Shiba Productions' The Little Tin Soldier (1968)

I have recently begun collecting the 3D “Living Storybooks” designed and manufactured by Shiba Productions in the 1960s.  They were distributed in North America by the New York-based publisher Golden Press.  Shiba Productions was a puppet animation studio that was founded in 1958 by three men: writer/editor Tadasu Iizawa (飯沢 匡, 1909-1994), artist/designer Shigeru Hijikata (土方 重巳, 1915-1986), and puppet maker and animator Kihachirō Kawamoto.  Kawamoto would go on to become the most famous of the three men but at the time he was an artisan and not yet a director/artist in his own right.  The studio specialized in puppet animation for television commercials.  In addition to animation, Shiba Productions also created puppets for picture books, magazines, and print advertising.

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Kawamoto had first worked for Iizawa during the Tōhō strikes of the 1940s.  He was hired as an assistant art director by Tōhō in 1946.  His mentor was the acclaimed art director and production designer Takashi Matsuyama (松山崇, 1908-1977).  After getting the opportunity to work on three major feature films, Kawamoto found himself on strike with his colleagues.  During the strike, Matsuyama got Kawamoto some work at Asahi Graph, a weekly pictorial magazine run by Asahi Shinbun that ran from 1923-2000.  When Kawamoto was eventually dismissed from Tōhō in 1950, he seems to have worked together with Iizawa and Hijikata on a number of commercial projects.  Iizawa was the one who introduced Kawamoto to the stop motion animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga (持永只仁, 1919-1993) when he returned to Japan from China in 1953.  It was from Mochinaga and his wife that Kawamoto learned the basics of puppet animation. 

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At Shiba Productions, it would seem that Iizawa played a kind of producer/writer role and Hijikata was the designer of the characters.  Kawamoto crafted the puppets by hand and was in charge of the animation – or in the case of the “Living Storybooks” photo shoots of the puppets.  He drew quite heavily on what he had observed as an assistant art director at Tōhō for this.  In an interview with Jasper Sharp in 2004, Kawamoto explained that he considered the dolls that he used in the storybooks “puppets” because to him “they were actors within the books.”

The first “Living Storybook” in my collection is The Little Tin Soldier (aka The Steadfast Tin Soldier)  by Hans Christian Andersen.  As these books were very popular with children, it is rare to find one in mint condition.  My copy (see image above) has well worn edges but the binding itself is intact. 

The books were called “3D” or “Living Storybooks” not only because they feature photographs of three-dimensional puppets and sets, but also because the front cover features a full colour hologram.  This novelty cover meant that the books were quite eye-catching when displayed on the shelves of bookstores and libraries.  It also made the storybooks quite memorable for children who grew up with them. 

The Little Tin Soldier has thick card pages and features 18 full colour pages and 14 black and white pages with text.  The monochromatic images of the puppets are less satisfying than the full colour pages because the images have been rather awkwardly cut out in order to have them alternate with the text.  The best monochromatic pages are the ones that have used illustrations to give the tin soldier floating down the river in his paper boat a setting. 

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The story is faithful to the original version of Andersen’s Steadfast Tin Soldier (Den standhaftige tinsoldat/しっかり者のスズの兵隊, c. 1838), so it does not have a happy ending.  .  .  at least not in the way most parents today would expect.  I rather like how the story ends with a random act by a child.  It seems a much more likely scenario for a tin soldier than a happily ever after ending.

The puppets and sets are all consummately designed and crafted.  The most striking image by far is that of the tin soldier and ballet dancer in the blazing fire.  Although there are certain design elements that make the book recognizable as being a product of the 1960s (ie. the title font, choice of colours, the modern looking castle and toy elephant), on the whole most of the puppets and sets have been designed in a way that references 19^th century European toys and design.  It is a beautiful, highly collectable book.  


References: 
Heibonsha’s Kawamoto Kihachiro: Ningyo Kono inochi aru mono (2007)
Takayuki Oguchi’s interview with Kawamoto: Animation Meister at Japan Media Arts Plaza’s website.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Noburo Ofuji’s Whale (くじら, 1952)

Some of the most beautiful early anime from Japan are the silhouette animations of Noburo Ofuji (大藤 信郎, 1900-61) and Wagoro Arai (荒井和五郎, 1907-94).  Inspired by the films of Lotte Reiniger – whose pre-war films were shown extensively in Japan (Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, p.247) – and drawing on the Japanese traditions of shadow plays and 19^th century utsushi-e (写し絵 / magic lantern shows), Ofuji and Arai created some of the most beautiful silhouette films of the 20^th century.

In his later years, Ofuji became interested in Buddhist and ocean themes.   The animator Kōji Yamamura  cites the themes of death, eros, and the human ego as examples (Shirarezaru Animation).  Ofuji's artistic masterpiece Kujira (くじら/ Whale, 1952) is one such film.  Like Kihachiro Kawamoto’s puppet films, which share Ofuji’s interest in Buddhist themes, Kujira features the themes of female suffering, natural phenomena that allude to Buddhist themes, and transformation.

  

Ofuji first made Kujira (鯨/Whale) in 1927 as a silent black and white film.  Inspired by the possibilities of colour film, he remade the film in the early 1950s using not only shadow puppets (silhouettes) but also cutouts of transparent coloured cellophane (影絵とセロファン切り絵).  The cutouts were assembled on a multi-plane animation table.  The backlighting of the animation table used in combination with the transparent cellophane allowed Ofuji to create highly complex layering of forms.  It is a breathtaking experience to watch and has beautifully rendered movement and transitions.

This 8 minute short opens with foreboding music that foreshadows the dark and mysterious events to unfold.  The story begins with the creak of a mast being raised on an ancient sailing ship.  Seagulls fly overhead as the ship navigates calm seas.  Aboard the vessel, men clap and guffaw and women's voices ring with laughter as geisha entertain the men with music and dancing.  

Ofuji dissolves between camera shots of varying shot compositions which, combined with the ghostly layering of transparent waves and clouds, give the film a dream-like quality.  A storm descends upon the ship.  The wooden ship creaks and groans as the sea violently tosses it about.  A giant tail of a whale emerges from the ocean and the whale seems to be following the ship as if in anticipation of the ship’s demise.  The ship’s crew struggle in vain to regain control of their vessel, but with a series of loud cracks and women’s screams, the ship sinks into the murky waters.

When the sea calms, a number of survivors float, their heads downcast, upon the wreckage.  One of the men finds the body of a woman floating in the water who appears to be dead.  Suddenly, the mysterious female form begins to move, terrifying the men.  As the woman cries out as she stretches herself into a standing position and one of the men immediately clutches her by the hair and drags her to him.  The more the woman struggles to escape, the more desperate the men become, tearing the clothes from her body and fighting each other to be the first to claim her.  The men’s fighting, as depicted by Ofuji’s shadow cutouts, begins to resemble a dance – their arms outstretched and curved move up and down like an interpretive dance depicting the waves of the ocean. 

The tension rises, stoked on by the crescendoing orchestra of the soundtrack, to a fever pitch.  At which point the black tale of the whale rises and the woman screams out in terror.  The whale, as in the ancient tale of Jonah, swallows the woman and her tormentors whole.  This leads to the most dazzling and abstract sequence in the film as the people float around the shadowy belly of the whale, desperately trying to escape.  The men are so consumed by fear that they have forgotten their desire to rape the woman.

An exterior shot of the whale shows him to be contentedly bobbing up and down in the ocean.  He blows water out of his blowhole and with it the woman and her three tormentors.  They land on the whale’s back, but it doesn’t take the men long to recover from their shock and resume their attack on the woman.  The woman resists, screams in terror, and races up and down the whale’s back in a bid to escape.  Two of the men fall off the whale and disappear and the one remaining man continues to chance the woman until his evil plan is foiled by the whale who raises his tail and flings the man to certain death in the sea.  A female narrator concludes the story, telling us that since this incident the woman has been spotted in the form of a mermaid.

Until this final narrative voice, the story has actually been told entirely through a combination of the visuals, the music of composer Setsuo Tsukahara (romanized as Tukahara in 1952), and the sound effects.  By sound effects, I mean not just creaks of the ship and the thunder but also the gasps and laughter of the human characters.   The dialogue in Kujira is also more incidental than narrative in nature.  Although the characters are clearly meant to look like ancient Japanese people the story itself seems to be influenced by a combination of Asian and European influences.  The mermaid, for example, resembles the mermaids and sirens of European mythology more than she does the hideous ningyo of Japanese folklore.  The idea of a whale swallowing people whole also has very famous precedents in Western literature.  Yet, as with the famous tales of Jonah and Moby Dick, the whale is intended to be symbolic not realistic.    I think there are many possible readings that can be drawn from Kujira.  For me, Ofuji is exploring the dark side of human nature with the woman, who is the most virtuous character in the tale, being reborn in a new form at the end of the film.

Correcting historical facts about Kujira

In 1953, Ofuji’s Kujira (on the programme as “La Baleine”) was part of the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival (under the name Noburo Ohfuji).  Kujira is reputed to have received much praise from the Jury president Jean Cocteau and festival attendee Pablo Picasso.  Although it has been reported in many publications that the film won an award at this festival, the official Cannes website does not indicate this. Many people have claimed that Kujira won “Second Prize” at Cannes – but as Cannes has no such prize this seems odd.  I have yet to find a reliable contemporary Japanese or French source that confirms the events that took place in Cannes that year – I may have to dive into the old French film periodicals in the Frankfurt Museum archives again soon.   I will update when I do.

It has also been often reported in error that Kujira appeared at Cannes in 1952.  The Japanese Movie Database and other online Japanese sources indicate that the film had its premiere in Japan in December 1952 – much too late for it to screen at Cannes in the spring of 1952.  The case for Kujira screening at Cannes in April 1953 is backed up not only by the festival’s official website, but also by the fact that Jean Cocteau was the president of the jury in 1953.  This would give more credence to the oft-mentioned anecdote about Cocteau praising the film.  The suggestion that Picasso saw the film at Cannes is also likely true, as Picasso had a studio in the nearby commune of Vallarius – as seen in this famous photograph of Brigitte Bardot visiting Picasso in his studio during Cannes 1956.

A good transfer of Kujira is available on the Kinokuniya DVD Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai.  Ofuji's original films are held in the archives of the NationalFilm Center.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai

Mathematica (マテマテカ, 1999)

I had the rare delight recently of seeing Takashi Sawa’s experimental short Mathematica (マテマテカ, 1999).  Sawa (澤隆志, b. 1971) is perhaps best known for his work as program director at Image Forum, but along with Takashi Nakajima, Takashi Ito, Takashi Makino and Takashi Ishida, he is also one of the five great “Takeshis” of experimental filmmaking.

With his film Mathematica, Sawa trains his 8mm camera on the fine details of the world that we often take for granted.  Using the techniques of poetic montage, stop motion animation, and 3D frottage (taking a rubbing of a textured surface), Sawa explores the structures, spaces, and subtle changes over time that occur in the natural world.

In an e-mail to me, Sawa explained that he was interested in exploring the translation between timeline and depth, between 50 seconds and 2500mm, and between film and lath.  The average person usually thinks about mathematics in terms of numbers, but in actuality mathematics is study of the art and science of abstraction.  It examines how the world around us is made up of not only quantity but also structure, space, and change.   In fact, Sir Isaac Newton famously called it the language in which the universe is written (Opticks, 1704).

In Mathematica, this is expressed through a montage of images that demonstrate these mathematical concerns.  Skin making itself smooth again after an imprint of the title of the film has been pressed into it, the patterns of wrinkles and lines on the skin, the rings of a tree, the mane of a sorrel horse, a pencil frottage of the cross-section of a tree, the netting covering a scaffolding, and film deteriorating.  The stop motion sequences of the tree-rings were for me the most fascinating.  The movement of the rings created by the stop motion causes the close-ups of the tree-rings to resemble other patterns of nature that have also been the subject of mathematical conjecture: the waves of the ocean or the formation of patterns on the sands of the desert.  These sequences also draw attention not only to patterns, structure, and space, but also to the concept of time. 

In the catalogue of the Holland Animation Film Festival 2002, Sawa wrote about how the pleasure of animation is in the way that it “breathes life in between frame and frame” and how “it is precisely the continuous playback by means of intermittent movement of these gaps and flickers that captivates both the makers and the audience of animation.  In works of experimental animation, which are made outside the system of film as industry, the question is how far we can extend the magic of these gaps and afterimages.” (p. 14).  With Mathematica, Sawa shows us how these gaps and afterimages can be used to focus our awareness on the extraordinary aspects of the commonplace in the world around us.

Takashi Sawa's work regularly screens at international festivals around the world.  You can circle him on Google Plus.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Order experimental film via cdjapan:

Takashi Makino Sakuhinshu Vol.1 With Jim O'Rourke