When I first discovered the
animation of Shiho Hirayama (平山志保), b. 1979 in 2009, I was delighted by the simplicity
and humour of her works. She has a great
eye for movement and the transitions in her short line drawing film Swimming (2008) are delightful in their
gracefulness and originality.
With Sound of Life (生活の音, 2010), Hirayama adds the
three-dimensionality of claymation to her trademark line drawing animation
style. Sound of Life is an example of
how animation can make the ordinary extraordinary and cause us to think about
our lives from a new perspective. I was
reminded of Nick Park’s Creature Comforts (1989), which
animated interviews with people about their daily lives, transforming ordinary people
into claymation animals living in enclosures at the zoo. Sound
of Life does not use interviews or dialogue, but instead the soundtrack
consists of the noises that one encounters in the course of the day. The soundtrack blends documentary sound with musical
interpretation of the soundtrack of our lives (piano, synth) which Hirayama
mixed herself.
The film begins in a minimalistic way:
three children kicking a ball around in an undefined public space. A woman joins the scene and picks up the clay
ball and looks at it and the scene shifts to a moving walkway (of the kind one
might find in extra long corridors when changing trains in central Tokyo)
complete with the soft female voice that warns you to watch your step. Bustling crowds where the line drawn people’s
hair has been replaced with colourful clay.
Blue clay fills the screen, as if replicating the slightly
claustrophobic feeling of being caught up in a crowd.
There’s a lovely sequence of people boarding
a train, with the clay filling the windows of the train. The train’s departure is captured with the
blurring movement of the clay, and then Hirayama transitions into a scene of motorcycles
on the street. She ease with which
Hirayama changes perspective and scene recalls the great master of changing
perspective, Georges Schitzgebel.
From traffic noises and road repair
drilling to the more subtle sounds of the wind in the trees or the more mundane
sounds of a taxi driver yawning as he waits at an intersection with his turn
indicator on, Hirayama draws our attention to the sounds of everyday life that we
might otherwise ignore. The animation
movement and the amount of clay used onscreen increases as the soundtrack becomes
more filled with music/sound. Soon there are no
more line drawings left, but the screen fills with clay sequences depicting a
bird feeding its young, a mother with an infant, and the film returns to the
image it began with: children playing with a ball. The boys remain faceless, but the screen is full
of colour this time. The closing credits
are played over an abstract sequence of clay colourfully moving and shifting as
if powered by the forces of nature.
It is an uplifting experience to
watch Sound of Life as the film
reminds us not only of how our lives are all interconnected by our shared
experiences of sound, but also how the sounds that make up our everyday lives can
affect our mood and general well being. With
so many people today blocking out the sounds of life by listening to music or
podcasts on their portable devices, Sound
of Life draws attention to the simple pleasures of listening and being aware
of the environment in which we live.
Hiroco Ichinose’s quirky animated shorts have been delighting festival audiences since
2006. The Last Breakfast (2006), Ha・P (2008), and Cow’s Day (2009) combine stylistic sparseness with a touch
of the surreal much like the films of her mentor Taku Furukawa.
Her most recent independent work, Two Tea Two,
has a very tactile feel to it, with its inky lines drawn on a textured
paper. An alarm clock rings, awakening a
long-haired woman with an angular face sleeping naked in her bed. She tilts her head and contorts herself into
a round shape, as if stretching her body awake.
She rushes off-screen and we hear a door close. She reappears again in a loose fitting
dress. The sound suggests she is now on
a public street and we see her gaze in a window, her face reflecting in a
window as if she were a two-headed creature as she observes a cup of tea.
Cut to the woman seated in a low
chair, her body oversized and contorted, as she tries to drink from her tea
cup. She looks up and a lovely short
sequence unfolds in which we see traces of the world outside the café window –
black ink on yellow paper. A shadow of
another female figure appears outside the window looking in at our
protagonist. Two women or the woman’s
face reflected in the window? She tilts
her head inspecting the reflection of herself.
When she straightens, her mirror image remains contorted. She pokes the contorted mirror image of
herself and the mirror image rounds into her chubby form again, knocking the
lid off the sugar dish as she floats to the other side of the table. A small insect spreads its wings and scurries
past the sugar dish.
We now have two identical women – or
the same woman reflected – sitting in low chairs facing each other, with the
coffee table hidden under the tangle of their long legs in high-heeled shoes. They stare at each other, steaming tea cups
in their hands. In a split screen, the
mirror image appears to speak to her original.
The woman with her bare shoulders above the red dress now stands in a storm, her long black hair streaming to the side in
the wind. A second head and long neck
appear – a two headed woman staring at the audience. She then curls herself into a ball and floats
away.
Back in the café, the winged insect wanders
around a stray sugar cube on the table.
It splits in half then reforms before munching on the sugar cube. The chubby version of the woman jumps past
the cashier with a chink of change hitting the counter, then sheds her clothes
as she jumps off screen. A door squeaks
as it closes on the vignette. The alarm
clock rings as the end credits roll. The
animated short finishes with a reprise of the city setting and the woman
jumping to the coffee table in her two-headed form.
For me, Two Tea Two captures the ambivalent relationship many women have
with their bodies. Rationally we may have
come to terms with our physical selves, but first thing in the morning,
pre-tea/coffee and depending on what phase of lunar cycle it is, our bodies may
feel heavy and bloated. Looking bleary
eyed in the mirror or at one’s reflection in a café window first thing in the
morning, it is not unusual for a woman to search her own face as if it were a
stranger’s, trying to reconcile our external selves with our internal selves.
I love the little touches in this
animated short of the action of city life passing by in fragments, and I
identify with the feeling of being elephantine and klutzy in a tiny café. This is a nice film to watch together with Aico Kitamura’s Getting
Dressed (2010) as both films explore the relationship between a woman’s
physical self and her state of mind.
Hiroco Ichinose (瀬皓コ, b. 1984) is, together with her husband Tomoyoshi Joko, one half of the creative animation team Decovocal. She is
a graduate of the animation department of Tokyo Polytechnic University, where
she has taught part time since 2009. In
addition to her independent animated shorts, Ichinose has worked on commercial
animation including the Rita and Whatsit
and Bee TV animated TV series.
The artistic response to the devastation wrought by the Tohoku earthquake
and the ensuing tsunami and nuclear fallout at Fukushima over the past year has
been immense. The Yamagata International
Documentary festival was inundated
with documentaries addressing a wide range of responses to the events of
March 11, 2011. Some artists, such as TOCHKA
have become directly involved in the effort to restore a sense of normalcy to
the lives of the people of the region.
One of the most profound responses to the disaster is Isamu
Hirabayashi’s Noburo Ofuji Award winning animated short 663114 (2011). The environment and the problematic nature of
the relationship of human being to the environment has been a recurring theme
in Hirabayashi’s experimental films from the highly allusive piece A Story Constructed of 17 Pieces of Space
and 1 Maggot (2007) to the overtly political Conversations with Nature (2005).
The title looks like a code, but it is actually a collection of
significant numbers. The Fukushima
disaster occurred 66 years after the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. 3/11 marks the date of the
Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and 4 are the number of reactors that were
damaged at Fukushima Daiichi.
On the surface, 663114, is
a simple, straightforward animation, but upon closer
examination one finds that it has as many layers as a tree has rings. An ancient cicada crawls slowly up a vertical
surface, which we learn through the first person narration is representative of
a tree. The tree’s surface is decorated
with inkan (印鑑), the familiar red stamps that are used in lieu of signatures in
Japan. The cicada tells us that he is 66
years old, born the film implies, at the time of the atom bomb.
In addition to being spoken aloud in a deep, guttural, masculine voice, the
narration also appears in shaky, black handwritten English:
Once every 66 years,
I emerge from the ground, leave offspring and die.
Before mating,
I shed my hard shell at the risk of my life.
Our ancestors have continued this cycle countless times.
The soil of this country is very fit for us to live in.
It is free of strong pesticides and there are no landmines.
The water is delicious so the sap is delicious as well.
I will climb as high as I can.
Aiming higher and higher.
It is our natural instinct.
To survive and leave offspring.
Since the moment of shedding skin is life risking.
We choose a tree that is tall, sturdy and won’t shake that much.
Our ancestors have continued this cycle countless times.
Through the various hardships.
Though slow, the cicada’s pace is steady and its movements repetitive. In contrast to the reassuring movements of
the cicada and its narration, the music and groaning voices of the soundtrack
create a growing sense of unease. Soon,
the cicada pauses and begins to moult. Just
when he is at his most vulnerable, moments after emerging from his skin, the
earthquake strikes. The vertical
surfaces representing the tree are thrown off kilter, and many of the red inkan stamps go flying.
The cicada, resilient creature that he is, has survived this initial
onslaught by clinging to his shed skin.
He says that he needs to stretch his wings as soon as possible, but
before he can do so the tsunami strikes.
Black waves resembling claws reach out towards the cicada and soon the
screen is awash with black undulating waves. The terror of the tsunami is expressed on the
soundtrack in guttural growls and the haunting cries of voices that are
suggestive of the thousands of innocent victims of this natural catastrophe.
The waves recede and the cicada, though injured, still clings on
with one remaining leg to the damaged husk of his shed skin. “I won’t die” the cicada declares, determined
to survive and leave offspring as his ancestors did before him. A buzzing sound announces the arrival of a
black, inky cloud signifying the radiation from the manmade nuclear
disaster.
Black rain and deep-voiced throat singing accompany the closing
credit sequence. When the rain has
passed and the credits are complete, the screen goes black and then reprises
the opening credit sequence. However this
time the inkan stamps are muddled
together and blurred, and the voice is no longer deep and masculine but
distorted and echoing. We hear the
approach of the cicada before we see him this time, and when he appears on
screen we see that he has been altered beyond all recognition by the nuclear
disaster.
I am a 66 year cicada.
Once every 66 years,
I emerge from the ground, leave
offspring and die.
66 years ago, when I was born
I’ve heard that there was a big
earthquake and a big tsunami.
There was also a big accident.
I will risk my life to shed this
hard shell before mating.
Our ancestors have continued this
cycle countless times.
The soil of this country is very fit
for us to live in.
I love this country.
It is significant that Hirabayashi chose a cicada to represent the
living creatures, human and otherwise, of Japan. Insects hold a special place in the hearts of
the Japanese, and the cicadas are one of the important signifiers of
summer. One cannot imagine a summer in
Japan without the song of the cicadas and children delight in discovering and
examining the skins of the cicadas when they moult. It is a symbol of reincarnation, appearing
metaphorically in many significant works of literature such as The Tale of Genji. Cicadas are also a symbol of longevity as
they are one of the longest living insects who spend much of their life cycle
underground (normally 2-5 years).
The film looks like a cutout film made of washi paper and ink, but Hirabayashi made it using images and
textures that he found on the internet. The
inkan stamps on the surface of the tree
are metaphorically significant in the film.
In Western culture, we do still use rubber stamps to make documents
official, and this tradition gave rise to the English idiom “to rubber stamp”
something, which is usually used to describe a bureaucrat approving something
automatically without proper consideration.
In Japan, the stamp culture runs even deeper with individuals, artists,
and corporations all using stamps as their signature.
When watching 663114 the
first time, I was reminded of the common hanko (判子) stamp that one
would use to sign for the post, or to sign into work, and I thought that each of the stamps stood for
individuals affected by the disaster.
But then I realized many of the red stamps were more complex than the kind used
by individuals so I contacted Hirabayashi to ask him about their
significance. Hirabayashi told me that
the inkan are a metaphor for
contracts [of the kind we would call “red tape” in English]. He went on to explain that after the war in
Japan contracts have been given preference over the feelings of people. In the aftermath of Fukushima, he feels that this bad
attitude has risen to the surface.
Therefore, the red stamps in 663114
represent the negative force of bureaucracy, the rules that govern a society,
in contrast to the enduring life force of the cicada, who struggles to survive
at any cost. It is a powerful film, and
although it addresses a very specific Japanese historical moment, the
universality of its message has not been lost on international festival
audiences. It received a warm reception
at last year’s Viennale and it also got a special mention in the Generation
Section at the Berlinale. The jury in
this division 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."
The soundtrack of the film is an artwork all of its own. It was composed by Osaka-based sound producer
Takashi Watanabe. During the Viennale press conference for 663114, Watanabe explained that they
approached the soundtrack as if it would be an offering to a temple. He looked to Buddhism and Shintoism in his
desire to create a new kind of sacred music.
Keitarō Iijima (Studio 301),
the sound producer on 663114,
explained that they used Japanese food for making the soundtrack including
nattō (fermented soybeans), dried Japanese noodles and also cabbage. He echoed Watanabe’s sentiments about the
sacredness of the project for them, emphasizing that he tried to have a sense
of respect for the food that they used throughout the production.
