the Animerama (アニメラマ) trilogy of films: A Thousand and One Nights (千夜一夜物語, 1969), Cleopatra (クレオパトラ, 1970), and Belladonna (哀しみのベラドンナ, 1973).  Although these adult themed films may have been conceived and co-directed by Tezuka, Yamamoto is generally credited as the main creative force behind these unique films.  Yamamoto was also the supervising director of Leiji Matsumoto’s influential anime series Space Battleship Yamato (1974-5).

The 20 films that Yamamoto selected for the 2003 Laputa survey reflect his love of both popular and avant-garde forms of animation. .  .  not to mention a taste for the eclectic and unusual.  Yamamoto’s generation were hugely influenced by the extraordinary cell animation produced by Walt Disney in the 1930s and 1940s.  Although they emulated Disney to a certain extent, with the Animerama films Mushi Productions also sought to move animation in a completely new and different direction than Disney.  The avant-garde spirit of these films was influenced by Yōji Kuri and the Animation Sannin no Kai, which is doubtless why Two Grilled Fish made Yamamoto’s list.

On the surface it may seem egoistic for two of Yamamoto’s own works to appear on this list, but it is not uncommon among the Laputa lists.  Puppet animation pioneer Katsuo Takahashi mentions his own work Nobara (野ばら, 1967) and Tsutomu Shibayama lists 18 Doraemon movies in his Top 20 List.  I enlisted my husband to help me translate Yamamoto’s comments about his selection which I have included below.  They reveal his quirky sense of humour. Although the list is numbered, Yamamoto claims the order is random. I am fascinated by the inclusion of The City of Lost Children which is not animation at all, but he suggests the aesthetics have an “anime taste” to them. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

1.

Fantasia

(ファンタジア, 9 Disney directors, 1940)

The film that inspired Yamamoto to become an animator.

2.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

(白雪姫, David Hand et al., Disney, USA, 1937)

“The dark beauty in Snow White reminds me of kabuki” - EY

3.

Two Grilled Fish

(二匹のサンマ, Yōji Kuri, 1960)

“Scary, terrible and disturbing to envision the progress of humanity in this way.” - EY

4.

One Thousand and One Nights

(千夜一夜物語, Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan, 1969)

Yamamoto claims that it was the first animation to be have an “Eirin cut”

(Eirin is the Japanese film classification – some would say “censorship” board)

5.

Belladonna

(哀しみのベラドンナ, Eiichi Yamamoto, Japan, 1973)

“Because I made it!” - EY

6.

Night on the Galactic Railroad

(銀河鉄道の夜  Gisaburo Sugii, 1985)

“Because a friend of mine made it!” - EY

7.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky 

(天空の城ラピュタ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1986)

“It has such a great chase scene!” - EY

8.

My Neighbor Totoro

(となりのトトロ, Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

“It succeeded wonderfully in turning Japanese folklore into entertainment.” - EY

9.

Renown “Ye-Ye” Girls Commericals

(レナウンのイエイエ娘CM, 1960s)

http://www31.ocn.ne.jp/~goodold60net/yeye.htm

“Oh those were fun, weren’t they!” - EY

10.

Ugo Ugo Lhuga series

(ウゴウゴルーガ, Toshio Iwai, 1992-1994)

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2005/08/ugo-ugo-lhuga-j.php

“This series was great because it turned poo into a character.  

Iwai took animation to a new level.  I watched it every day when it was on TV.” - EY

11.

Minna no Uta series

(みんなのうた, various, NHK, 1961-present)

“I congratulate the NHK on this series.  Please continue it forever!” - EY

12.

Hedgehog in the Fog

(霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, 1975)

“Well, I listed it because everybody says it’s great.”  - EY

13.

The Mighty River / Le fleuve aux grandes eaux

(大いなる河の流れ, Frédéric Back, 1993)

“I like it better than The Man Who Planted Trees” - EY

14.

American Pop

(アメリカン・ポップ, Ralph Bakshi, 1981)

Yamamoto enjoyed the combination of rotoscoping with human drama.

15.

Heavy Metal

(ヘヴィメタル, Gerald Potterton, 1981)

“Hmmmm… this one is ugly and beautiful at the same time (醜悪美).” - EY

16.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

(ナイトメアー・ビフォア・クリスマス, Henry Selick, 1993)

“A grotesque doll with an exceedingly beautiful heart.” - EY

17.

Beavis and Butt-head Do America

(ビーバス・アンド・バットヘッドDo America, Mike Judge/ Yvette Kaplan, 1996)

“Very queer characters, very strange story, knee-slappingly hilarious.

On the one hand there’s Disney, and on the other hand there’s this odd, queer stuff.

America produces such diverse [animation].” - EY

18.

Death Becomes Her

(水遠に美しく, Robert Zemeckis, 1992)

puppets and special effects Guy Himber, Alec Gillis, Don Elliot, et al.

“Fantastic animation techniques used with ‘humans’” - EY

19.

Run Lola Run / Lola rennt animation sequences

(ラン・ローラ・ラン, Tom Tykwer, 1998)

Animation designed by Gil Alkabetz

“The animation is good, as is the beauty of the camera work.  

The construction is also great.  

Lola with the tattoo on her belly is really kawaii” - EY

20.

The City of Lost Children / La Cité des enfants perdus

(ロスト・チルドレン, Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Marc Caro, 1995)

“There’s no “anime” in it at all, but it has an anime flavour to it. 

(he uses the katakana term アニメテイスト literally “anime taste”)  

Their debut film Delicatessen was also good.” - EY


Source: Laputa Top 150 World and Japanese Animation

Face To Face (お向かいさん, 2007)

The animated films of Kansai artist Mika Seike (清家美佳, b. 1975) are a rare treat. Information about her is even harder to come by as she has very little web presence.   As far as I am aware, Face to Face (Omukaisan/お向かいさん, 2007) is the most recent animated work released by Seike.  As in her previous films, she uses scanned objects and photographs of her actors (in this case Natsuko Miyata and Yoshiro Togami) for the basic forms of her animation, which she manipulates, colours, and animates on her computer.  As in her previous films, the people and backgrounds in Face to Face have a grey, textured tone similar to that of newsprint.  In contrast to the grey and black of the human forms, elements of the natural world, such as leaves, butterflies, and flowers have been vividly coloured. 

2 films by Seike appear on Thinking and Drawing

A female hand enters from screen left and puts a green leaf down on a flat surface and it grows roots and transforms into a small tree that leans to the left.  Then a male hand enters from screen right and places a red leaf on the tree.  This leaf sprouts into a branch giving the tree a more balanced shape.  The camera then cuts to a wider angle and we see that the surface on which the tree is growing is not earthen, but a small wooden card table.  A man and woman sit at the table, hands on their laps, heads bent forward in rapt concentration as if they were playing chess with one another.

The woman raises her head, and a green leaf pops out of her mouth, like a ticket out of a vending machine and she places it on the tree, causing a new branch to form.  The man does the same with a red leaf.  And so the “game” continues, with the man and woman staring intently at one another across the branches of the tree.  Their faces have a rough quality to them as if they were made out of corrugated paper. 

When the tree is full with entangled branches of green and red, one of the green leaves suddenly pops off the tree and begins to fall.  The man looks surprised and the woman’s expression suggests that she is crestfallen by this – her eyes lower to watch it fall.  When the green leaf touches the table, it begins growing into a vine which rapidly wraps itself around the woman’s neck and head.  Another leaf comes out of her mouth and she places it on the tree.  As the green leaves grow higher, close ups show us that the leaves are now almost blocking out eye contact between the woman and man. 

Two red leaves fall to the ground and transform into vines that wrap themselves around the neck and face of the man.  Another red leaf comes out of his mouth, but instead of placing it on the tree, he plants it on the woman’s side of the table, where it grows into a red-leafed vine that wraps around the woman.  She opens her mouth and a green vine grows out of it, wrapping itself around the man’s face.  He releases another red leaf, but instead of planting it, holds it up defiantly between their lines of vision and it transforms into a red flame.  He sets the vine alight, and the flame travels, as if up a dynamite cable, to the woman’s mouth.  Consuming the flame causes a small stone to fall out of the woman’s mouth.  She then raises her head and a stone shoots out of her mouth, hitting the man on his forehead. 

Seike's Fishing Vine (2006) appears on Tokyo Loop

The woman looks over the man’s shoulder at a butterfly fluttering past the window, set against a red sky.  Her gaze then shifts to the floor, where there are three stones – suggesting that this has happened before.   She then removes the vines from her face.   She walks to the window to peer outside.  As she does so, the red butterfly comes to greet her on the windowsill and a rumble of thunder can be heard.  Outside, there are some of flower-boxes – some full of colour, some empty – and a giant stone appears to have fallen at some point on the ground causing fissures in the concrete.  The woman’s gaze follows the butterfly as it soars into the sky, joining other butterflies against a ruddy sky.  This establishing shot reveals a landscape of dull grey apartment buildings, each with flowerboxes giving the scene some colour.  In some of the apartment windows other people can be seen sitting at tables performing the same ritual of planting leaves on tables. 

As the butterflies continue their soaring, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind joins the low rumble of a distant thunderstorm.  Eventually, the butterflies plant themselves on the floor of a small wood of red-leafed trees, causing another red-leafed tree to sprout.  This tree also produces a fruit, out of which is born another butterfly.

The butterfly flies to the woman and lands on her hand, then journeys into the sky.  The camera pulls back to reveal that the urban landscape seems to be walled.  The camera pulls back further to show that these walls are actually the walls of a box that juts out from the chest of the man.  Back inside the apartment, the woman returns to the table.  The sky is now green and the red butterfly has joined them.  The man looks down, then removes the vines from himself, stands and closes the box into his chest, as if it were a bureau drawer.  He walks to gaze out the window on the opposite side of the room, where a green butterfly lands on the window sill.  Between the apartments out this window is a much less bleaker scene:  a garden full of greenery and colour.  Some purple butterflies plant themselves in the grass causing a stone to grow out of the earth.  The green butterfly returns to the man who looks at it intently before watching it fly away again.  The camera then pulls back to reveal more of this garden community, and then to show that it too is inside a box, but this one is jutting out of the woman’s chest.  When she closes it into her chest, a green butterfly escapes from it and joins the red butterfly on the tree on the table.  The red butterfly then lands on the woman’s forehead, then enters the woman’s mouth.

Inside the woman, the butterfly flies downwards and arrives in the garden where the man is gazing out the window.  It plants itself in the ground in front of the man and sprouts into a red-leafed tree.  The green butterfly then flies to the man’s forehead, then into his mouth and appears on the stormy side of the house, where it plants itself in the empty flower-box. Unlike the red butterfly, which sprouted a tree of its own colour, the tree that the green butterfly creates has both green and red leaves.  The man returns to the table and the couple stare at each other over the original tree.  Each pulls a leaf from their mouths and plants them on the tree, causing butterflies to emerge – the red butterfly lands on the woman’s forehead and the green on the man’s forehead.  As the camera pulls silently away, we see the butterflies then enter their mouths again.  The camera continues to pull back, out of the window.   The final image is of the man and woman, framed in a window, staring at each other over the green and red tree on the table.

Seike’s characters inhabit a monochrome world and the only signs of nature – the leaves and the butterflies – seem to represent communication between men and women.  But, instead of being a beautiful organic process, the relationship between the two sexes has been reduced to a game of strategy.  It is a bleak vision of the modern world with the vibrant butterflies being the only signs of a possible transformation of the relationship into something more beautiful.

Departures (おくりびと, 2008)

In the modern world we have become quite estranged from the natural process of death.  When my grandmother was growing up in rural Ontario death was accepted part of life and bodies were laid out on the dining room table to be cleaned and dressed before being laid in a simple coffin in the living room for visitation.  Today, when loved ones die strangers take care of preparing the body for funeral services.  People who work in funeral services are often stigmatized for it, as was revealed on the US program The Bachelor when a beautiful young funeral director vied for the prize.

In Japan, the stigma is even greater because of the history of people who worked with the dead being ostracized as burakumin (untouchables).  The descendants of the burakumin are still the victims of oppression in Japan and people who work with the dead still risk being stigmatized in their community as “unclean.”  Yōjirō Takita’s Oscar-winning film Departures (おくりびと, 2008) tenderly explores this issue with the tale of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a young cellist who suddenly loses his job in a Tokyo orchestra.  He decides to return to his home town in Yamagata prefecture with the support of his wife Mika (Ryōko Hirosue) to look for work.

Soon after their arrival, Kobayashi answers an advertisement in the newspaper for a company looking for someone to assist with “tabi” (旅) which he interprets as “travel”.  However, the “travel” that is meant in the ad is not to do with a physical journey but a spiritual one and Kobayashi finds himself employed as the apprentice of a man called Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki) who ceremonially prepares the dead for their journey into the next life.

Okuribito Sheet Music for Piano and Cello

The pay for this work is generous so Kobayashi gives it the old college try, but it takes some getting used to and his emotional turmoil is amplified by the fact that he is afraid to tell his wife the truth about what his new job entails.  It turns out that Kobayashi is an ideal candidate for the job because he understands what it means to suffer loss.  His father walked out on his family when he was six and he missed the funeral of his mother two years earlier because he was too busy to return home.  The film follows Kobayashi’s acceptance of his new work as his vocation with warmth and depth and his story is bolstered by cleverly written subplots concerning his lost father, the family that runs the local bath house, and Kobayashi’s co-workers. 

Okuribito Original Soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi

Cinematically, the film does not really stand out from the crowd, which is why it was such a shock to many that it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film over the Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008).  In terms of subject matter, it was very brave of the filmmakers to take on the taboo subject of preparing bodies for death.  The strong storyline and superb acting is complemented by the glorious location shooting in Sakata, Yamagata.  If I were still living in Japan I would be immediately planning a getaway to the region for some hill walking. I am also quite partial to the violoncello and the score by Joe Hisaishi is beautifully written and performed (available from cdjapan).

I watched the German DVD release of this film Nokan: Die Kunst des Ausklangs which has a 16 minute interview with Takita as an extra.

The DVD is also available in the US, the UK, and elsewhere.