The Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows (1972-1980), Part I

Ever since reading about Tadanari Okamoto and Kihachiro Kawamoto’s joint Puppet Anime-Shows (川本+ 岡本パペットアニメーショウ) on Anipages, I have wanted to learn more about them.  Had the two Japanese masters of puppet animation met working on puppets for stop motion pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions – the studio that famously did the puppet animation for Rankin/Bass’s beloved children’s classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) – or had they met earlier?  How did the idea for the Puppet Anime-Shows develop?  What was screened at the events?

According to Kawamoto's account in Kihachiro Kawamoto: Animation and Puppet Master (Kadakawa Shoten, 1994), Kawamoto and Okamoto met for the first time at the farewell party Mochinaga hosted for Kawamoto when he departed for Prague to study under Jiri Trnka in 1962.  Okamoto’s enthusiasm for the future of puppet animation in Japan made quite an impression on Kawamoto and became the basis for their friendship.

Shortly after Kawamoto’s return to Japan, Okamoto quit MOM Productions and founded his own animation studio in 1964 which he named Echo Productions.  Okamoto’s first independent film A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) impressed Kawamoto with its fresh style and subject matter.  However, from the very beginning it was clear that the two men had very different approaches to puppet animation.  Okamoto was able to produce many more films than Kawamoto because he took advantage of the need for educational films for schools.  This meant that Okamoto had a steady source of income for producing animated puppet films and employed a studio system of animating.  He employed a team of talented artists including Sumiko Hosaka, Fumiko Magari, and Hirokazu Minegishi to assist with the construction of puppets and assisting with the animation.   

In contrast, Kawamoto worked as an independent artist in the 1970, making the dolls himself, making their costumes, constructing the sets, and doing the animation with very little money for staff to assist him.  Much of Kawamoto’s work was funded by making puppets for NHK’s children’s programming such as Okaasan to Issho (1966), Cinderella (1973), and Yan Yan Mū-kun (1973-75). 

In the early days of their independent work, Kawamoto and Okamoto began to spent a lot of their free time together, not only to talk about their work but also going on ski trips and other excursions together.  It was on one such outing that Okamoto, who had already hosted a solo show of his own work, suggested putting together a joint puppet animation show.

In hosting their Puppet Anime-Shows, Okamoto and Kawamoto faced two major obstacles: finding enough material to screen and funding the event.  Because puppet animation is a time consuming process, Kawamoto could only complete a new work every couple of years.  Even Okamoto, with his larger staff, could only produce two to four short films a year.  With only a handful of new works, they needed something to fill out the programme to make it a proper event.  Kawamoto came up with the idea of including live puppet theatre performances.   Not only would this lengthen the programme, but live shows could also incorporate the humorous aspects of puppet performances.    

Hosting these Puppet Anime-Shows in addition to their usual puppet animation production schedules was hard going for Kawamoto, Okamoto, and their staff.  The positive reaction of the audience to the screenings and performances outweighed any hardships that they experienced and made it all worthwhile for them.  Kawamoto has said that if it were not for Okamoto and the Puppet Anime-Shows his work would never have amounted to much.  The period during which they held the Puppet Anime-Shows was the time that Kawamoto felt that he truly became an artist.  Ten years after the curtain closed on the final Puppet-Anime Show, Kawamoto was able to pay a final tribute to his friend and puppet show collaborator by completing The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店, 1991), the film that Okamoto left unfinished when he died suddenly of liver cancer at the age of 62.   

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

What puppet films were screened at the Puppet Anime-Shows?  Read Part II to find out.

To learn more read: 

• Kihachiro Kawamoto: Animation and Puppet Master (Kadakawa Shoten, 1994)
• Tadanari Okamoto: The Heart of Animation (Benjamin Ettinger, Anipages, 2005)
• Kawamoto Kihachirō: Ningyō – kono inochi aru mono (Heibonsha, 2007)
• Midnight Eye Interview: Kihachiro Kawamoto (Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye, 2004)

AVAILABLE ON DVD:

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

Towards the Rainbow (虹に斑って, 1977)

The great puppet animator Tadahito Okamoto (岡本 忠成, 1932-90) was at his most prolific during the 1970s, sometimes creating two or even three short films per year.  The most beautiful of these is Towards the Rainbow (虹に斑って/Niji ni Mukatte, 1977): a story of love conquering all odds.  The 18 minute short is adapted from the folk tale Futari ga kaketa Hashi (ふたりがかけた橋) by Etsuo Okawa about two young lovers separated by a river. 

The story is narrated by screen legend Kyoko Kishida, who lent her voice to numerous puppet animations by both Okamoto and his friend and colleague Kihachiro Kawamoto.  The story is interwoven with the music of folk singer Kōhei Oikawa, who adapted the story Futari ga kaketa Hashi into song for the film.  Okamoto had used Oikawa once before for the music for Praise Be For Small Ills (南無一病息災, 1973).

Okamoto sets the scene with an ancient, creased map of two communities in the mountains that are separated by a fast flowing river.  The divided communities feud with each other with the young boys calling names and throwing rocks at each other across the deep gorge.  A young girl on one side of the river collects flowers which she offers the boys on the other side of the river as a gesture of goodwill, but she is cruelly struck down by stones.  A young boy tries to stop his older peers from continuing to throw stones at her and is struck down himself. 

From that moment on a friendship blossoms between the girl and boy.  One day, he brings her a present in a basket which he tries to send to her side of the river along a rope, but some boys tear the rope out of her hands and the basket washes away in the river.  In spite of all these obstacles, their love for each other only grows stronger.  When the boy grows into a young man, he braves the terrible current of the river with his raft to visit his love on her side of the river.  Their love seems impossible for both are bound by responsibilities to their own families and communities. 

The young man decides to build a bridge across the river and sets to work with supporters from his village.  However, the river is too strong and knocks the bridge down.  In her distress over the seeming impossibility of their romance, the woman falls into the river and the young man rescues her.  As she lies in shock in his arms, the couple sees a magical display of white cranes forming a bridge over the river and the woman experiences a vision in which she dances on a rainbow joining the two communities.  This vision inspires them with the idea of building a new kind of bridge that does not need a support beam.  The tale promotes the value of devotion, dedication, and perseverance.

Towards the Rainbow is a truly spectacular stop motion animation.  The puppets were handcrafted out of wood and cloth and the misty backgrounds and sets – which are similar to those used in Okamoto’s previous film The Strong Bridge (ちからばし, 1976)  – have been made with an eye to historical accuracy.  Okamoto is said to have done extensive research about how such bridges were designed and constructed in the period in which the film is set.  The attention to detail practised by Okamoto and his puppet and art designers can be seen in everything from the men having stubble on their faces after a long day of work to the use of a professional choreographer to assist with the young woman’s dance on the rainbow in the dream sequence.

In the opening sequence the young girl is shown picking flowers in a field of higanbana or red spider lilies – which fans of Japanese cinema will recognize from Yasujiro Ozu’s film Equinox Flower (彼岸花/Higanbana, 1958).  Higanbana – which also appear on the cover of the original storybook – usually bloom around the autumn equinox near countryside graveyards and are associated with the journey of the soul into the next world.  It is clear that the bridges being built in Towards the Rainbow, are not just literal but spiritual as well.  The film comes full circle, beginning and ending in autumn with the narrator declaring that the young heroine in her bridal garb is more beautiful than the autumn leaves.

ORDER NOW:

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.2

Director

Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成

Original Story

Etsuo Okawa 大川悦生

Screenplay

Kunpei Nagakura 永倉薫平　

Yoko Higashikawa 東川洋子　

Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成

Animation

Seishiro Fujimori 藤森誠代　

Hirokazu Minegishi 峰岸裕和　

Hiroshi Taisenji  奏泉寺博　

Tokiko Ōmukai 大向とき子　

Yumiko Yoshida 横田由美子

Art Design

Takashi Komae 小前隆　

Masami Tokuyama 徳山正美　

Chizuko Makisaka 槇坂千鶴子　

Minoru Kujirai 鯨井実

Puppets

Sumiko Hosaka 保坂純子　

Yoshiko Kumahiko 阿彦よし子　

Sumie Ishii 石井寿美恵

Cinematography

Minoru Tamura 田村実

Editor

Naoko Aizawa 相沢尚子

Sound

Isamu Koufuji 甲藤勇

Narration

Kyoko Kishida  岸田今日子

Choreography

Saburō Satō 佐藤三郎

Music 

(composition/performance)

Kōhei Oikawa 及川恒平

Musicians

Paper Land  ペーパーランド　

Shuji Honda 本田修二　

Makoto Kouda幸田実　

Masayuki Nakatomi 中富雅之　

Kifu Mitsuhashi 三橋貴風 (shakuhachi)

Credits courtesy of Animations Wiki

Towards the Rainbow won Tadanari Okamoto his 5^th Noburo Ofuji Award at the 16^th Mainichi Film Concours.  This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

text © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Zipangu Fest 2011

Zipangu Fest gets underway tomorrow night in London and runs until the 24^th of November.  It is the first UK-wide festival devoted to Japanese film.  The festival bills itself as a showcase for the best of cutting edge and avant-garde Japanese cinema.  Last year’s inaugural festival took place at various venues around London’s East End before travelling to regional events in Bristol, Leeds, Coventry, Nottingham and Newcastle in the UK, and further afield to Tallinn, Estonia.  This year's festival is packed with cinematic gems both new and old.

Animation and Experimental Films

My favourite parts of the festival programme this year are the animation and experimental film events.  There are two screenings celebrating the work of Takashi Makino: Enter the Cosmos and Seasons Inter View.  Makino is one of Japan’s top experimental filmmakers.  His colourful abstract works take spectators on a journey of the senses.  Makino will be in attendance for the latter of the two screenings. 

Some brilliant animated shorts will be featured in the Beyond Anime: The Outer Limits screening including works by Ryu Furusawa, Ryo Hirano, and KTOONZ.  I highly recommend the work of Image Forum graduates Nasuka Saito and Mana Fujii, whose works I ranked as the best of the Dome Animation special at Nippon Connection 2010.  

Julian Ross has curated a special event for Zipangu called Nippon Re-Read: Radical Fragments and Abstractions from Japan I and II + Cat Soup which will present a spectrum of experimental works past and present.  It is a strong programme which will be topped off by a screening of Tatsuo Sato's Cat Soup (2001) with live accompaniment by premiere noise-rock band Bo Ningen. All proceeds from this event with go to disaster relief efforts in Japan.

Documentaries

The festival will open with the stunning new film KanZeOn (Neil Cantwell, 2011), a mystical journey from the timeless to the modern that examines the role of sound in Japanese Buddhism. This screening includes a discussion with special guests Neil Cantwell, Tim Grabham, and ta2mi led by Lucia Dolce, the director of the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religion at SOAS.

In the wake of the March 11 disaster in the Tohoku region of Japan, Zipangu has introduced a Nuclear Reactions programme featuring Hitomi Kamanaka’s documentaries Ashes to Honey (read review) and Rokkasho Rhapsody (read review) - both of which I recommend highly.  In addition, Zipangu is screening Shinpei Takeda’s moving road-trip documentary Hiroshima Nagasaki Download, in which two college friends interview atomic bomb survivors living in North America.  There will be a Q+A with the director after the screening.  Hiroshima Nagasaki Download will be preceded by The Student Wrestler (Yumehito Imanari, 2010) which was the winner of the audience award at Image Forum 2010.

Other docs on the programme include We Don’t Care About Music Anyway (Cédric Dupire/Gaspard Kuentz, 2009) about  Tokyo’s avant-garde noise music scene and horror meets J-pop in Shirome, a mockumentary that involves director Koji Shiraishi luring prepubescent idol band Momoiro Clover into a supposedly haunted abandoned school – the result lies somewhere between the Blair Witch Project and the X-Factor.

Rare Films

The Zipangu Retro programme will feature a rare screening of the 1959 docudrama Lucky Dragon No. 5 directed by one of post-war Japan’s most important independent film makers, Kaneto Shindō.  It tells the story of the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb catastrophe that exposed a Japanese fishing boat crew to radioactive fallout.  

Another rare film being screened as part of Zipangu Retro is a 1930s ghost story The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen (Kiyohiko Ushihara, 1938).  Subtitled especially for Zipangu Fest and never seen before in the UK, this gem is one of Japan’s few surviving pre-war horror films.

UK Premiere of Abraxas 

UK fans of Japanese cinema should also be sure to check out the UK premiere of the much-lauded feature film Abraxas, which tells the story of a punk musician turned Buddhist monk.  Abraxas was a surprise hit at the 2011 Sundance Festival and was well received at Nippon Connection 2011.  Read Marc Saint-Cyr’s review of the film to learn more.

Zipangu Fest 2011 – celebrating the best of cutting edge and avant-garde Japanese cinema – will be held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and Café Oto from November 18th to 24th, before moving to venues around the UK. The festival will showcase a selection of Japan’s finest features, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental films.  For full details visit: http://zipangufest.com.