A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965)

This 15-minute stop motion animation is an important landmark in Japanese animation history.  A Wonderful Medicine (ふしぎなくすり, 1965) is the first independent film by Tadanari Okamoto (岡本忠成, 1932-90) after he founded his own studio Echo Productions (Echo Kabushiki-gaisha) in 1964.  It is also the first stop motion / puppet animation to win the Noburo Ofuji Award, which for 1965 was jointly awarded to Okamoto and experimental animation pioneer Yōji Kuri.  Okamoto was to go on to win this prestigious award more times than any other animator.

A Wonderful Medicine is an adaptation of the short-short story Nusunda Shorui (盗んだ書類) by novelist Shinichi Hoshi (1926-1997), acclaimed for his “short-short” science fiction stories – many of which were illustrated by another Ofuji award-winning animator Makoto Wada and one of Kuri’s fellow Animation Sannin no Kai members Hiroshi Manabe.  Short-short stories belong to the genre flash fiction, and as such tend to be not only short but also boast fresh, innovative storylines and unexpected endings. 

The evil genius imagines the medicine giving him powers of defying gravity / the winding road leading up to the scientist's lab

In an opening reminiscent of To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955), an open top convertible winds its way up a coastal hill to a lookout point.  But instead of Cary Gant and Grace Kelly, the car holds a tall, skinny, evil genius with a Poirot moustache and his short, checked-cap-wearing lackey.  The two men are targeting a moustachioed elderly scientist who quirkily has a boy assistant and a talking crow. 

Posing as a potential customer, the evil genius spies on the scientist and overhears him making a new discovery.  Believing this new “wonderful medicine” to be something useful for his plans for world domination, the evil genius and his lackey plan a bold mission to steal the “wonderful medicine.”  Comical at every turn, they are almost foiled by the alarm systems and the talking crow, but in the end their cunning allows them make off with their prize.  In a hilarious twist at the end (spoiler alert), the lackey – who is coerced into being the guinea pig – takes some of the “wonderful medicine” which turns out to be a cure for turning a wicked heart into a good and wholesome heart.  Overcome by his new-found sense of morally upstanding principles, the lackey confesses his crime to the scientist, who is delighted to learn that his new medicine works as intended.

Examples of special effects

Compared to Okamoto’s graduate work Mirror (1960), one can see an improvement in the fluidity of character movement and general expressiveness of the characters – skills which Okamoto acquired during his period working under Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM Productions.  In an amusing touch, the scientist and the evil genius, whose mouths cannot be seen, both talk via their moustaches going up and down.  The establishing shots, both exterior and interior, set the scene beautifully.  The most innovative sequences occur when the crow tries desperately to prevent the thieves from taking the medicine.  Scribbles and even foam have been overlaid on top of the scene in order to depict the chaos of the fight in a dynamic fashion – I am guessing that as with Eastern European puppet films of this period (hugely influential on Okamoto throughout his career), and indeed as with Kihachirō Kawamoto’s early puppet films, this film was shot on the horizontal surface of an animation table with the camera looking down from above.  This would have allowed Okamoto to add depth and special effects on plates of glasses placed at different camera distances above the puppets.

Tadanari Okamoto Sakuhin Shu Vol.1

A Wonderful Medicine appears on the first DVD of the Collected Works of Tadanari Okamoto (JP only), which I reviewed for Midnight Eye.  This review belongs to my series on the Noburo Ofuji Award.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

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

Order from cdjapan

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

Order from cdjapan

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):