The Demon (鬼, 1972)

When Kihachirō Kawamoto (川本 喜八郎, 1925-2010) travelled to Prague in 1963 to visit the studios of Jiří Trnka (1912-1969), he was famously given the advice to look at his own country’s history of puppet traditions in order to improve his craft as a puppet animator. While he did throw himself into the study of the Bunraku theatre upon his return to Japan, he did not adapt any traditional Bunraku plays for his puppet films.  Instead, he looked to the wealth of legends from Japan's ancient past.

The Demon (鬼/Oni, 1972), which I think stands as Kawamoto’s first great masterpiece of puppet animation, is an adaptation of a tale from the 12th century anthology Konjaku Monogatari (今昔物語). The story concerns an ancient legend that says that when people grow old they turn into demons who will devour their own children. The story is told with title cards instead of a narrator with traditional musical accompaniment by Seiji Tsurusawa on shamisen and Goro Yamaguchi on shakuhachi. The music was also composed by Tsurusawa.

Two brothers live with their aged mother, the title cards tell us. The introduction to the story mixes puppets with a series of drawn images etched on black which sets up the story of the mother’s life of suffering. Born into this world to unfeeling parents, she was an outcast of her community as a child and suffered greatly at the hands of her husband. Her life has been truly wretched as she has only known illness and poverty. In the end, the title cards tell us, she has suffered a “human life inhuman without a trace of light.”

One day, while out hunting, the brother dressed in blue’s chonmage (topknot) is grasped by a ghostly hand from above. Unable to escape, the brother dressed in red rescues him by shooting the arm off using his bow and arrow. The brother in blue falls to the ground with the gruesome hand still grasping the chonmage. “A demon’s arm!” cry the brothers, and they run home in terror. When they arrive, they find their mother in bed with one of her arms gone. The mother transforms into an oni (demon) and dances with the disembodied arm. The film ends by relating to us the ancient superstition, ending with the observation “how horrible”.

In his early puppet films like The Demon, Dojoji (1976) and House of Flames (1979),  Kawamoto constructed horizontal sets and shot them from above. This is a technique which he had seen Břetislav Pojar (b. 1923) use during his 1963 visit to Eastern Europe (see the JMAF Animation Meister interview by Takayuki Oguchi). Using this technique, Kawamoto could also place images in the background and foreground using plates of glass, giving the film its Yamato-e look. The film looks absolutely stunning with its autumnal colour palette against black. I love the artistic flair of little touches like the bamboo forest and the twinkling fireflies.  The puppet movement is more refined than in his first independent puppet film The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (花折り/Hana-ori, 1968).  In fact, in some scenes the puppets almost look as if they are dancing.

The theme of suffering in the film comes from Kawamoto’s study of Buddhist philosophy - which is openly referenced in the art of the opening sequence (see above image). Each of his animated films tackles the theme of suffering in some way, particularly his final masterpiece The Book of the Dead (2005), which depicts a woman on the path to enlightenment.

The Demon won Kawamoto his first of six Noburo Ofuji awards – one of which was for his completion of his friend Tadanari Okamoto’s final film The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店, 1991).

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

This film is available with purchase with English subtitles from cdjapan:

Kihachiro Kawamoto Sakuhin shu

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Koji Yamamura interviewed on NHK World

Koji Yamamura was a featured guest the NHK World programme  imagine-nation today.  He first spoke about his early childhood interest in drawing animation.  He then went on to discuss his latest film Muybridge's Strings, which is playing this month at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art (learn more about this event):

On his childhood and his creative process

"I think my earliest memory of drawing something was at home, before I started kindergarten. In fact, I almost think that’s my first memory altogether. Drawing pictures is so natural to me that I don’t think there was even a day when I didn’t draw. By the time I thought about it, I found myself in a job in which I draw every single day. It’s a fundamental part of my life." 

"I was an extremely curious child and this was something that I realized even at the time. I love drawing, but I wanted to try so many different things as well. Even when watching anime on TV, instead of just enjoying it, I looked at it from the production side. I thought about how they drew certain things and what kids of pens and paints they used. I was fascinated by all those technical questions." 

"I was 13 when I tackled my first animation. I created the entire story, the pictures, background and direction and even composed the music for it. I handled every aspect of it myself. This was during my childhood, so we’re talking about the 70s, I guess. There were very few independent full stop animations back then, let alone ones created by children, so I got a lot of attention for it. How I felt back then is part of the foundation of who I am when I create something today." 

"Thinking about the nature of life and the world is something that feeds the part of me that makes animation. It’s a vital process that allows me to create animation. Of course, I’m focusing on the work at hand itself, but I’m always thinking about my life as I create. Lots of different feelings and ideas change during that period. I’m always trying to find something new and to keep thinking as part of my creative process."

On Muybridge’s Strings

 It took a total of seven years from Yamamura coming up with the original concept until the animated short's completion.  Muybridge's Strings is partly inspired by the life of photography and early cinema pioneer Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904).  His most famous photography experiment was set up to settle a debate about  whether or not a galloping horse has all four of his hooves off the ground at any point.  He set up a number of cameras that used glass plates in a line, with the cameras triggered by strings as the horse passed by.  

A parallel contemporary story runs through Muybridge's Strings that is based on Yamamura's own experience of his teenage daughter growing up.  Yamamura explains:

"The two time periods are drawn in parallel and the animation aims to make people think about the actual nature of time. It was partly inspired by the idea of using string to take photographs, which tickled me as a visual image. The other story comes from my own life."

"Through watching my daughter grow up I have a strong sense of the fragility and the extraordinary nature of time. Animation has a way of making “meaningful” time out of “empty” time. So I think about it a lot and always wanted to use time as a theme. I guess that’s how this work came about."

"I’m pretty fast at drawing so the pictures are done quite quickly, nut the animation itself is a labour intensive process. Therefore, I get the chance to think a lot while I’m tied up in that process. In that sense animation is perhaps the best reflection of who I really am."

Support Koji Yamamura buy ordering his work on DVD:

To order from Japan via cdjapan:

The Old Crocodile and Selected Works (JP/EN/FR)

Mt. Head and Selected Works  (JP with English subs)

Kafka Inaka Isha (JP only)

From the US:

Mirai Mizue debuts Modern No. 2 at the 68th Venice Film Festival

This month’s Venice Film Festival was a great success for Japan with Shinya Tsukamoto’s film Kotoko winning an Orrizonti Prize and teenagers Shota Sometani and Fumi Nikaido winning the Marcello Mastroianni Award for their performances in Sion Sono’s Himizu.

Mirai Mizue of CALF also had the honour of presenting  his latest animated short Modern No. 2 (2011) at Venice. It is a follow-up to his work Modern (2010) which was inspired by optical illusions, like the paintings of M.C.Escher. He made the films using isometric drawings on graph paper. In the “Making of” extra on his DVD Mirai Mizue Works 2003-2010 (order now from CALF), he explained that while making Modern he set himself the rule of using only three kinds of lines: one vertical and two slanting lines. Mizue is interested in the concept that animation can be very good when one imposes a limitation on movements. He tried to come up with many ideas while keeping within the rules he set for himself in order to prove that one can make great films even when using a minimal number of elements.

When people come across Mizue’s work on video-streaming sites (check out his profiles on Vimeo and Youtube), they often mistake his geometric and cell animation for CG. Mizue could have chosen to make Modern using CG, especially as it only involves straight lines, but in fact he always draws each individual frame by hand. They are then scanned and edited into a video on the computer.  If you look closely, you can see how his films differ from CG in their textures and movements.

In his shared press conference with Shinya Tsukamoto, Mizue explains his techniques and his inspiration for Modern No. 2 The colours were inspired by traditional Japanese art. Instead of the grey tones of the backgrounds in Modern, for Modern No. 2 he uses warm-hued washi paper (traditional rice paper) which, judging from the trailer, are sometimes painted boldly in green and black.

Mizue goes on to explain how he collaborated with twoth for the music. He felt that Modern had a slower rhythm, so for Modern No. 2 he told twoth that he wanted to increase the tempo. This surprised the interviewer at the Venice Film Festival, who found even the first Modern remarkably fast.

As Mizue uses graph paper to plan his designs, in order to reduce the rhythm, he used just one square – and to make the movement quicker, the line uses 2 or 3 squares. As a result, he found that the speed of No. 1 was quite even, but that No. 2 has many variations – some of which he described as “bounces”. In conclusion, Mizue said that he believes that animation must not necessarily tell a story, but to amuse and make people feel good.

MODERN No.2   4'10"/color/DCP/16 : 9/stereo/Japan/2011

Director / Writer / Editor / Animation　Mirai Mizue

Music / Sound Design　twoth

Colour Design　Mirai Mizue and Saori Shiroki