Indigo Road (藍の路, 2006)

This 13 minute puppet animation belongs to the Michi (Road) Series directed by Tomoyasu Murata (村田朋泰). As with all of the short animations by Murata that I have seen, the film is without dialogue. It relies on elements of “pure cinema”, visuals combined with sound effects and music, to relate the melancholy story of a pianist who has lost someone that he loves.

The fact that the main protagonist is a pianist is only hinted at in Indigo Road (藍の路) by a pan shot that connects the man to an empty piano in the scene in the empty bar. The piano is also featured strongly in the soundtrack. This is a film that needs to be seen more than once in order to understand everything that is going on.

The film moves, almost seamlessly between the past and the present. The past, which is inhabited by the woman, is imbued with warm shades of ochre, orange, and red. Many of the scenes have also been shot in such a way as to give the impression of real daylight coming in through the windows. In the present the woman’s absence is highlighted through the use of greys, indigo blues, and lots of shadows.

The man and the woman are also connected through the act of sweeping. The man is shown sweeping an empty corridor that is cluttered with litter, and the woman is shown sweeping the apartment. The motif of emptiness is everywhere, from the hollow sound of the wind ruffling the man’s coat to the empty streets, empty chairs, and empty corridors of the setting. The whole ambiance of the film reminded me of the Don McLean song “Empty Chairs” in which he sings:

Morning comes and morning goes with no regret

And evening brings the memories that I can’t forget

Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs

And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs.


As in the Don McLean song, we don’t understand why the woman has left, only that she is gone. The music emphasizes this with its dramatic crescendo in one scene when we think the man and the woman will meet only to stop suddenly when the man opens the door and she is not there. The only sign that remains of her presence is the lone red flower blooming on the windowsill, but the brilliantly coloured blue butterfly that once hovered by the flower is now dead and broken on the floor when he sweeps the corridor.

In 2002, Murata won the Prize in Excellence for his early puppet animation Nostalgia that he made during his student years at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. The Japan Times has described his puppet animation as resembling “fine paintings in every frame” that “feature heart-warming stories with humble characters.” Indeed, the combination of the sets and the way that they are lit in Indigo Road do have a painterly feeling about them, but they are not static. Murata enjoys a moving camera and there are several dramatic tracking and panning shots in the film that emphasis the emptiness of the space.

Towards the end there is an interesting moment where the pianist is split in two and we see him watching himself cleaning the toilet. In the next scene, as he walks past a bathroom mirror, he pauses and then splits into two people, with one image of himself walking off-screen and the other image remaining standing still. I wasn’t sure what to make of this part of the film at first, but upon further reflection it seemed to me that this scene visually represented the feeling a person has that they have lost a part of themselves when someone they love dearly leaves them. The wonderful thing about this film is that it is open to multiple interpretations.

Indigo Road can be ordered from tomoyasu.net

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2006

Tomoyasu Murata 村田朋泰

Last week, I discovered the work of Tomoyasu Murata (村田朋泰) at a small gallery on Hongo Dori, just across the street from Tokyo University. The display window featured a tongue-in-cheek Japan-themed installation which caused many passersby to pause for a moment’s reflection. Small figures of men in army uniforms swam, their feet fluttering and their arms swirling through the sea under an iconic hinomaru-themed background. In the foreground, next to a figure of Ultraman, were two old-fashioned portable televisions, one on top of the other, playing animated shorts. Another amusing touch was an old coin-operated candy machine. For 100 yen you would receive a numbered ball that you could turn in at the desk for a Murata souvenir. The artist himself was there and autographed our souvenir with his name and one of the stars of his animated shorts: handstand boy.

There was a nostalgic feel to the installation inside the gallery. On an old bookshelf, several old-fashioned small televisions were tucked side-by-side with books on the shelves. Each little screen was playing a different image. Two old church pews sat in front of the bookshelf, their backs to the televisions. On the floor in front of them was an unusual piece of art involving model houses and a huge tongue lolling out onto the floor.

The walls of the gallery featured photographs on one side and paintings and illustrations on the other. The photographs were all old black and white snapshots that had a cut-out of a white cloud-like object that came down from the top of the photos, like slime in a B-Horror movie, and obscured the faces of the figures in the photos. Large, pillow-like versions of these clouds were also liberally placed about the room, most hanging from the point where the wall meets the ceiling like snow hanging over the eaves of a roof.Upstairs, one could view a selection of short animated films directed by Murata. As in the gallery downstairs, the animated shorts demonstrated a wide range of methods. Murata has done a series of stop-motion puppet animation shorts called the My Road Series. There is a European feel to these shorts, particularly in the style of the main protagonist’s apartment. The main protagonist, a pianist, is suffering from some kind of a loss, possibly his partner, and emotion and mood is conveyed through character movement, music, sets, lighting, and other special effects such as winds blowing and sound effects. Murata’s films have no dialogue, but he seems to work in collaboration with musicians and composers.

Murata also dabbles in cel animation and computer animation among other techniques. Tokyo Montage, for example, combines a wide range of techniques in a style that reminded me of the experimental work of Norman McLaren. Although the My Road Series has a melancholic feeling to it, most of his films do not take themselves too suriously. One motif found in almost all his films is the butterfly, a creature that I feel captures the beauty and playfulness of Murata’s work.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2006

My Neighbour Totoro (となりのトトロ, 1988)

If you’re a parent and the studios have got you down with the current vogue for high-paced, action-packed animated films that lack the innocent charm of early Disney films, then I highly recommend that you introduce your child to the world of Hayao Miyazaki. For the very young, you can do no better than My Neighbour Totoro (となりのトトロ / Tonari no Totoro, 1988).

Set in an idealized 1950s Japan, the film is told from the perspective of two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe, aged 11 and 4 respectively. Their mother has taken ill and is in the hospital indefinitely and their father, a university professor in Tokyo, moves them to a new home in the countryside to be closer to the mother’s hospital. As the girls explore their new home, a traditional Japanese house, they discover that it is inhabited by little black balls with google eyes called kurokurosuke, a term which has been translated variously as dust bunnies or soot sprites. When the children tell their father and the obaasan (grandmother) from next-door, the adults do not accuse the children of seeing things. In fact, the obaasan says that she, too, could see sprites/fairies when she was a young girl. I love that the adult figures in this film encourage the children to use their imaginations and to believe in things that they can see that perhaps not everyone can.

While Satsuki is at school one day, Mei is playing alone in the garden when she discovers a giant Totoro living at the foot of the giant camphor laurel tree near their home. Totoro seems to be a kind of spirit or fairy related to the camphor tree. Although Miyazaki himself has denied any connection to religion, the tree does have a rope around it that in Shinto indicates that the tree is a kami, or sacred spirit. The giant Totoro and the two smaller Totoros have a playful relationship with the girls at first: flying in the sky and playing ocarinas together, but later in the film when Mei runs away and gets lost, Totoro and a Catbus help Satsuki find her again.

The thing that makes this such a wonderful film for children is its simplicity. Unlike a typical American animated feature, there are no bad guys, no violence, and no chase scene at the end. Instead, the film shows the children experiencing joy, fear, anger, and other emotions as they deal with the trials of growing up as well as their underlying fear that their mother may die of her illness. The imaginary creatures act as helpmates on the children’s journey of discovery, but they never speak (there is no condescending adult moral imposed on the film), rather the children intuit what Totoro wants to show them.

My children have fallen in love with the theme song and Totoro. Even my one and a half year old sings the song to herself when she plays. That said, I want to emphasize that this is a film that can be enjoyed by people of any age and I highly recommend it as an antidote to over-the-top CGI features.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2006