Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (亀は意外と速く泳ぐ, 2005)

Suzume “Sparrow” Katagura (Juri Ueno of Swing Girls and Nodame Contabile) has an unusual turtle named Taro with a green and red painted shell as a pet. As far as pets go, turtles are not the most engaging of creatures. To make matters worse, when Suzume’s husband calls home from abroad he seems more interested in Taro the turtle’s welfare than in his wife.

Suzume’s life is much like that of the turtle: slow moving and mundane. This is in stark contrast to the life of her best friend Kujaku “Peacock” Ogitani (Yū Aoi of One Million Yen Girl and Hula Girls) whose life seems full of adventure and has big plans to move to Paris and live with a Frenchman in view of the Eiffel Tower. All that changes one day when Suzume is the unfortunate victim of an apple cart spilling its wares done the flight of 100 steps Suzume regularly must climb to get home. As she cowers on the steps to protect herself from the onslaught of apples, Suzume spots a tiny “Spies Wanted” poster on the railing.

Replying to the ad, Suzume meets the Kugitanis – an unusual couple who claim to be part of an important espionage operation. They test Suzume and pronounce that her ordinariness makes her the perfect candidate to be a spy. Thus begins Suzume’s spy training – a journey that gives her a sense of purpose in her life for the very first time. The irony in all this, of course, is in the fact that the Kugitanis' mission and employers are never made clear.

Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (亀は意外と速く泳ぐ, 2005) is a quirky little comedy that will delight viewers who enjoy slow-paced, off-the-wall humour. Director Satoshi Miki’s choice of stylized sets and costumes are the big hint that this film should be read as a flight of fancy and not realism. Taro the painted turtle is quite literally a turtle whose shell has been painted red and green. The red and green motif repeats itself in Suzume’s costumes and in many elements of the set. It is a light film with a simple message: if one looks closely enough one can find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

I was particularly delighted with the opening credits of the film which were designed and animated by Tobira Oda. Suzume is flipping through a giant pad of paper with flip book illustrations in its corner. The flip book animation – which is interspersed with film credits – shows an animated version of Suzume performing the mundane daily tasks of a housewife: preparing meals, hanging laundry, cycling to run errands, vacuuming, and so on. A simple concept executed in a very cleverly way.

Order Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers Now

This month I will be featuring reviews of Japanese feature films released by independent distributors in the UK. I was saddened by the news (read more at VCinema) that one of the many victims of the riots this week in England was the Sony DADC warehouse in Enfield. One of the biggest distribution warehouses in the London area, it held the stock of more than a hundred independent record labels and film distributors. While insurance will cover the cost of the stock that went up in flames, with no current stock to sell many of these companies have been put into extremely difficult financial circumstances.

Third Window Films is the distributor for Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers in the UK.  They have written a long piece about the fallout from the fire on Facebook.  Other Third Window Films titles that I recommend include Fine, Totally Fine (read my review) and Confessions of a Dog (read my review). Please support Third Window Films by ordering films that are currently in stock in their Amazon Store (also available to order as an import via Amazon in the US, France and Germany).  If you live in the UK you can rent many Third Window Film titles on Mubi.  UK residents can also support Third Window Films at the cinema by supporting the release of Lee Sang-il's  Villain (Akunin) on August 19th. Check out the official Facebook page for details.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

To order to Japan:

Kame wa Igai to Hayaku Oyogu Deluxe Edition

Norihito Iki’s Kaidan (怪談, 2003)

It is the height of a Japanese summer in Norihito Iki's animated short Kaidan.  The time of year when the cicadas are singing their song.  A young girl is kneeling over the remains of a frog, lamenting its death. As she peers down at the frog, one of her own eyes transforms into the dead eye of the frog. She goes to pay her respects at a Shinto shrine, where an image of the frog appears in the shrine’s divine mirror (yata no kagami / 八咫鏡). This startles the girl, who runs through the countryside with images of a fish, an eel, and the frog appearing like ghosts in the landscape.

The girl returns to her home, where the sound of the frog’s song seems to haunt her and she karate-kicks into the air as if to try to ward off the ghost of the frog. “Atsui,” she exclaims as the summer heat overwhelms her and she gets something to drink in the fridge. The frog’s ghost teases her, first appearing to slide out of the crack between the refrigerator doors, then hopping out of the table as if it were a pond surface. The frog ghost then drops onto her back like a heavy blanket.

The spirit of the frog seems to enter the girl and the film ends with a photograph of a real girl’s face with a frog eye – suggesting that this tale may have been the experience of a real girl. The image dissolves into an animation of the frog, singing with the girl’s voice: “Kaeru. . . kaeru. . . kaeru. . .”

The conceit behind this animation is the double meaning of the word “kaeru” in Japanese. As a noun kaeru (カエル/蛙) means frog, but as a verb kaeru (かえる/帰る) means to return / come back. On a simple level, one could interpret this as the girl’s desire for the return of her beloved frog. The use of the Shinto shrine, however, is no accident for the frog’s association with the idea of returning has meant that frogs are sold as good luck charms at many Shinto shrines as a symbol of the need to return to the hold place, or to give good fortune to the bearer.

As the girl herself appears so ghostly in Kaidan and the settings are devoid of other people, I wondered if the girl herself were a ghost looking for a way back to the land of the living. The title Kaidan is usually used in Japanese to refer to ancient ghost stories, such as those translated to English by Lafcadio Hearn under the title Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.  The kaidan that I have read or seen in films (ie Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan or Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugestu) are best described weird and wonderful - and Iki's animation certainly meets both of these criteria.

The unique look of the film is created by overlaying the animation onto black and white photographs. For the landscape scenes, Iki has found wonderful locations on which to draw the ghostly forms of animals. The dark interiors of a Japanese-style house are naturally very suited to a ghost story and Iki uses this to his advantage. This film charmed me from the first moment I saw it because of its playful mixture of photographic (fish eye lens / playing with exposures), experimental (rapid montage/flickering), and animation techniques both old and new.

Order Thinking and Drawing Now

I first saw this film when I acquired Image Forum’s Thinking and Drawing: Japanese Art Animation of the New Millennium in January 2007 (read my review at Midnight Eye) and it has haunted me (in a pleasant way) ever since.  In addition to animation, Norihito Iki – a graduate of Musashino and Tamabi – is a professional photographer. Check out his official website or his new Facebook page to learn more about him and see samples of his recent work.

Music: Atsuko Sato

Voice acting: Momoka Fujita

Created and Directed by: Norihito Iki

text © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Japan in Germany 2: Green Tea Cycle Katzenzunge

I have just returned from our summer holidays to a backlog of e-mails and blog entries. The first stop in my July travels was the city of Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia. My husband was there for business, and I tagged along to visit a cousin and do some sightseeing. As the weather was fine – a rarity in Germany this summer – I decided to walk to the Museum Mile rather than take the U-Bahn.

After passing such historical buildings as Villa Hammerschmidt and Palais Schaumburg, I followed Willy-Brandt-Allee to the U-Bahn station at Heussallee. As I waited at the lights to cross Heussallee, my eyes were drawn to a wagon drawn by a bicycle with a sign in Japanese advertising green tea. It was so completely unexpected; I thought that I was seeing things for a moment.

As I forgot my camera that day, I have taken a screencap from the website.

Another sign introduced the wagon as Green Tea Cycle Katzenzunge and the menu offered a wide assortment of green tea from full-flavoured varieties such as Tenko and Shincha to milder green teas such as Kukicha and Hojicha. The menu even offered such modern concoctions as Matchaccino: cappuccino made with matcha (green tea powder ) instead of coffee.

I was greeted by the friendly, smiling face of the proprietor Ryoji Ichikawa (follow him on Twitter where he updates daily on his whereabouts) and as he prepared my Genmaicha, I asked him about how he came to be on the Museum Mile in Bonn. I learned that his wife is German and after living together in Osaka for several years, they had moved to Bonn for her work two years ago. He noticed that proper Japanese tea was hard to come by in Bonn and decided to start up his small business selling green tea.

The name “Katzenzunge” (Cat Tongue) should not be confused with Katzenzungen, the traditional German chocolate confectionery by Feodora . Rather, it is the literal translation of the Japanese neko-jita (猫舌). The term “neko-jita” is used to describe someone who is very sensitive to hot (but not spicy) liquids or foods. In his explanation of why he called his business “Katzenzunge”, Ichikawa-san explains that the name conjures up for him the image of people blowing on their hot drinks in order to cool them down – an image that gives him a kind of cozy feeling.

I certainly felt very cosy as I parked myself on a bench by the Rhine and sipped my Genmaicha out of its stylish (for a disposable cup) white paper cup with black lid.. As I watched the ships pass up and down the river, I must admit that I felt a bit natsukashii. . . it occurred to me that the last time I had sat by myself and watched shipping vessels was in Yokohama back in 2006 when I went for a walk after seeing the Nihonga Painting: Six Provocative Artists exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art. Sigh. . .

If you live in the Bonn area or are planning to visit anytime soon, I highly recommend visiting Green Tea Cycle Katzenzunge and enjoying a traditionally brewed, organic green tea. Weather-permitting, Mondays to Fridays, Ichikawa-san can be founded on Heussallee. On Saturdays, Sundays, and state holidays, he can be found on the Bonn side of the Rhein – a wonderful place to go for a stroll or a bike ride.

One can also purchase about a dozen varieties of loose leaf Keiko Organic Green Tea from Kagoshima. Ichikawa-san also offers lessons in green tea preparation. Visit the Green Tea Cycle Katzenzunge website for more information. 

This blog post is part of a new series called Japan in Germany.  

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011