Humanity and Paper Balloons (人情紙風船, 1937)

When he was still an assistant director, one day [Akira] Kurosawa visited the open set where Sadao Yamanaka was shooting Humanity and Paper Balloons (Ninjo Kamifusen, 1937). It was the scene where the unemployed ronin (masterless samurai) Matajuro, played by Chojuro Kawarazaki, tries to hand over a letter of entreaty to a senior official. What Kurosawa never forgot about that day was that even though the weather was perfectly fine, everybody was just standing around idly, peering up at the sky. He learned that they were waiting for a cloud to waft over a warehouse on the set.

- Teruyo Nogami, Waiting on the Weather , p. 17

I like this anecdote from Teruyo Nogami’s memoir because it sums up the type of conscientious director that Sadao Yamanaka was. There is not a false not in Yamanaka’s final film Humanity and Paper Balloons (人情紙風船/Ninjō kami fūsen, 1937). From the beautifully rendered transitions between scenes to the impeccable ensemble timing of the Zenshin-za acting troupe, the film has been so well planned as to seem effortless.

Nogami’s anecdote also brings to attention one of the important motifs of the first half of Humanity and Paper Balloons: the clouds in the sky. In contrast to the claustrophobic streets and tenements of ancient Edo, the shots of the open sky seem to symbolize the dreams of a better future for the two main protagonists: Shinza the Barber (Kan’emon Nakamura) and and impoverished ronin Matajuro Unno (Chojuro Kawarazaki). Both men have ambitions to move up in the world but are thwarted at every turn by the restraints of the feudalism of the Tokugawa era.

Shinza tries to make money by running an underground gambling establishment but the Yatagoro Gang, with its ties to the weathly merchants like Shirakoya Pawn Shop and the samurai gentry like Mori, threaten him with violence if he continues to encroach upon their turf. Unno’s late father was indentured to Mori as a samurai and for reasons not made clear became a ronin. In the hopes of providing a more comfortable life for his wife, Unno tries to seek favour from Mori with a letter from his father that contains evidence that Mori gained his position thanks to Unno’s father’s support. However, self-serving Mori goes out of his way to avoid contact with Unno.

The story unfolds with the inevitability of a Shakespearean tragedy: we know that it is not going to end well, but the drama is so riveting that we cannot look away. In the accompanying booklet to the Eureka! Masters of Cinema DVD of this film, Shinji Aoyama (director of Eureka and Tokyo Koen – which just won the Golden Leopard at Locarno) writes that Yamanaka learned his techniques from Hollywood cinema of the 20s and 30s – and I must admit that I was often reminded of the timing of dialogue in classic films like Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932) and Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) – especially in the scenes featuring Shinza the barber. The way in which Shinza brought the action through the tenement houses when being chased made me wonder what fun Buster Keaton would have had if given traditional Japanese houses as a prop for his stunts. Yamanaka did a great job of exploiting the depth of space possible with Japanese houses in the summer.

Yamanaka uses a floor level camera quite often in Humanity and Paper Balloons – a stylistic element that has traditionally in Western film studies been attributed to Yasujiro Ozu, but seeing it used in Humanity and Paper Balloons solidifies for me the fact that it is really just the best camera angle for capturing action that is taking place in traditional Japanese settings. When characters are seated on tatami – be it in a home setting or in a drinking establishment – the best way to capture medium or medium long shots of the characters is to have the camera operator seated on the floor as well. Also interesting is Yamanaka’s preference for a stable, unmoving camera in Humanity and Paper Balloons – it matches well with the theme of lack of social mobility. Although the film may have an historical setting, this theme must have been one that audiences in 1937 could identify with: the Shogunate may have been dispensed with by then, but life under the military dictatorship of the period meant that people’s life choices were similarly limited.

The final image in Humanity and Paper Balloons is that of one of the kamifusen (paper balloons) that Unno’s wife makes in her spare time floating in the gutter. The kamifusen is a traditional Japanese toy that is delightful to play with, but whose usefulness is fleeting at they tear easily or are destroyed by contact with water or fire. In the context of the film, I have always read this final image of the kamifusen as signifying the fragility of human existence. It is somehow made all the more poignant knowing that this would be Yamanaka’s final film before being set to Manchuria where he fell ill and passed away much too soon.  Yamanaka's films themselves proved as transient as the kamifusen of Unno's wife, with only three of them surviving the war and neglect of the twentieth century.

I was reminded of this metaphor of ephemerality last week when the riots in England destroyed in a matter of hours the livelihoods and homes of so many handworking people. Eureka! Video – the distributor for Humanity and Paper Balloons in the UK was one of the independent companies affected by the destruction of the Sony DADC warehouse in Enfield during the London Riots. Although they work on a much smaller scale than Criterion in the States, their DVD releases are all topnotch and have made available many films like Humanity and Paper Balloons that had never been available with English subtitles before. I wish them the best in these trying times and hope that my readers will help them by purchasing their DVDs.  Click here to order Humanity and Paper Balloons from Amazon.co.uk

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

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