Nishikata Kids: Anna on My Neighbour Totoro

An interview with Anna
Age: 6 1/2

What is your favourite anime?
Totoro

What do you like about Totoro?
The cat-bus [nekobasu] and the little dust bunnies [makkuro-kurosuke].

If you could be a character in the film, which one would you be?
The big sister Satsuki because she looks after Mei and tries to cheer her up and Mei gives her hugs.

If you saw a Totoro in real life would you be scared or excited?
Excited because I would be on his belly and go to sleep like this [she curls up like a cat to demonstrate].

Where do Totoro live?
In a tree log where it’s sunny and pretty with beautiful flowers.

What is the funniest moment in the film?
When Mei sees the dust bunnies for the first time.
And when the bus cat is smiling like this [she makes a BIG GRIN].

What do you think will happen in the future for the family?
The Mommy will get better.

Are there any other anime that you like at the moment?
Lizard Planet. I like the big lizard on the planet. The other lizards are cool too.

Nishikata Kids: A Child's Perspective on Japanese Culture

Song of Spring (春の唄, 1931)

Noburo Ofuji (大藤 信郎, 1900-1961) is one of Japan’s top animation pioneers. His innovative chiyogami films represent some of the best in pre-Toei Doga animation. Cutouts were a common animation technique in the 1920s and 1930s because of their cost effectiveness. Not only was celluloid expensive because it needed to be imported, but cutouts can be used over and over again, reducing the more time-consuming manual labour of drawing individual frames for cel animation.

Song of Spring (春の唄/Haru no uta, 1931) demonstrates how Ofuji’s films stood out from those of his contemporaries because of his use of the unique textures and shapes of chiyogami. Originating in the Edo era, chiyogami is a brightly coloured type of paper traditionally printed using woodblocks. In Song of Spring, the use of chiyogami complements the aim of the film to teach children about national symbols (cherry blossoms, the hinomaru) and traditions (kimono costume, dancing and celebrating the arriving of spring).

Like his earlier work The Village Festival (村祭, 1930), Ofuji’s Song of Spring is a sing-along animated short aimed at a young audience. Instead of the “Follow the Bouncing Ball” technique which Ofuji used in The Village Festival, Song of Spring opens with a sheet of music onto which katakana appear one by one, spelling out the lyrics to the first verse.

The land of cherry blossoms

Sakura, Sakura

Flower blossoms blow in from east and west

Covering the asphalt here as well

My step turns wild amidst whirling cherry petals

The land of cherry blossoms

Sakura, Sakura

I think of you as spring bursts forth

A chandelier shining in my dreams

A bright kimono amidst the whirling cherry petals

The song, performed by Kikuko Inoue of the Asakusa Opera, is very catchy. While the song’s themes may be very Japanese, the song has a Western flavour to the performance style. I was reminded of patriotic music invoking nature from other countries like Flower of Scotland, Canada’s The Maple Leaf Forever, or Vera Lynn’s The White Cliffs of Dover. In fact, I would describe Inoue’s singing style as a kind of high-pitched Vera Lynn. In the DVD notes, Aaron Gerow mentions that the Asakusa Opera played an influential role in introducing Western music and musical theatre to Japan (p. 5).

The complexity of Ofuji’s cutout technique is apparent during the opening credits where he has movement happening in more than one part of the frame. Each section of the film is given its own scene. The first verse and its repeat are illustrated by the music score with lyrics and a cute sequence of dancing cherry blossoms with feet. During the instrumental bridge, Ofuji has designed a lovely sequence using cherry blossom shapes that move and develop like a kaleidoscope. The complexity of the animation increases throughout the film with the pièce de résistance being the lovely final sequence where a girl in kimono dances. The sophistication of movement as the girl mimics the whirling of the cherry blossoms is as expertly done as a Lotte Reiniger silhouette animation from the same time period.

The version of Song of Spring on the Zakka Films DVD is truly remarkable as a rare example of tinting in a pre-war Japanese film. Early cinema was not only black and white but quite often tinted either by soaking the film in dye in order to stain the film emulsion or hand tinted. Notable examples include Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, 1926) and the recently restored A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1902) by Georges Méliès, which premiered at Cannes in May and is screening at the BFI London Film Festival this month.

Certain colours in tinting were associated with different locations or times of day. An amber tint would be used for daylight interiors, for example, while a blue tint would suggest a moonlit night. . . or water as in the below image from The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Ofuji has gone with a pink tint in keeping with the cherry blossom theme of the song.

The opening title cards suggest that Ofuji shot the film on a Pathé Baby (パテ・ベイビー). The Pathé Baby film system used a unique 9.5mm film format introduced by Pathé Frères in 1922 and became quite popular in Europe in the 20s and 30s. The Pathé Baby did not record sound, so Song of Spring was designed to be played simultaneously with a Columbia Records phonograph record of the song. Not only does Columbia Records appear in the opening credits of the film, but the film ends on a shot of a Columbia Records phonograph record spinning amongst the cherry blossoms.

Song of Spring appears on the Zakka Films DVD The Roots of Japanese Anime with optional English subtitles. The DVD comes with an informative booklet that includes historical background by Jasper Sharp (Midnight Eye) and film notes by Aaron Gerow (Yale U). Individuals can purchase this DVD for a reasonable price from independent film distributor Film Baby. Institutions should contact Zakka Films directly for purchasing information.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Jours d'Hiver: The French release of Kihachiro Kawamoto's Winter Days (2003)

The strong cultural ties between France and Japan means that many treasures of Japanese cinema and animation unavailable elsewhere can be found on DVD in France. Living in Europe it’s a great alternative to ordering DVDs from Japan as the prices are more reasonable than overpriced Japanese DVDs and one doesn’t need to worry about customs.

Some recent treasures that I have picked up from France include Naomi Kawase’s Shara (沙羅双樹, 2003) and The Mourning Forest (La Forêt de Mogari/殯の森, 2007). I am very excited about indie label Choses Vues picking up Shohei Imamura’s classic A Man Vanishes (L'Evaporation de l'homme/人間蒸発, 1967) for release this coming December.

This week I got my paws on the 2008 les films du paradoxe release of Winter Days (Jours d'Hiver/冬の日, 2003), a collaborative animation adaptation of a renku poem that I reviewed for Midnight Eye in 2008. It was a bittersweet experience re-watching the film and its "Making Of" footage as three of the animators, project coordinator Kihachiro Kawamoto, Prof. Masahiro Katayama, and Reiko Okuyama have passed away since the film was first released.

Apart from Jours d’Hiver the only other foreign DVD release of the film that I know of is in Korea. There were two DVD versions released in Japan – neither of which have subtitles. I have the slim line version which features "Making Of" extras and a collection of 8 postcard-sized illustrations and storyboards by Yuri Norstein and Kawamoto. There is also an insanely priced complete box set containing the film DVD plus 8 additional "Making Of" DVDs for a total of 945 minutes for hard core animation fans. Rumour has it that the box set footage is poorly shot and edited.  This knowledge, combined with prohibitive price, means that I will wait to check it out in a film library the next time I make a research trip to Japan.

Renku Animation "Fuyu no Hi"

1 disc + 8 illustrations/storyboards for 6,800 yen

Renku Animation "Fuyu no Hi" Kanzen Ban Box

9 disc boxset for 36,000 yen

The French DVD is very similar in content to the slim line Japanese release with the film in its entirety and the "Making Of" doc. With their cover art les films du paradoxe have clearly chosen to highlight Kawamoto’s role as organizer of the collaborative film using the cheerful image of Kawamoto’s Bashō puppet with his arm outstretched in friendly invitation. The cover also highlights the names of 9 of the most well known directors in Europe: Yuri Norstein, Aleksandr Petrov, Břetislav Pojar, Isao Takahata, Co Hoedeman, Raoul Servais, Mark Baker, Jacques Drouin, and Koji Yamamura.

The renku poem has been translated into French by the documentary filmmaker Catherine Cadou. Cadou is best known to fans of Japanese cinema for her work as an interpreter and assistant for Akira Kurosawa in his later years. Her documentary Kurosawa’s Way (Kurosawa, la voie, 2011) showed at Cannes to much acclaim in the spring and will be screened at TIFF Tokyo later this month (learn more about this doc at Wildgrounds).

Catherine Cadou’s translation of Winter Days is narrated by a series of voices over the Japanese title cards that appear at the beginning of each short, mimicking the style of the original Japanese voice track. The full French text also appears in the beautiful accompanying booklet (in lieu of the 8 illustrations/storyboards in the JP edition) with each stanza illustrated with full colour stills from its corresponding animated short. The booklet also contains short profiles of all the animation directors and an interview that Julien Bastide did with Kihachiro Kawamoto about the project for AnimeLand back in 2003 when the film had its premiere in France. The interview provides insights into how the project was conceived and how Kawamoto exerted creative control over the project. For example, I learned that in addition to Norstein receiving the honour of going first, that Kawamoto considered the stanzas written by Bashō himself (1st, 8th, 11th, 18th, 21st, 28th, and 31st) to be the most important. He divided the remaining six Bashō stanzas equally between Japanese (Furukawa/Okuyama and Kotabe/Takahata) and non-Japanese animators (Servais/Pojar/Baker) reserving the one he felt was the most challenging of these for the capable direction of Isao Takahata.

In my earlier screenings of Winter Days, I had not noticed that the composer for the film was Shinichiro Ikebe (池辺 晋一郎, b. 1943). Ikebe is a highly sought after composer having written the scores for many acclaimed films by  Kurosawa (Kagemusha, Madadayo, Dreams, Rhapsody in August). Other notable film scores by Ikebe include Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine (1979), The Ballad of Narayama (1983) and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001), MacArthur's Children (Masahiro Shinoda, 1984), and the Future Boy Conan animation series (Hayao Miyazaki, 1978).

My only criticism of the French release of Winter Days is the fact that they have removed the Japanese voice track entirely. It would have been much more satisfying to have the option of watching the film in its original version with French subs. As I already have the original version it does not affect me personally, but animation collectors who do not speak French should take this into consideration. The "Making Of" documentary is subtitled not dubbed – several of the 17 animators featured in this footage speak French (Drouin, Servais, Hoedeman) and are not subtitled.

I personally delighted in Cadou’s interpretation of the renku as it gave me a fresh perspective on the poem itself as well as the animation adaptations.  It seems a shame that the film has never been picked up for English release given the prestige of the many animators who contributed to this unique project.