Puppet Maker Sumiko Hosaka's Animation Top 20

Sumiko Hosaka  (保坂純子, b. 1930) has worked as a puppet artist since 1953.  Throughout her career she has made puppets for live theatre, TV, and commercials, but is perhaps best known for the puppets she made for the stop motion animation of Tadanari Okamoto.  She has also made puppets for the films of Fumiko Magari and the Noburo Ofuji Award winning team N&G Production.

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.3

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Her first experience making puppets for stop motion animaton came in the early 60s when she was part of the original staff at Tadahito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions.  She was on one of the puppet-making  teams that worked on MOM Pro's first project for Rankin/Bass The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1960-61).  Starting in the late 1960s, she began working for Okamoto, her former colleague at MOM Pro, after he had set up his own independent studio Echo Productions.   She made puppets for many of his most significant stop motion works from The Mochi Mochi Tree (1972) to The Magic Ballad (1982).  She also occasionally worked for Kihachirō Kawamoto – including his greatest work Book of the Dead (2005).

Sumiko Hosaka currently teaches puppet making techniques at Laputa Art Animation School.  Examples of her freelance work can be seen in her profile at Puppet House.

Selected Filmography

The New Adventures of Pinocchio (Rankin Bass, 1960-61)

Back When Grandpa Was a Pirate (Tadanari Okamoto, 1968)

Home My Home (Tadanari Okamoto, 1970)

The Flower and the Mole (Tadanari Okamoto, 1970)

The Monkey and the Crab (Tadanari Okamoto, 1972)

The Mochi Mochi Tree (Tadanari Okamoto, 1972)

Praise Be to Small Ills (Tadanari Okamoto, 1973)

Five Small Stories (Tadanari Okamoto, 1974)

Are wa dare? (Tadanari Okamoto, 1976)

The Magic Ballad (Tadanari Okamoto, 1982)

The Little Bear Oof (Fumiko Magari, 1983)

The Fourth of the Narcissus Month (Suisenzuki no Yokka, Nozomi Nagasaki , N&G Production, 1990)

Home Alone (Rusuban, Nozomi Nagasaki, N&G Production, 1996) – won Noburo Ofuji Award

Book of the Dead (Kihachiro Kawamoto, 2005)

Hosaka’s picks for the Laputa 150 poll in 2003 speak for themselves: a cross-section of some the greatest films in world animation.  Reflecting her interest in puppets, the list is heavy with examples of stop motion animation by Jiri Trnka, Karel Zeman, Roman Kachanov, Jan Svankmajer, and, of course, Okamoto and Kawamoto.  At #1, Hosaka placed the Soyuzmultfilm classic The Little Grey Neck (1948).  In Japan, it was released on DVD together with Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s The Humpbacked Horse (1947/75) as part of The Ghibli Museum Library.  It is also available to buy as a download here.

Konyok-gorbunok & Seraya Sheika

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1.   The Little Grey Neck (灰色くびの野鴨, Vladimir Polkovnikov/Leonid Amalrik, USSR, 1948)

2.   The Emperor's Nightingale (支那の皇帝の鴬, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1948)

3.   Prince Bayaya (バヤヤ王子, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1950)

4.   The Hand (手, Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1965)

5.   Inspiration (水玉の幻想, Karel Zeman, 1948)

6.   The Fantastic World of Jules Verne (悪魔の発明, Karel Zeman, 1958)

7.   Tale of Tales (話の話, Yuri Norstein, Russia/USSR, 1979)

8.   Hedgehog in the Fog (霧につつまれたハリネズミ, Yuri Norstein, Russia/USSR, 1975)

9.   Cheburashka (チェブラーシカ, Roman Kachanov, Russia/USSR, 1971)

10. Dimensions of Dialogue (対話の可能性, Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1982)

11. Faust (ファウスト, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 1994)

12. The Fall ( 落下, Aurel Klimt/Derek Shea, Czech Republic, 1999)

13. The Cowboy’s Flute (牧笛, Tei Wei/Qian Jianjun, China, 1963

14. The Demon (鬼, Kihachirō Kawamoto, Japan, 1972)

15. The Magic Ballad (おこんじょうるり, Tadanari Okamoto, Japan, 1982)

16. Creature Comforts (快適な生活, Nick Park, UK, 1989)

17. Nausicaä of the Valley of theWind (風の谷のナウシカ, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 1984)

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

      (木を植えた男, Frédéric Back, Canada, 1987)

19. Otesánek (オテサーネ, Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2001)

20. A Christmas Dream (おもちゃの反乱, Karel and Borivoj Zeman, Czechoslovakia, 1946)

The Little Bear Oof (くまの子ウーフ, 1983)

The Little Bear Oof (くまの子ウーフ/Kuma no ko Ūfu, 1983) is a stop motion short animation directed and animated by Fumiko Magari (真賀里文子).  Magari got her start in stop motion working under the animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions on the Rankin/Bass series and specials.  She also worked on a number of notable projects for Tadanari Okamoto including A Wonderful Medicine (1965), Welcome, Alien (1966), The Flower and the Mole (1970), Chikotan (1971), and The Monkey and the Crab (1972).  In addition to her work for animated films, Magari has made animation for television, and according to her official profile, has made over a thousand commercials (and counting!).  She has her own animation studio Magari Jimusho (Magari Office) and teaches at the Laputa Art Animation School.  Be sure to check out an insightful interview with this pioneer of Japanese stop motion animation in the Februrary 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine.

The Little Bear Oof is based on the children’s storybook by celebrated author Toshiko Kanzawa (神沢利子, b. 1924) and was made available on Youtube by Magari Jimusho last spring.  It is the tale of an imaginative young bear who takes pleasure, as children do, in the wonders of nature (admiring large trees, chasing honey bees) and the simple pleasure of life (honey on toast, picking flowers with his rabbit friend Mimi-chan).  He is concerned about the welfare of others – in an amusing sequence one would never see in an American animation, he spontaneously relieves himself and then apologizes when he realizes he is peeing on ants.

The story is episodic, following a typical day in the life of a child living in the countryside.  Little lessons are imparted along the way – like washing one’s hands before eating – but on the whole the film is just a slice of life tale of an idyllic childhood.  The settings are quaint – woodcut furniture and a wood-burning fire – all very reminiscent of the world of Beatrix Potter.  During the course of the film, Oof (Ūfu) learns from a chicken where eggs come from.  The only conflict in the film comes in the form of a mischievous fox who distracts Oof by telling him that he is made of pee (complete with an flashback to Oof peeing on the ants) and steals Oof’s egg.  Oof chases after him, but fails to get the egg back and cuts his foot on something sharp.  He sits down to cry, but soon recovers from this incident and there is a wonderful sequence of him rolling down the hill and giggling all the while.  The film ends with Oof’s father coming home and Oof telling him that he’s realized that he’s not made of pee, but made of himself. 

It is a sweet tale that will captivate preschoolers as it is written using the logic of children in this age group: a time when the world around us is a mystery waiting to be discovered and understood.  The puppets are lovely and resemble children’s toys.  They were lovingly handcrafted by Sumiko Hosada (保坂純子, b. 1930), who also worked with Magari at MOM Pro and Okamoto’s studio Echo Pro.  Hosada also teaches puppet design at Laputa.  The art director Hiromi Wakasa (若佐ひろみ) is famous for her work on many Okamoto and Kihachirō Kawamoto productions.  The icing on the cake are the children’s songs written and performed by Tomoya Takaishi (高石ともや) and his folk band The Natarsha Seven (ザ・ナターシャー・セブン). 

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Watch for yourself (in 2 parts):

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)