Atsushi Wada wins Silver Bear at the Berlinale

It was been a great week for Japanese independent animation with Atsushi Wada picking up the Silver Bear at the Berlinale for Best Short Film for his latest work The Great Rabbit (グレットラビット, 2012) which was produced by the French company Sacrebleu Productions.  The Jury commented:

This dreamlike film uses a unique, surreal language to tickle our unconscious while showing us the confusion of the modern world in animated form. Using a delicate hand drawn style, Atsushi Wada decodes reality with absurd sequences of characters caught in time. (source)

The Japan Times, who have a wonderful photograph of a smiling Wada accepting the award, quoted Wada as saying “I am proud to win this award. I feel relieved because I used to think my works were rather hard to understand.” 

The film has been hand drawn frame-by-frame on paper in Wada’s signature style, which you can learn more about in my November 2010 interview with him or in my review of his CALF DVD Atsushi Wada Works 2002-2010.

Many top animators have won the Silver Bear in the past including Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart in 1956 for Rhythmetic, Paul Driessen in 1981 for On Land, at Sea and in the Air, and Ishu Patel in 1985 for Paradise.

Here is the official trailer for The Great Rabbit:

Isamu Hirabayashi’s beautiful animated short 663114 (2011) also received a nod at the Berlinale in the Generation Section in which the jury is made up of eleven children and seven teenagers.  They said of 663114:

Visuals and sound melded together flawlessly to create a philosophical and layered masterpiece. The director conveys his message, beyond all conventions. Through a simple metaphor he portrays the survival of a culture, even in the face of catastrophe. (source)

Hirabayashi used the platform to remind people around the world of the seriousness of the crisis in Fukushima: "Children are being exposed to dangerous radioactivity a year after the earthquake. It is our responsibility as Japanese adults to protect the children."

I am proud to announce that I am curating the animation selection for Nippon Connection this year.  Atsushi Wada will be our special guest and we will have the honour of screening Hirabayashi’s 663114.


You can order Atsushi Wada's DVD from CALF (JP/EN), British Animation Awards (UK), or Heeza (FR/EN)

The Black Cat (黒ニャゴ, 1929)

The Black Cat (黒ニャゴ/Kuro Nyago, 1929) is a record talkie from the silent film period.  A record talkie was a silent film played synchronously with a phonograph record.  Like today’s music videos, record talkies were designed as promotional devices for record companies and their songs.  People who enjoyed The Black Cat animation could have bought the record and played it on their own gramophone (record companies also manufactured gramophones) at home.

The children’s song The Black Cat was written by Kōka Sassa (佐々紅華, 1886-1961), husband of the popular Asakusa Opera singer Ruby Takai (高井 ルビー, 1904-unknown), with lyrics by Otowa Shigure (時雨 音羽, 1899-1980).  It was released by Victor Records and features the vocal talent of child star Hideko Hirai (平井 英子, b. 1918).  Hideko Hirai also features with Ruby Takai in the Kōka Sassa hit Chameko’s Day, which was made into an animation directed by Kiyoshi Nishikura (see review) in 1931.

On the other side of the Pacific, Walt Disney had made splash a year earlier with the release of Steamboat Willie (1928) which he co-directed with Ub Iwerks.  While not the first animated film to have a synchronous soundtrack, Steamboat Willie was certainly the most successful and marked the debut of the iconic Mickey Mouse.  Sound on film technology was much slower to come to Japan – not only because of a lack of technology but because of the tenacity of the benshi tradition.  The first animated film with a synchronous soundtrack would not be made in Japan until 1933: Kenzō Masaoka’s lost film The World of Power and Women (Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka).  The first step towards sound films in Japan were the record talkies, and The Black Cat is believed to be the first of its kind.

The film is directed and animated by the legendary Noburo Ōfuji (大藤 信郎, 1900-61) in his signature chiyogami cutout animation style (cutouts using traditional Japanese paper).  Due to the expense and relative scarcity of celluloid in Japan in this period, cutouts were a common method for making animated films.  It was shot on 9.5mm film on a Pathé Baby.   I watched the film on the Kinokuniya DVD Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai (2010). The film was digitized by the National Film Center and synchronized with the original Victor record.  Both the soundtrack and the film show their age with much popping and scratching, but as so many films from this era have been lost we are lucky that the film survives in a relatively complete condition.

The opening shot is of chiyogami cherry blossom trees shedding a few petals.  Some boys walk along and sing of their desire to have a black cat with a red collar who dances.  A black cat appears and sings and dances for them.  The cat then introduces her brother, a tabby cat, who also sings and dances for them.  The boys also join in with the dancing and singing.  As with any successful children’s song, The Black Cat has a catchy tune and is repetitive.  It alternates between song and dialogue.  One can imagine children of the era mimicking the cat’s dance, not to mention the cry of the cat as she sings.  The bouncy rhythm of the song would also encourage clapping.  The second refrain might have inspired the children to leap like the cat’s tiger ancestors, while the third refrain might have gotten a bit wild with children pretending to throw a mouse just like the cat.

Examples of mattes being used in The Black Cat

The character movement is less complex than later Ōfuji films, but it is still very charming.  Ōfuji uses two main set-ups for the piece: a cherry tree orchard and a bamboo forest.  Some of the more complicated sequences involve spinning chiyogami paper and the “tracking” shots of characters walking.  I put “tracking” in brackets because it is not actually the camera that is moving, but the paper under the camera between shots – but this animation technique creates the illusion that the camera is moving over the scene.  As is typical for films of this era, mattes are used in lieu of close-ups.  There was no such thing as a zoom lens in the 1920s and it would have been more cost effective / time efficient to matte the image than to change the camera set-up for a close-up. All in all, it is a delightful piece of early animation history.

In addition to the DVD Ōfuji Noburō: Kūkō no Tensai, The Black Cat appears on the Digital Meme Box Set Japanese Anime Classic Collection.  A sample of the film with English subs can be screened on Crunchyroll.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Norio Hikone’s Animation Top 20 (2003)

The characters created by illustrator and animator Norio Hikone (ひこねのりお, b. 1936) are instantly recognizable to young and old alike in Japan.  A graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts, Hikone got his start working as an animator/inbetweener for Toei Animation (Alakazam the Great, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon) and Mushi Pro (Kimba the White Lion, Jungle Emperor Leo). 

In 1966, he founded Hikone Studios and made a name for himself doing animated shorts for TV as well as a variety of commercial work.  He has done a great deal of animation for the NHK including the long-running popular programmes Minna no Uta (Everybody’s Song) and Manga Nippon Mukashi-banashi (Manga Nippon Folk Tales).  His client list runs quite long, but he is perhaps best known for his delightful Karl Ojisan (Uncle Karl) TV spots for the Meiji Seika snack food “Curls”.  These ran from 1986-90 and are a source of much nostalgia for folks who grew up in Japan in the 1980s.  Norio Hikone also contributed to Kihachirō Kawamoto’s renku animation Winter Days (2003).  Check out his official website to see more of his endearing characters in action (JP only).

Here is the list Hikone contributed to Laputa’s Top 150 Poll in 2003..  Hikone himself featured on many lists, including that of the late Masahiro Katayama.

Le roi et l’oiseau 

(王と鳥 やぶにらみの暴君, Paul Grimault, France, 1948)

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (aka Hoppity Goes to Town)

( バッタ君町に行く, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1941)

Legend of the White Serpent

(白蛇伝, Taiji Yabushita/Kazuhiko Okabe, Japan, 1958)

Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom

(プカドン交響楽, Ward Kimball/Charles A. Nichols, USA, 1953)

Betty Boop in Snow White

(ベティの白雪姫, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1933)

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor

(ポパイと船乗りシンドバッド, Dave Fleischer, USA, 1936)

The Snow Queen

(雪の女王, Lev Atamov et al., Russia, 1957)

Around the World with Willy Fog

(80日間世界一周, Luis Ballester, Spain/Japan, 1987)

The Old Mill (Silly Symphonies)

(丘の風車, Wilfred Jackson, USA, 1937)

The Spider and the Tulip

(くもとちゅうりっぷ, Kenzō Masaoka, Japan, 1943)

Blinkity Blank

(線と色の即興詩, Norman McLaren, Canada, 1955)

Hedgehog in the Fog

(霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, Russia, 1975)

The Man Who Planted Trees/L'homme qui plantait des arbres

(木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987)

Kitty’s Graffiti

(こねこのらくがき, Taiji Yabushita/Yasuji Mori, Japan, 1957)

The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon

(わんばく王子の大蛇退治, Yugo Serikawa, Japan, 1963)

Animal Treasure Island

(どうぶつ宝島, Hiroshi Ikeda, Japan, 1971)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

(風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 1984)

Yellow Submarine

(イエロー・サプマリン, George Dunning, 1968)

The Demon

(鬼, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Japan, 1972)