Combustible (火要鎮, 2012)

“Fires and quarrels are the flowers of Edo, yet the greater essence is the fireman”

The ancient city of Edo was known as the City of Fires because of the frequency and ferocity of its fires.  This was due to a combination of factors from the high flammability of the densely built wooden nagaya (長屋/row houses) to arson.  Between 1601 and 1867 alone, the city suffered nearly 1800 fires – 49 of them considered “great fires” that killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. 

The record of these fires appears in paintings, wood cuts, and scrolls – many of which can be viewed on the Institute for Fire Safety and Disaster Preparedness website – and the popular legends surrounding many of the fires have inspired everything from kabuki plays about the arsonist Yaoya Oshichi of the Great Fire of Tenna to Laura Joh Rowland’s mystery novel The Fire Kimono, which is set during the Great Fire of Meireki.  Popular manga-ka and animator Katsuhiro Ōtomo and his design team at Sunrise used woodblock print artists the inspiration for his unique animated short Combustible (火要鎮/Hinoyōjin, 2012).

Set in the 18^th century, the story begins with the unfurling of a cloth-bound emakimono (scroll painting).  The camera tracks slowly left, in the direction that one reads a scroll, over a highly detailed depiction of 18^th century Edo from the busy river, over the working class Shitamachi (low city) to the more affluent Yamanote (“foot hills” – or “high city” as in Edward Seidensticker’s 1984 book).  A male chorus sings a kiyari – a ritual song which was sung by hikeshi (Edo firefighters).  Traditional kiyari would list the tools needed by the firefights but with the words all drawn out like a chant. 

During the slow tracking shot, a hinomi-yagura (fire lookout tower) appears in the foreground to foreshadow the events to come.  The camera pauses in a large garden of the affluent home of a young girl called Owaka-chan (Saori Hayama).  Bored on her own in the garden, her spirits are lifted by the appearance of the boy next door, Matsuyoshi (Masakazu Morita), on the tiled garden wall.  A lyrical sequence ensues showing their varied play together, their agile figures dissolving in and out to show the passage of time as the garden subtly changes seasons. 

The children’s cheerful voices become a memory of the past as the camera dissolves to a red room with a hanging scroll painting of the garden on the wall.  Owaka is now a young lady in a formal kimono sitting with her mother.  The women’s response is interrupted by the sound of hanshō (alarm bells) in the distance.  Owaka’s mother sends a boy up onto the roof to the lookout to discover the location of the fire.  All across the black sky of Edo, men have climbed onto their roofs to observe the fire – all except Matsuyoshi.  He surprises the women by climbing the wall, running through their garden to escape from his family. 

The next scene shows Owaka as the dutiful daughter, serving her family’s guests under their watchful eyes.  As soon as she is in the privacy of her room, she weeps.  Owaka is much more adept at hiding her displeasure from her family than Matsuyoshi whose father has become violent with rage.  Matsuyoshi kneels on the floor in front of his father, his shirt sleeve torn off to reveal a tattooed arm.  The hikeshi firefighters – who normally came from the lower classes – were as heavily tattooed as today’s yakuza with water symbols such as dragons to give them courage and bring them good luck on the job.  It seems that Matsuyoshi has run away from home to become a heroic firefighter.

We hear Owaka and Matsuyoshi talking about the contrast between their childhood and their present situation against still scenes from Owaka’s empty house and garden.  Owaka is then seen reclining in apparent misery next to her koto – the stringed instrument she has doubtless had to learn to play in part of her training to be a nobleman’s wife.  Night falls and Owaka sits in her room with a beautiful wedding kimono and her elaborate trousseau.  A voice-over of her father’s bragging tells us that they are just waiting on the final touch: the obi for her wedding kimono.  Owaka sighs in misery and throws a fan across the room.  She doesn’t notice until it is too late that the fan has landed in her lantern.  Before long, the lantern bursts into giant flames.  Owaka’s first instinct is to run for help but then she reconsiders.  Perhaps this fire can alter the inevitability of her fate?  The drums and hanshō thrum loudly as the hikeshi firefighters gather to fight the fire as it rages through the Yamanote district.  Matsuyoshi is one of the brave men who nimbly ascend tall ladders onto the rooftops to assess the situation.  Will he be able to rescue Owaka or will her foolishness lead only to tragedy and devastation?

12th Century Animation (12 seiki no animation)

Isao Takahata

Watching Ōtomo’s short but masterful film, I was reminded of Isao Takahata’s fascinating illustrated book 12^th Century Animation (十二世紀のアニメーション, 1999) which examines how the composition of Heian picture scrolls prefigure the techniques used in modern animation.  It even includes examples from picture scrolls that dramatically depict Heian era fire – a scroll that Ōtomo may be referring to in an interview with Asian Beat last summer.  Using a complex mixture of traditional and CGI animation techniques, Ōtomo and his team have created a film combines the quiet beauty of 18^th century emakimono (picture scrolls) with the dynamism of CGI movement.  I particularly love the added touch of the letterboxing using traditional Japanese cloth instead of black bars.

This duality is expressed in the dramatic structure of the film.  As Ōtomo explains in Asia Beat, the first half of the film represents “stillness” and the second half “movement” with its “intense fire and action sequences”.  The slow tracking camera using mostly long and extreme long shots used in the first half contrasts with the fast cutting action shot from a variety of angles in the second half.  Similarly, the quiet sounds of garden birds of the early scenes are replaced by the drums and bells of the traditional dance music employed during the fire sequence as the film rages towards its abrupt end.  My two favourite shots in Combustible employ very different techniques: the glorious slow tracking opening establishing shot of Edo and the exciting CGI sequence of Matsuyoshi and his fellow firefighters flying up onto the rooftops by ladder.  As our POV ascends the tall building like a weightless crane shot, I believe I even said “wow” out loud at the sight of the rows of houses up in flames.  Fire and water are notoriously challenging for animators to get right and this film is a tour de force in the animation of fire. 

Available on the Short Peace DVD (JP only)

Short Peace BD (JP only)

Short Peace BD Special Edition (JP only)

Katsuyoshi Ōtomo won the Noburō Ōfuji Award for Combustible at the Mainichi Concours last year.  The film was also shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Animated Short and was nominated for the prestigious Annecy Cristal.  Although it started making the festival rounds in 2012, Combustible was theatrically released as part of the omnibus Short Peace alongside Shuhei Morita’s Oscar-nominated animated short Possessions (九十九/Tsukumo, 2013) as well as shorts directed by Hiroaki Ando and Hajime Katoki.  Short Peace was released on DVD and BD in Japan this month.  No word yet on any English DVD/BD/download release dates.  For fans of animation, the special limited edition BD is well worth the investment if you don’t mind the lack of English. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Direction/Screenplay:

Katsuhiro Ōtomo

Music:

Makoto Kubota

Cast:

Masakazu Morita (Matsuyoshi)

Saori Hayama (Owaka)

Character Design:

Hidekazu Ohara

Animation Director:

Tatsuya Tomaru

CGI Director:

Shūji Shinoda

Animation:

Hidetsugu Ito

Hiroyuki Horiuchi

Koji Watanabe

Kouichi Arai

Mari Tominaga

Masaaki Endou

Shuichi Kaneko

Takahiro Tanaka

Background Art:

Junichi Taniguchi

Yoshiaki Honma

Effects Animation Director:

Takashi Hashimoto

Visual Concept:

Hidekazu Ohara

Possessions (九十九, 2013)

Shuhei Morita’s Oscar-nominated animated short Possessions (九十九/Tsukumo, 2013) follows in the ancient tradition of yōkai (supernatural) stories.  Traditional Japanese culture is animistic.  They believe that all things have spirits or souls.  The spirits depicted in Morita’s original tale are tsukumogami (付喪神 – the Japanese title 九十九 is a homonym for tsukumo), which folklore expert Noriko Tsunoda Reider translates as “tool specters” (see: “Animating Objects”).  In other words, they are animate everyday household objects.  In the prototypical tsukumogami story, the tools or objects have become abandoned by their owners and the spirits have become embittered or vengeful. 

In Possessions, a tall strong man voiced by legendary seiyū  Kōichi Yamadera (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Anpanman, etc.), becomes caught in a storm while travelling through a dense forest.  Set in the 18^th century, the man is dressed in typical peasant clothes including a straw hat (kasa) and a straw raincoast (mino) (see: muza-chan).  On his back, he carries a himitsu-bako tool box on a stick.  The wind blows off his conical straw hat and leads him to an abandoned shrine built into a rocky hillside.  As he enters the shrine, the man politely remembers to ask the spirits residing in the shrine to forgive his intrusion and allow him to stay the night.  The shrine is full of what appears to be abandoned junk – one pile presciently resembling a face. 

The spirits dwelling in this shrine are not so easily appeased.  As the man closes his eyes and breathes deeply to recover from his difficult journey, the interior transforms into a clean and bare floor of 8 tatami with bull’s eye parasol shapes on the fusama (sliding doors).  The man looks around him in shock like a bull trapped in a pen and pinches his face to see if he is dreaming.  Suddenly the room is filled with ancient dancing parasols led by a small Parasol Frog (Jyanome Kaeru, voiced by Takeshi Kusao, who has lots of experience voicing frogs).  To appease the spirits the man opens his himitsu-bako tool box (see: About Japanese Puzzle Boxes) and sets about repairing all the paper parasols. 

This seems to work until the man slides open one of the fusama and finds himself in trapped another 8 tatami room with an elaborate tanmono (kimono fabric) design painted on its fusama.  The man tries to escape and is forced back into the room by tanmono tsukumogami (kimono fabric specters).  A beautiful kimono-clad woman (voiced by Aoi Yūki of Puella Magi Madoka Magica) depicted on the fusama asks him if he finds her beautiful like everyone else does, and he finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of tanmono fabric. He again turns to his tool box but is comically less skilled as sewing than he was at repairing parasols.  Can he appease this taunting spirit, or is there more in store for him?  This haunted shrine has more secrets up its sleeves before the twist at the end. 

In making this animated short for Sunrise’s Short Peace (ショート・ピース, 2013) anthology, Morita worked with a small core animation team including character designer Daisuke Sajiki (Coicent, Five Numbers), CGI animator Ryūsuke Sakamoto (Coicent, Five Numbers), art director Hideki Nakamura and animation veteran Hiroyuki Horiuchi doing key animation.

 

Available on the Short Peace DVD (JP only)

Short Peace BD (JP only)

Short Peace BD Special Edition (JP only)

It takes a lot to get me excited about CGI animation.  I much prefer the warmer textures of a traditional stop motion animation to the cold plasticity of mainstream 3D CGI animation.  Possessions; however, has won me over.  It has none of the coldness I associate with CGI.  It is a warmly textured piece that at times almost looks like characters and sets cut directly out of chiyogami paper.  According to Morita’s recent interview with Dan Sarto for AWN, he was inspired one day by the chiyogami paper his child was playing with at home.  Thus the central protagonist looks as though he has been constructed of traditionally patterned chiyogami and plain washi paper (paper made from traditional fibres).  The uses of other traditional colours and textures from the Hakone yosegi-zaiku (mixed wood) pattern of the tool box to the temari (embroidered balls) eyes of the final yōkai monster, are all cleverly executed.  This animation delights at every turn with its nods to traditional art and storytelling wrapped up in the modern package of three dimensional computer animation.  Shuhei Morita is really coming into his own as a director and well deserving of his Oscar nomination nod. 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Direction and Screenplay: Shuhei Morita

Producer: Yasumasa Tsuchiya

Music: Reiji Kitazato

Cast:

Kōichi Yamadera (Otoko)

Aoi Yuki (The Kimono Fabric Beauty / Tanmono Komachi/ 反物小町)

Takeshi Kusao (Bull’s Eye Parasol Frog / Jyanome Kaeru /蛇の目蛙)

Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪, 2012)

“.  .  .  The old haunts of [bears and wolves] are now turned into plowed fields, 

and where they once roamed in unmolested freedom, 

you find in their stead children playing; 

where two decades ago you heard the hungry howl of wolves 

and the angry growl of bears, you hear the sweet notes of school songs.” 

– Nitobe Inazō, May 1906

The Lost Wolves of Japan (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)

An extended version of the above quote appears in historian Brett L. Walker’s The Lost Wolves of Japan, which explores how wolves went from being revered creatures in ancient and medieval Japan to being hunted to extinction during the modernization period of the Meiji Restoration.  Mamoru Hosoda’s 2012 anime feature film Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪/ Ōkami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki, 2012) suggests that the wolves did not become extinct; but instead survived into the modern age becoming half human. 

The story is narrated by one of the wolf children, Yuki (Haru Kuroki), who recollects how her parents met.  Her mother Hana (Aoi Miyazaki) was a university student (the buildings are recognisably based on Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo) when she found herself drawn to a mysterious fellow student (Takao Ōsawa).  The man, known only as “Kare” (he/him/boyfriend), is a reluctant suitor but Hana’s kindness and patience wins him over.  Finally he reveals to Hana that he is actually an Ōkami-otoko (wolf man) and she accepts him for who he is.    Unlike the European werewolves of legend, who transformed under the light of a full moon and attacked humans, the wolf men of this tale are merely the result of interbreeding for survival.  The Ōkami-otoko in this film has shape shifting-abilities similar to the tanuki of Studio Ghibli’s anime Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994), who take on the guise of humans when their natural habitat in the Tama Hills is destroyed by urban sprawl.  The wolf-human hybrids in Hosuda’s original tale take on the shape-shifting abilities associated with foxes and tanuki of Japanese folk legend. 

To order (US): Wolf Children (Blu-ray/DVD Combo) Wolf Children

amazon instant video: Wolf Children
Japanese BD/DVD: Wolf Children

Hana and Kare move in together and have two children Yuki and Ame (Snow and Rain) without the assistance of medical care, for fear that the doctors will discover the family’s secret.  They live in domestic bliss until one fateful day when Kare does not return home.  Hana takes the children out in the heavy rain to find him and discovers that he has had an accident and died in the river.  Hana struggles on her own as a single mother, unable to seek help because the children are prone to transforming into wolves whenever emotions run high - which is often with children.   The neighbours complain about the noise the children make when they play like wild animals in the apartment and howl.  Soon, the local authorities are becoming suspicious about the fact that the children have no public records. 

Fearing that their secret will be revealed, Hana moves with the children to the countryside.  After a time, they are accepted by the community but as the children get older they each have to come to terms with their dual identities.  Can they control their wolf instincts in order to integrate into human society or will the call of the wild be too great?  Each child takes their own path with unexpected results. 

Wolf Children has a gentle pace that will seem slow to anime fans used to action-packed weekly drama.  It is a film that invites us to reflect on our role as humans in the environment and how communities can function to either include or exclude people who are different or eccentric in some way.  Some parallels could be drawn between the struggles of the wolf children in the community and the struggles of people who are biracial to fit into society.  Can one be both identities or does one have to choose?

Above all, Wolf Children is a truly beautiful animation.  The wolf children are super-cute with and fun to watch at play – thanks mainly to the work of prolific character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, etc.).  The film’s depiction of idealised rural Japanese landscapes are reminiscent of another Studio Ghibli animation:  My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988).  The film is the first that Mamoru Hosoda under the auspices of his own animation studio, Studio Chizu, which he founded in 2011 with the aim of making feature film animation (Source).  Wolf Children was successful at the box office in Japan, beating out Pixar’s Brave in its first week, and went on to win Animation of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and Best Animation Film at the Mainichi Film Concours.  This suggests we can look forward to more auteur fare from Hosoda in the near future.   

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

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