Zakka Films: An interview with Seiko Ono

Rokkasho Rhapsody (Hitomi Kamanaka, 2006)

One of the biggest frustrations of fans of Japanese film is that we hear about a great documentary playing at international festivals and have to wait years before it is available on DVD.  Even then, the film is usually only released in Japan and without English subtitles – thus limiting the audience and making it difficult to use for teaching purposes.

All that changed earlier this year when the U.S-based company Zakka Films opened its Filmmakers’ Market with the aim of offering Japanese and Asian documentary filmmakers the opportunity to bring subtitled DVDs of their films fresh onto the market for consumption like fish at Tsukiji. 

Zakka Films is the brainchild of Seiko Ono, wife of respected Yale professor Aaron Gerow (author of Visions of Japanese Modernity and A Page of Madness).  After my dedicating the month of October last year to reviewing DVD releases by Zakka Films, I contacted Seiko Ono to learn more about how she came to start this exciting new DVD label.

Tell me about yourself and your background in the film industry.

In the late 1980s in Japan I started working at Studio 200 of the Seibu Department Stores. Things were about to decline, but Seibu still had lots of museums, movie theaters, performance theaters and galleries. Unlike the department stores in the US, they were trying to provide an entire life to customers: not just fashionable brands, but the arts as well. Studio 200 was one of the Seibu art spaces, and was sort of an all-purpose theater playing rare films, presenting dance performance, experimental music concerts, art exhibitions, etc. People working there, including me, coordinated many different kinds of events, and I had some wonderful opportunities to work with films which were not shown at commercial theaters such as Taiwan New Wave films. It was extremely exciting for me to work there, and in fact I learned so many things and met a lot of film people, which helped me later. Just before the 1990s, Seibu’s art spaces started closing one after another out of financial difficulties. People around me started leaving because no one wanted to be transferred to the shoe section or some other section of the Seibu Department Store. In 1990 I joined the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, which was preparing for the second festival in 1991 (the YIDFF takes place once every two years). After that, for nearly 20 years, my work involved programming and coordinating the YIDFF. I am no longer officially at the YIDFF, but I am still involved.

Zakka Films seems like a real labour of love.  What inspired you to start the company?

In 2004 my husband got a job at Yale in the US, and all of us moved to America. I still continued to work for the YIDFF from afar even though I was not a programmer anymore. I had more spare time to start thinking of doing something I had never done before, or something that could justify me living here in the US. Considering my long career at the YIDFF, it didn’t take a long time to get the idea to sell Japanese documentaries on DVD. I already had connections with many documentary productions and filmmakers. It was a quite natural idea to start thinking of working on Japanese documentaries. There were only a few Japanese documentaries that you could obtain in the US, and the few that existed tended to downplay the presence of the director, such as with Out of Place: A Memoir by Edward W. Said and Radiation: A Slow Death. The first is by Makoto Sato and the second by Hitomi Kamanaka, and both of them are pretty famous documentary filmmakers, but their names as directors were sometimes hard to find in publicity. Customers were not always even aware these were documentaries from Japan. I felt there was something not quite right with this situation. That was one impetus for starting Zakka Films. By the way, Zakka Films means 雑貨映画in Japanese. It is a made up word combination, but zakka in Japanese means miscellaneous goods, so I thought I’d deal not just with documentaries, but also with other rare films which are powerful and excite fans of good cinema. As you know, the first DVD of Zakka Films was The Roots of Japanese Anime, a collection of classic animation, not documentary. You see I had no experience in running my own business in Japan, and here in the US I was a non-English speaker, so I thought I should not try something too difficult at first. Classic animation had a broader appeal and there were already many fans of Japanese animation. Starting with this, I could learn how to produce a DVD, how to promote it, and how to sell it.

Although much of pre-war animation has been lost, many great animated films by Noburo Ofuji and Kenzo Masaoka did survive until the present day.    What criteria did you use in selecting films for The Roots of Japanese Anime: Until the End of WWII? 

If you want to access classic animation films, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, is the best place to visit, but it is almost impossible for us to make a DVD from their films. Fortunately, there are some classic animation collectors in Japan. All the films on The Roots of Japanese Anime were from one collector whom I had known for a long time. At the beginning of this project, I had a longer list of films to include, but the process of working on permission and rights issues trimmed it down to eight films. For me Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (review) was the one which couldn’t be removed, since it was so historically significant. We also made a booklet that comes with the DVD which includes historical backgrounds of each film, and out customers have liked that.

Do have any plans to release more anime in the future?

Right after I released this DVD, I received requests from many customers about what they want next. Many of them were popular 1970s anime which were made for TV such as the anime of Fujio Akastuka or Go Nagai. If I won a fortune in a lottery, I might put out such DVDs, but that is a bit beyond our scale. However, if I have another chance to work on classic animation again, I would do it.

Zakka Films released four documentaries by legendary filmmaker Noriaki Tsuchimoto who passed away in 2008.  Did Tsuchimoto know of the plans for their release?

I wish he had known of this plan. Two years after his death, my husband and I visited his office, Ciné Associé, a company which was taken over by his wife and sometimes editor of his later films, Motoko Tsuchimoto. I told her about my project before the plans were even concrete, and she was very happy to hear of it, and it was her enthusiasm that helped start the project. Of course I needed to discuss the project with Siglo, the production company for Minamata: The Victims and Their World (review). Both of them were so supportive. Motoko-san provided us tapes, documents, books and whatever was helpful for Zakka.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Tsuchimoto’s documentaries about Minamata and Hiroshima seem more important than ever – particularly his focus on the victims of these manmade catastrophes and their stories.  What can today’s documentarians learn from Tsuchimoto?

Tsuchimoto’s belief was that “If there is no record, there is no truth.” When he started making documentaries about Minamata, Minamata disease was taboo: no one wanted to talk about this disease, which is why his first attempt to make a documentary about Minamata for television totally failed. So what he did was to enter their world: he and his staff started living there, and volunteered to do things like drive a car to help them. Minamata was a poor town and cars were still rare. After building closer relationships with them—a method that wasn’t unusual in the 1960s given the Sanrizuka series by Ogawa Productions—he and his staff gradually started shooting. Their office was always open so people from Minamata could make casual visits and Tsuchimoto could show them the rushes they just shot. Building trust, people who refused to be filmed at the beginning ended up turning to ask him to film them! That’s why he could shoot so many of the victims for Minamata: The Victims and Their World. 

This documentary became an important document in publicizing Minimata disease so they could be officially recognized as a victims by the government of Japan at that time. Tsuchimoto’s Minamata series is not just a document, it is a record of human dignity. For cinematic beauty, I believe some of his films should be ranked among the top films of world cinema history. You cannot find in his films the terrible images of the victims that you can find by searching YouTube with the keyword “Minamata.” He patiently waited until the patients were relaxed and tried to film their most beautiful expression. I think that’s how he in the end could create works that made you think deeply about social contradictions. After the Fukushima nuclear accident, many documentary filmmakers have been to Fukushima or Miyagi to make documentaries. I think it is fine to have many different styles and methods, and not all of them need be masterpieces. But I wonder how many filmmakers think like Tsuchimoto did about how to film such tragedies, and how their work relates to the issues. The documentaries I like to see are not those that are complete when you’re finished watching, but those that start then. Tsuchimoto’s films are like that.

On the Road: A Document (1964) is a groundbreaking film for its experimentation with the form of dramatized documentary.  Can you talk a little bit about why this was such a radical film when it was released and how it was received by audiences?

This film was originally made as traffic safety film for the Metropolitan Police, but it was shelved for nearly 40 years because Tsuchimoto did not make the film that was ordered. Tsuchimoto was working with the drivers union to expose their problems and unhealthy labor conditions, while also masterfully editing the footage like a city symphony, so when a police official finally saw the film, he called it “useless—the plaything of a cinephile.” Until recently the film was not shown openly except at some film festivals, so for a long time On the Road was a kind of phantom film. The production company went bankrupt, so the rights finally reverted to Noriaki Tsuchimoto himself, and the DVD was released in 2004 in Japan.

The name “Zakka” (miscellaneous goods) suggests that you plan to expand your catalogue to include more than just classic works of animation and documentary.  What is next for Zakka Films?  

I am going to continue working on Tsuchimoto’s works, but in the spirit of my company’s name, zakka (雑貨), I would like to extend my business and move beyond the limitations imposed by our size and finances. The project I just opened is The Filmmakers’ Market (FM). FM is a new marketplace for documentaries that tries to break down the walls separating Japanese filmmakers and foreign viewers and allows filmmakers to bring their English-subtitled works in for direct sale, kind of like a farmer’s fresh produce market. When I produce and release my own DVDs, there are countless steps such as making subtitles, designing the DVD cover, making booklets, and so on; that is a big investment in time and money, so we have to limit ourselves in what we actually release. But FM is basically Zakka helping independent filmmakers sell the DVDs they have already made to a foreign market. It opens up the possibilities to obtain rare documentaries, some of which are not even commercially released in Japan. We feature not only Japanese but also other Asian documentaries. All of the DVDs are produced by the directors and producers themselves; for some, Zakka will help make an English booklet or cover, but some may have only Japanese on the package or in the booklet (we will note as such when selling it). But and all of them will have English subtitles. Please come and look at the films brought to market!

産地直送 Filmmakers’ Market (official website)

ROKKASHO RHAPSODY  Director: Hitomi Kamanaka (read review)

In 2004 the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant was completed in Rokkasho village as a facility for reprocessing spent fuel from Japan's nuclear reactors into plutonium. The film spotlights the people of the village, who hold diverse opinions regarding this huge, nearly operational national project.

ECHOES FROM THE MIIKE   Director: Hiroko Kumagai

The story of the Miike Coal Mine, the largest mine in Japan, which ceased operations on March 30, 1997. Hiroko Kumagai interviewed over 70 individuals, men and women, including Koreans who were forcibly brought to Japan. The film looks at Miike not just to explore the past, but also to think about the future: what it means to work and to live.

BREAKING THE SILENCE  Director: Toshikuni Doi

In the spring of 2002, the Israeli army surrounded and attacked the Balata refugee camp. The camera follows residents living in at state of terror and records their lives and feelings.

ARTISTS OF WONDERLAND Director: Makoto Sato

This is a film about seven artists. It's also about seven people who are mentally handicapped. This has all the marks of a Makoto Sato film: the quirky humor and passion for everyday human life.

BINGAI  Director: Feng Yan

Bingai, a Chinese documentary by Feng Yan—a director deeply inspired by Shinsuke Ogawa—has just been added to the Filmmakers' Market at Zakka Films. Bingai won the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize (the grand prize of Asia program) at the Yamagata Film Festival.

MAPPING THE FUTURE NISHINARI  Directors: Yukio Tanaka, Tetsuo Yamada

Nishinari in Osaka is home to one of Japan's largest concentrations of day laborers, with much of the population being composed of homeless persons, buraku(a discriminated community of descendants of outcast groups), former yakuza, and Korean-Japanese. This documentary presents the people of Nishinari, not from on high, but rather from their own level.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Sawako Decides (川の底からこんにちは, 2010)

Hollywood has lost the plot when it comes to romantic comedies. Back in the genre’s golden years, actresses with solid acting chops and modest looks (Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn) won over audiences by playing terrific characters that female audiences could identify with.  These days, female leads in romantic comedies tend to be cookie-cutter beautiful with shallow, egocentric issues that have little to do with the day-to-day concerns of real women.

This is not the case in Sawako Decides (川の底からこんにちは / Kawa no soko kara konnichi wa, 2010), where the main leading lady ranks herself as “lower middle” in the spectrum of women.  Sawako has average looks, meagre self esteem, and is lacking in professional ambition.  In the five years since she left her home town for Tokyo after a falling out with her widowed father, she has suffered through five dissatisfying jobs and is in her fifth disappointing relationship after being dumped by her previous four boyfriends.  She seems to be stuck in a cyclical rut when she gets word that her father is terminally ill with cirrhosis brought on by heavy drinking. 

Sawako resists moving back to her home town to support her dying father and his wayward brother because it means having to face up to unresolved problems from her past, but her recently divorced boyfriend Kenichi coerces her into going.  Kenichi is looking for a fresh start for his life with his young daughter and sees potential in Sawako’s family business of packing freshwater crabs.  His daughter Kayoko, with her big mournful eyes, is more cautious than her father, but ultimately will be the first person to really connect with Sawako.

The choices that Sawako faces in this film are difficult and her decisions are not predictable, which only serves to make her character all the more human and likable.  Hikari Mitsushima (Love Exposure, Kakera) brings her trademark shy charm to the role and contrasts well with the more brash female characters such as her old childhood friend with a grudge and the gaggle of crab-packing women who are determined to make Sawako suffer a bit for her past sins before welcoming her back into the fold.  The wacky, screwball aspects of Yūya Ishii’s film keep it from wallowing too long in self-doubt and misery – though the unlikely subplot of a random Tokyo graduate student seducing a married fisherman should have been left on the cutting room floor.  

All in all it is an enjoyable film that reminds us that no matter how average a person is, they need only work hard and look out for others in their community to enjoy a successful life.  As Sawako's family vegetable patch demonstrates, sometimes the most beautiful flowers can grow in the biggest dung heap.

Sawako Decides recently came out on DVD in the UK.  The distributor Third Window Films has been struggling to get back on top since they lost their stock in the Sony warehousefire during the London riots this summer.  Please support them by ordering their films on DVD or, if you like in the UK, watching them on MUBI.  The DVD includes an interview with the director as an extra.

Director and Screenwriter

Yūya Ishii

Cinematographer

Yukihiro Okimura

Original Music

Chiaki Nomura

Cast

Sawako

Hikari Mitsushima

Kenichi

Masashi Endo

Kayoko

Kira Aihara

Tadao

Kotaro Shiga

Nobuo

Ryo Iwamatsu

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Minamata: The Victims and Their World (水俣 患者さんとその世界, 1971)

It is a sad irony that the Fukushima nuclear disaster should occur in the same year that Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s groundbreaking documentary Minamata: The Victims and Their World (水俣 患者さんとその世界/Minamata: Kanja-san to sono sekai, 1971) got its first release on DVD with English subtitles.  For the narrative of corporations and politicians putting financial gain ahead of risks to public health and safety is not a new one in Japan.  History is repeating itself yet again – only the players and the type of poison have changed.

Minamata: The Victims and Their World is the first in a series of documentaries that Tsuchimoto made documenting the plight of the victims of Minamata disease, their families, and their fight for redress.  Minamata disease takes its name from the city in Kumamoto prefecture where the disease was identified in 1956.  The disease is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning.  The local chemical factory run by the Chisso Corporation polluted Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea with industrial waste water containing the highly poisonous chemical compound methylmercury between 1932 and 1968.

Noriaki Tshuchimoto’s documentary opens with a series of title cards that quietly lay out the bare facts of how the people of Minamata came to be poisoned by mercury.  The documentary then shifts its focus from the facts and figures to the stories of the victims and their families.  Fishermen talk of how they knew something was wrong when fish began behaving strangely in the sea and local cats that ate the fish started going insane.  Family members share the agonies endured by their loved ones before they died of the disease.  Doctors, teachers, and physiotherapists compare and contrast the illness to other known conditions such as cerebral palsy.  The most chilling legacy is the stories of the children with congenital Minamata disease, who were poisoned while in the womb.  Their physical and mental challenges are so great that there is little hope for rehabilitation.

The interviews are paced throughout the film like the ebb and flow of the tide.  Emotionally harrowing personal testimonies are book-ended by quiet sequences that give the spectator a moment to pause and reflect.  These quiet moments are often montages that capture the natural beauty of the landscape and the sea of the region.  With each new story of pain and loss, the tension slowly builds until the film’s dramatic climax in which the victims and their families go to the Chisso biannual shareholders meeting to confront the company president and demand that he publicly take responsibility for his company’s crimes against humanity and the environment.

The mainstream documentary style in Japan – even today – is one in which an authoritative, voice-of-god narrator tells the spectator how to interpret the images they are being shown.  As authority figures had betrayed the people of Minamata, Tsuchimoto wisely decided to foreground the voices and faces of the victims themselves in this documentary.  According to Sachiko Mizuno in the supplementary material for the DVD release, the victims had resisted the efforts of television documentary crew because of their deeply held suspicions about the media (p.6) It becomes apparent while watching the documentary that Tsuchimoto has won over the people with his friendly, sincere manner.  He occasionally appears in the film, usually partly or wholly off-frame, holding a microphone in his hand and gently coaxing his subjects to talk to him.

The film is particularly interesting for its use of sound.  The lack of synch between the image and the soundtrack is initially distracting.  Sound was a big problem for low budget documentary filmmakers of the day as it was recorded separately from the image.  The asynchronous sound provided Tsuchimoto with the opportunity to play with the soundtrack in innovative ways.  As his subjects tell us their stories, we are treated to montages of images of the dead, their families, and their homes.  The asynchronicity forces us to listen more closely to the words and to study the face of the speaker more carefully.  Although each family has their own individual tale of suffering and loss to tell, taken together one gets the sense of a community of simple, hardworking people who have been unjustly made into outcasts in the town where their families have lived and fished for generations.  The story of their fight for justice is not only of historical import, but their determination against all odds is also inspiring for the many people who are today suffering at the hands of an unfeeling bureaucracy in the southernmost prefecture of Tohoku.  

Minamata: The Victims and Their World is one of four documentaries by Noriaki Tsuchimoto (土本典昭, 1928-2008) released by Zakka Films on DVD this year. It has optional English language subtitles and is accompanied by an essay by Abé Mark Nornes (U of Michigan) and film commentaries by Sachiko Mizuno (Kanazawa 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

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲, 1942)

World War II inspired many governments around the world to sponsor animated propaganda to rally support on the home front. Some, like the films of Norman McLaren in Canada, were aimed at encouraging people to support the war financially – see V for Victory (1941), Five for Four (1942) , and Dollar Dance, 1943 (NFB Overview). Disturbingly in the United States (see Ducktators), Japan, and Germany (see Der Störenfried), propagandists decided to target children for their campaigns by using characters from popular folk tales and movies. 

   

In Japan, the legend of Momotaro, the Peach Boy, was commandeered by propagandists as a patriotic hero. In the original tale, Momotaro was found by an elderly couple floating down the river in a peach. When he grew up, he became unusually strong. One day, Momotaro decides to Demon Island in order to defeat the demons that are terrorizing the people there and the elderly woman who adopted him gives him millet dumplings to take with him. Along the way, he encounters a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant and he gives them millet dumplings so that they will join him on his mission. They defeat the demons and return home with wonderful treasures. 

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (桃太郎の海鷲/Momotarō no umiwashi, 1942) reframes this story in a manner designed to encourage people to celebrate the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor as a victory against evil forces. Unlike the original tale where Momotaro actually engages in battle with the dog, monkey, and pheasant, in Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, Momotaro assumes the role of a military leader who orders his troops of dogs, monkeys, and pheasants into battle while he follows the action from the battleship. “I, your captain,” Momotaro pronounces, “will await your return.” Momotaro towers above the animals who are quite childlike in both appearance and behaviour. 

The film sets up a number of gags to endear young audiences on the side of the Japanese forces. The ground crew are rabbits who use their floppy ears to make signals. On one of the planes, a dog and a monkey play with building blocks that are in danger of collapsing. The Japanese, the film suggests, are on the side of all that is good and natural in the world. At one point, they even befriend a baby sea eagle and his parent in a bizarre sequence that takes place on the wing of one of the aircraft – as if there would be no wind while in flight! 

The conceit is that Hawaii is Demon Island and that the inhabitants there are the demons of legend. When the attack commences, we are disturbingly shown events from the point of view of the people on the ground. The Americans are depicted in human, not animal form, but the horror of the event is subverted into slapstick comedy. The central American character resembles Bluto from the popular Fleischer Studio’s Popeye series. These films were well-known and loved by Japanese children in the 1930s and the character would have been immediately recognizable as Popeye’s nemesis. In the unlikely circumstance that a child did not recognize him as Bluto, he is clearly demarcated as “bad” because he has demon horns and a tail and is associated with heavy drinking. 

Apart from the fact that it is disquieting to see an event in which 2,402 Americans were killed and more than a thousand wounded depicted as if it were an extended slapstick comedy routine, there are a number of historical inaccuracies promoted by the film. Two of the most obvious are the suggestion that some Japanese troops were on the group and set airplanes on fire by hand (a chain of monkeys, like the S-shaped Barrel of Moneys toy game, descends from an airplane window to do this with matches) and worse, the suggestion that all the Japanese returned home safely. In actuality 55 Japanese airmen and 9 submariners were killed in action that day. 

The attack on Pearl Harbor  with Americans depicted as fat demons.

A great deal of the film is taken up with showing off Japanese military might. It takes many minutes for action to get underway because the opening scenes are so concerned with instilling a sense of awe and pride in the technology of war.  The film was billed at the time as being Japan’s first feature-length animation – which was a bit of a stretch considering that the film is only 37 minutes long. The true recipient of this title was the sequel to this film Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors (Mitsuyo Seo, 1944). 

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle is the centrepiece of Zakka Films’ DVD The Roots of Japanese Anime which also includes a bonus extra of posters from the time advertising the film as “A thrilling, unparalleled naval battle that makes the red and blue demons tremble!” The posters also suggest that Momotaro’s army will not only be fighting Bluto but also Popeye and Betty Boop, declaring: “Roosevelt and the American gangster Popeye are no match. They face Momotaro’s troops and end up all wet.” Popeye and Betty Boop do not appear in the film itself.  Most disturbingly, the ads proclaim that the film is not only sponsored by the Naval Ministry but recommended by the Ministry of Education “as a living textbook for your children.” From today’s perspective it is certainly a valuable film to watch in order to teach about how propaganda is produced and disseminated. 

Apart from the troubling nature of the subject matter, the film is historically significant in terms of demonstrating how sophisticated cel animation had become in Japan by the 1940s.  It is important to note that the politics of the film do not reflect that of the director, Mitsuyo Seo (瀬尾 光世, 1911-2011), who actually had left-leaning political sympathies and was pressured into making propaganda films.  Tragically, due to historical forces beyond his control, Seo was saddled with these beautifully animated but deeply propagandistic films as his legacy to animation history.  Seo does at least have the distinction of being the first Japanese animator to use multiplane camera and his work is said to have influenced Osamu Tezuka.  It was also interesting to see puppet animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga listed in the credits for this film.  

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

Film Credits:

Sponsored by the Naval Ministry 

Production Company: Art Film Production (Geijutsu Eigasha) 

Producer: Einosuke Omura 

Director and DOP: Mitsuyo Seo 

Music: Noboru Ito Animation Technique and Composition: 

Tadahito Mochinaga, Toshihiko Tanabe, 

Tamako Hashimoto, Shizuyo Tsukamoto 

Special Effects: Hajime Kimura

.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

The Monkey Masamune (猿正宗, 1930)

During the late Kamakura period, there lived a famous swordsmith known as Masamune whose renown as a swordsmith was so great that even long after his passing the term “Masamune” was used to describe any fine sword. Even today, the Masamune Prize is awarded to swordsmiths of outstanding skills in their craft. In Yasuji Murata’s cutout animation The Monkey Masamune (猿正宗/Saru masamune, 1930) a humble messenger is rewarded with the gift of a Masamune sword when he saves the life of a monkey and her child.

Murata ((村田安司, 1896-1966), one of Japan’s top early animators, is renowned for his skills as a cutout animator. He learned the craft of animation from Sanae Yamamoto (山本 早苗, 1898-1981) and became a pioneer in the field of educational animation. He made films for the Yokohama Cinema company.

Although the screenplay is an original one by Chuzo Aochi, the tale follows a pattern familiar in Japanese folk tales in which a person rescues an animal and receives a reward for his good deed. In fact, in The Monkey Masamune the messenger performs two good deeds: first saving the monkeys from the wrath of the hunter and after they present him with his reward, he uses the Masamune to rescue the hunter from a wild boar.

The Monkey Masamune is a deceptively simple black and white cutout animation. The cutouts have been so meticulously drawn and move so smoothly that in some scenes they could almost be mistaken for cel animation. In the liner notes to the Zakka Films release, Aaron Gerow explains that Murata “did not just move the pieces of paper, but changed them between frames to show more complex body movements like turning around” (The Roots of Japanese Anime, p.7).

Although the opening sequence consists only of the messenger running to deliver his message, Murata – who by this time was a seasoned animator with more than a dozen animated shorts under his belt – demonstrates his sophistication as an animator by varying the camera distance and angles. In one shot, the camera appears to be tracking left over a painterly landscape that unfolds in the background like a scroll.

When the messenger pauses for a break, we have a panning shot of the landscape that suggests we are seeing it from the messenger’s point-of-view. He playfully looks at the scenery upside-down by bending over and looking between his legs. As his head wiggles amusingly from side-to-side, Murata cuts to an unusual point-of-view shot that shakes back and forth briefly before the man comically falls over and lands on his bottom. We have become inured to the use of shaky cams in POV shots, but for 1930 this was quite unusual and innovative.

Just as I noted in my recent review of Noburo Ofuji’s Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box, Murata also uses irises to focus in on dialogue and action.  In the messengers confrontation with the hunter, the a box-shaped matte is placed over the scene, and has the effect of intensifying the drama of the scene.

The Monkey Masamune was originally silent and likely had benshi accompaniment during screenings.  The Roots of Japanese Anime  DVD features the soundtrack that was later added to the film, but there are still the occasional title cards that point to the film’s origins as a silent film. The film is not in as good a condition as the Ofuji films on the DVD, but despite the flashing and scratching it is still watchable.

The Zakka Films DVD has optional English subtitles and comes with an informative booklet featuring an  historical overview 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

Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box (ちんころ平平玉手箱, 1936)

The early anime pioneer Noburo Ofuji (大藤 信郎, 1900-1961) is best known for his kirigami (cutout) animaton and kage-e (silhouette) animation. He was also quite skilled in the art of cel animation as demonstrated by his 1936 animated short Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box (ちんころ平平玉手箱/Chinkoroheibei to tamatebako).

An upbeat, lively animation aimed at a young audience, Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box tells the tale of a young fellow named Chinkoroheibei. He is a mischievous character with a real knack for getting himself into trouble either unwittingly or due to his own heedless actions. Taking a nap under a tree, a spider falls into his mouth and when Chinkoroheibei spits it out, the poor creature has lost some of his legs causing a turtle to laugh at the spider's misery. This inspires Chinkoroheibei to poke at the turtle, causing the turtle to bite Chinkoroheibei’s finger in order to escape. Incensed, Chinkoroheibei  runs after the turtle who leads him into the sea.

Underwater, Chinkoroheibei discovers the wondrous palace of the fish king. A big celebration is underway with the large fish king surrounded by cheering smaller fish with their unusual round black heads. Initially, Chinkoroheibei is not allowed into the party but he disguises himself as a fish and enters the palace. He watches as the fish king is presented with a box that the fish and crabs use to perform magic tricks in which bubbles are transformed into various sea creatures. Chinkoroheibei recognizes the box as the “legendary treasure box” and schemes to steal it away. A comical chase sequence ensues with Chinkoroheibei receiving his comeuppance in the end.

In addition to using the kind of slapstick comedy popular in both animated and live action cinema of the day, Ofuji also uses a visual device developed in the silent period: the iris. As zoom lenses were rarity in the 1930s, irises were used in order to focus attention on one part of the screen. In the case of cel animation, it removes the need to draw a new background in order to shoot a close up. A matte is placed over the existing image and gives a similar effect as a close up.

Examples of the use of irises and mattes in Chinkoroheibei.

Ofuji uses mattes (cutout frames) not just as irises but also cut into cloud shapes to focus attention on one part of the screen. Some of the mattes even appear to be made of patterned chiyogami. At first, I thought the cloud-shaped mattes may have been used for practical reasons – covering part of the frame in a matte reduces the amount of the screen that needed to be drawn and re-drawn on celluloid, an expensive commodity at the time. Ofuji may also have been saving time on certain scenes in order to have more time to work on more complex scenes like the celebration of the fish king and the dramatic final chase scene. But, then in one of the shots of the treasure box, some of the creatures that appear out of the bubbles swim away over the chiyogami matte, suggesting that Ofuji may just have used the mattes because they simply appealed to him aesthetically.

Chinkoroheibei resembles a kind of tailless mouse with small, round ears.  He bears a striking resemblance to Mickey Mouse. Japanese animators in the 1930s (and the next generation of animators and manga-ka who were just children at the time like Osamu Tezuka, Takashi Yanase, Yoichi Kotabe, Monkey Punch, and so on) were strongly influenced by the two of biggest names in animation of the time: Walt Disney and the Fleischer brothers. This stylistic influence can be seen not only in the character design, movement, and use of physical comedy in Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box, but also in other cel animation by Ofui and his peers.  Kon Ichikawa’s Shinsetsu Kachi Kachi Yama (1936), Yasuji Murata’s Private 2nd Class Norakuro (1934), and Mitsuyo Seo’s Sankichi the Monkey: The Storm Troopers (1934) are a few examples that I have seen.

Examples of complex animated sequences in Chinkoroheibei.

Ofuji uses the standard cel animation practice of using a stationary background with movement in the middle- and fore-ground. The character movement is smoother than in his cutout animation (see: The Village Festival or Song of Spring). Ofuji adds depth to the underwater scenes through the use of bubbles and swaying sea plants both in front of and behind the central action. The most impressive scene technically is the final chase scene. Water is notoriously difficult to animate and Ofuji does a stellar job of it considering the technical limitations of the time.

Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box  appears on the Zakka Films DVD The Roots of Japanese Anime with optional English subtitles. A striking image of Chinkoroheibei in profile is used on cover of and in promotional materials for the DVD.  The Roots of Japanese Anime 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.

A Mother Should Be Loved (母を恋はずや, 1934)

In support of the BFI, one of the many companies to lose their stock in the Sony warehouse fire in Enfield, I ordered their dual format edition of Late Autumn / A Mother Should Be Loved last week. A Mother Should Be Loved (母を恋はずや, 1934) is one of the few extant Yasujiro Ozu films that I had not yet seen. Although the first and last of 9 reels that make up the film are missing, enough remains of the film to make it enjoyable viewing.

A Mother Should Be Loved is the type of family melodrama that was common at the time. It tells the story of two school-aged brothers from a wealthy home whose father (Yukichi Iwata) dies suddenly. Their mother Chieko Kajiwara (Mitsuko Yoshiwara), with the support of an old friend of their father’s whom they call Uncle Okazaki (Shinyo Nara) and his wife (Shinobu Aoki).

As the Kajiwara brothers grow up, it becomes apparent to them that their mother tends to favour the elder brother Sadao (Seiichi Kato/Den Obinata) over her younger son Kosaku (Shusei Nomura/Koji Mitsui). It is not until Sadao applies for college and sees his birth certificate for the first time that the family secret is revealed: he is the son of his father’s late first wife and Chieko is only his stepmother. Sadao’s bitterness over this well-intentioned family deception leads to a rift between the two brothers that the plot tries to resolve.

Visually, the film is unlike Ozu’s later style apart from a few favourite motifs such as clothes hanging to dry, factory chimneys, and trains. The house that the family lives in until the father’s death has a European furnishings which more resemble the set of an early Carl Dreyer film than an Ozu film. As the family’s financial circumstances become more difficult they move to a more modest Japanese-style home.

The most fascinating element of A Mother Should Be Loved that I would like to learn more about is Ozu’s use of poster art in the film. The mother is strongly associated with Christian imagery in the film in the form of a poster for the Passion Play Tercentenary in Oberammergau. In 1634, the residents of this small town in Bavaria made a pledge to God that if they were spared from the bubonic plague they would produce a play every ten years depicting the life and death of Jesus. With a few exceptions, the play has been performed every 10 years since. The event advertised in the poster in A Mother Should Be Loved was exploited by the Nazis as part of their greater anti-Semitic agenda and Hitler himself even attended one of the performances. It would be interesting to find out how much Ozu understood about the context of the event itself.  He certainly would not have know about Hitler visiting.  The film was released in May 1934 and Hitler saw the Passion Play in August 1934.  Without all the historical baggage, the cross on the poster merely functions metaphorically to suggest that the mother is adhering to the Christian principle of self-sacrifice.

In contrast, the brothel that Sadao moves into when he runs away from the family home has its walls papered with Hollywood and European movie posters.  The most striking of these is a stylized poster of Joan Crawford in Lewis Milestone's Rain (1932). Here is a screencap from the film alongside the original full colour poster:

This is quite appropriate for a brothel as Joan Crawford plays a prostitute on a path to redemption and a life on the straight and narrow.  Many critics complain that A Mother Should Be Loved is "marred by melodrama" (Donald Richie, Ozu, p. 219), but it is really quite tame in comparison to the over-the-top melodrama of Rain (a film which I coincidentally saw for the first time in Japan - I picked it up in a 500 yen bargain bin several years ago).

Another poster in the brothel is for the G.W. Pabst epic Don Quichotte (The Adventures of Don Quixote, 1933) starring the wildly popular Russian operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin (spellings vary in different European countries).  It was the first sound film adapation of Miguel de Cervantes's novel and three versions were shot - French, English,and German - with Chaliapin singing in all three versions.  I couldn't find the poster used in the film but to get an idea of how it looked in colour I have found a different poster for the film as well as a poster for a theatrical version that uses a similar graphic design:

Alexander Jacoby, who wrote the introductory essay in the BFI booklet, remarks upon the thematic similarities between a A Mother Should Be Loved and the Julien Duvivier classic Poil de carotte (The Read Head, 1932) about a boy who is unloved by his parents.  Like the Passion Play poster, the poster for Poil de carotte is made all the more poignant from the perspective of today because the child star Robert Lynen, in the title role of François Lepic was executed by the Gestapo for his role in the French Resistance in 1944.

The final movie poster that I recognized in A Mother Should Be Loved is for the film Die Tochter des Regiments (The Daughter of the Regiment, 1933).  The film was directed by Carl Lamac and stars his wife (or ex-wife - they divorced sometime in 1933) Anny Ondra (most famous for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail) and Werner Fuetterer.  This is the most rare of the films referred to in A Mother Should Be Loved.  I do not know if a copy of it is extant, but it most certainly has never been released on DVD.  I would presume that the film is an adaptation of the Donizetti comic opera La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment, 1840)

A Mother Should Be Loved sparked my interest in learning more about the kinds of films Ozu was watching in the 1920s and 1930s and what he thought about them.  Such a shame that so many of his early films were lost as I am sure they would shed even more light onto craft of this endlessly fascinating film director.