Two Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ, 1967)

In 1967, the experimental animator Yōji Kuri remade his 1960 animated short Two Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ).  This new version has the same basic plot as the original film, which I described in an earlier post.  It also has the same overall theme of theme of well-intentioned people with a desire to live in peace and harmony being thwarted by external forces (politics, war, communities) beyond their control.

Stylistic Differences

The original film was shot in black and white, but the 1967 version uses colour.  As is typical of Kuri, the colour is used sparingly.  Some of the scenes, such as the idyll of the couple’s island paradise before the invasion of technology and outsiders, more rendered more eye-catching by this stylistic choice.   The change in film stock also suggests that Kuri had a higher budget for this film. 

There are also differences in character design.  For the central protagonists, the couple, these changes are only minor:  they are now wearing hats and come to the island without their dog and their chickens.  The most startling difference is to the character design of the outsiders who invade in the island.  In the original version, it was an assorted mixture of men and women with no identifiable nationality.  In this second version, the invaders are bearded men dressed and are very obviously an ethnic Arab stereotype.  The men invade the island and use the scientist’s machine to produce women, with whom they pair off and create babies who help them take over the island.  

There was a lot of unrest in the Middle East in the 1960s – the Six-Day War occurred in 1967, for example.  I am not well versed enough on the Japanese perspective on the Middle East at this time to speculate on what Kuri was trying to say by using these characters but it makes for fascinating viewing.  Post-9/11 the image of a giant rocket sticking out of a skyscraper seems chillingly prescient.   It got me to wondering about what Kuri’s wartime experiences were.  I know from his official bio, that his father was a soldier and was absent for much of his childhood years.  He was also still living in his home prefecture of Fukui when the terrible earthquake struck that region in 1948.  I imagine the average person growing up in Japan in the 30s and 40s would be acutely aware of how external forces can affect a person’s life irrevocably.  

As for the animation itself, the movements in the 1967 version of Two Grilled Fish are smoother and the film has been more tightly edited.  Some of the shots in the original version lagged slightly.  My intuition tells me that the differences in editing can be mainly attributed to experience.  In 1960, Kuri had only just begun to experiment with animation as an artistic medium, but by 1967 he had at least two dozen films under his belt.  He also had the assistance of his protégée Taku Furukawa (Speed, Jyōkyō Monogatari) who had been under his mentorship since 1963 and would go on to become one of Japan’s top independent animators in his own right. 

The Soundtrack

Another significance difference between the two versions of Two Grilled Fish is the soundtrack.  The original film featured experimental sound designed by the avant-garde composer Kuniharu Akiyama with a narrated text by poet Shuntarō Tanikawa.  Although there is still a cutting edge element to this new soundtrack thanks to effects by Hiroshi Yamazaki, who also collaborated on Kuri’s films The Midnight Parasites (1973), the film has a completely different feel to it because of the addition of the pop song Sekai wa Futari no Tame ni (世界は二人のために / The World was Made for Only the Two of Us) sung by Naomi Sagara.  It is a very catchy song, with the theme matcheing perfectly to the animation.  As much as I like the poet Tanikawa, the narration in the first version did not really add much to the interpretation of the film --- and in general I prefer when animators use narration and dialogue sparingly.  The lilting of Sekai wa Futari no Tame ni when it is reprised at the end reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s ironic use of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” at the end of Dr. Strangelove (1964). 

Although it seems incongruent for Kuri to use a pop song when most of his films use avant-garde soundtracks, there is a subversive element to Naomi Sagara herself.  Sekai wa Futari no Tame ni was Sagara’s first hit song and marked the beginning of her successful recording and TV career.  Her career peaked during the 1970s when she appeared more than a dozen times on the Kōhaku Uta Gassen – the popular annual New Year’s Eve Special – an honour bestowed only on those who have “made it”.   She even hosted the programme five times (1972, 1974-7).  While this all indicates that she was mainstream, Sagara was subversive because of her gender ambiguity.  She has a deep singing voice which means she gets mistaken for being a young man – and she also dressed (and continues to dress) in a masculine way.  She rejected the miniskirts of the era in favour of suits and has always cut her hair short.  Despite these obvious signals about her sexuality, her lesbianism was a closely guarded secret until she was outed in 1980 by a bitter ex-girlfriend.  This caused her to leave the spotlight for a long time.  She apparently ran her family’s business for many years but is happily back in the spotlight these days not only as a recording artist but as a dog expert (see her book!).  I love her voice so I am a bit biased when I say that the song adds greatly to the appeal of the film.

International Audience

I suspect that the key reason behind much of the changes between the two versions of Two Grilled Fish has to do with the intended audience.  In 1960, Kuri was just testing the waters domestically with his unique brand of animation.  By 1967 he had an international audience for his works.  Thus, the 1967 version has English and French text instead of the Japanese of the original.  This is not just in the opening credits but also within the action of the film itself (ie the label on the entrance to the Ministry of Defense in the war scenes).  With an international audience in mind, Kuri also made two versions of Au Fou! (殺人狂時代 / Satsujin Kyōjidai)) – 1965 for the original and 1967 for the international version.  Kuri made a splash on the international festival scene in the early 1960s with his profile boosted significantly when he won the Special Jury Award at Annecy in 1963.  This new version of Two Grilled Fish won Kuri an award at Oberhausen in 1968.  He also won his second Noburo Ofuji Award at the Mainichi Concours in 1968 for Two Grilled Fish and The Room (部屋/Heya, 1967).

The film appears on the Universal Geneon DVD:

The Collected Works of Yoji Kuri

Read more about Kuri:

Clap Vocalism (1962)

Love (1963)

Musings on Yoji Kuri and Chair (1964)

Producer: Yoji Kuri

Animation:  Yoji Kuri and Taku Furukawa

Sound Effects:  Hiroshi Yamazaki

Song Composer: Taku Izumi

Song Lyrics: Michio Yamagami

Song Performed by: Naomi Sagara and the Victor Orchestra

Colouring:  Kazue Sasaki, Yoshiko Doi, Katsuko Igari, Hiromi Tsuda

Editing: Katsuko Igari

Recording:  Kojimachi Studio, 3A Kobo

Production Company: Kuri Jikken Manga Kobo

 Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

This review belongs to my series on the Noburo Ofuji Award:

Two Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ, 1960)

Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, b. 1928) made Two Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ/Nihiki no Sanma) in 1960, which was a seminal year in Japanese animation history. The first ever domestic anime, Three Tales (新しい動画 3つのはなし, 1960) was broadcast on the NHK in January and in November, the first experimental animation festival of the Animation Group of Three (Animation Sannin no Kai) – Yōji Kuri, Hiroshi Manabe, and Ryōhei Yanagihara – was held at Sōgetsu Hall.  The hall was at the heart of Tokyo’s dynamic avant-garde movement which embraced a variety of arts from music to the theatre, from sculpture to the cinema. 

With films like Clap Vocalism (人間動物園, 1962), which won prizes at Annecy and the Venice Biennale in 1963, and Two Grilled Fish, Kuri was to inspire a new wave of experimental animation both in Japan and internationally.  Two Grilled Fish screened at the second Animation Group of Three festival at Sōgetsu Hall on January 19^th, 1962.  Alternate English titles for this black and white cutout animation include “Two Fishes” and “Two Pikes”.  I have gone with the title that best matches the French of the official international title of Kuri’s 1967 colour remake of the film: Deux poissons grillés.  In the original Japanese title, “nihiki” is the counter for two small animals and “sanma” is a slender fish known variously in English as Pacific saury or mackerel pike.  It is a popular dish in Japan that is associated with the autumn months.  The most common way to prepare sanma is salted and grilled whole and served with daikon oroshi (finely grated daikon radish) and side dishes of rice and miso soup. 

Two Grilled Fish is adapted from Kuri’s self-published manga of the same name.   The soundtrack was designed by the avant-garde composer and poet Kuniharu Akiyama (秋山邦晴, 1929-96).  The soundtrack is a fascinating mixture of experimental sounds and funky jazz music.  Kuri then showed an early version of the animation to his friend, the renowned poet Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川俊太郎, b.1931), who wrote a text inspired by it.  This text is narrated by the actor Harukazu Kitami (北見治一, 1920-95).

Many of Yōji Kuri’s films avoid a narrative, but Two Grilled Fish is a kind of modern parable.  It tells the story of a man and a woman who go by raft to a remote desert island with chickens and a dog.  At first, it is a kind of paradise for them.  They farm and fish following the same routine every day, feasting on grilled sanma that they roast out in the open.  One day, their harmony gets interrupted by a mustachioed scientist on a raft powered by an abused pig.  This unwanted visitor constructs a robot which begins the process of industrialization on the island.  The couple are disgruntled but decide to put up with the man and his technology. 

Things take a turn for the worse when a crowded raft of men and women come to the island and violently take it over.  The couple move their home to their fishing dock and barricade themselves using barbed wire.  The newcomers multiply and take over the island at a rapid pace.  Soon, the island is overwhelmed with houses, which then transform into skyscrapers with cars spewing pollution.  The next phase of industrialization is warfare, with the island transforming into a fort to protect itself against missiles.  In the end, the island is destroyed, with the couple left of the tiny edge that remains. 

The film expresses the angst felt by the Japanese public in 1960.  1955-61 was a period of rapid economic growth for Japan in the run up to so-called the “Golden Sixties” and with the announcement in 1959 that Tokyo would host the 1964 Summer Olympics, plans to build the Tōkaidō Shinkansen – Japan’s first bullet train – and other infrastructure projects were fast tracked.  The faces of major cities in Japan, particularly Tokyo, were changing at a rapid rate.  While for some this economic prosperity may have been a positive thing, politically there was a lot of friction.  Just one year before Two Grilled Fish was made, protests broke out against Jana’s security treaty with the United States leading to the unseating of the Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.  There was much angst concerning the possibility of the Americans stockpiling nuclear weapons on the military installations in Japan.  Two Grilled Fish encapsulates both the sense of the growing environmental cost of industrialism and the Cold War fears of a nuclear war using minimalist animation armed with humour and a deep sense of irony.  The "two grilled fish" are a metaphor for the idealistic couple who desire a peaceful existence, yet the fruits of their hard work are constantly under threat from destructive forces beyond their control.

  

The film appears on the Universal Geneon DVD:

The Collected Works of Yoji Kuri

Read more about Kuri:

Clap Vocalism (1962)

Love (1963)

Musings on Yoji Kuri and Chair (1964)

 Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

The Sparrows’ Lodge (雀のお宿, 1936)

The surviving copy of the 1936 animated short The Sparrows’ Lodge (雀のお宿/Suzume no O-yado) that appears in Digital Meme’s box set the Japanese Anime Classic Collection is on the whole in remarkably good shape apart from missing its original opening credits.  Credits have been digitally added, crediting the film as being directed by Kenzō Masaoka (政岡 憲三, 1898-1988) with drawings by Masao Kumagawa (熊川正雄, 1916-2008) – both men are considered important pioneers of anime and worked together on a number of projects together including Masaoka’s classics Benkei vs. Ushiwaka (1939) and The Spider and the Tulip (1943).

The Story

 The film starts rather abruptly with the rather startling text telling us that the little girl Chunko has had her tongue cut out by her greedy grandmother and has been sent to the Sparrows’ Lodge.  Chunko’s kindly grandfather is concerned about her well-being and travels to the Sparrow’s Lodge to see how she is doing.  A Japanese audience would automatically recognize the tale as an adaptation of the well-known fable The Tongue-Cut Sparrow (舌切り/ Shita-kiri Suzume) which has been translated many times into English.

In Masaoka’s version, the sparrow has been transformed into a little girl who has been sent to some kind of a school or orphanage where the girls and their teacher dress in kimono with a sparrow hood.  Her tongue has not been fully cut out because she can speak.  She and the lodge offer the grandfather hospitality which he receives politely and he watches and enjoys the girls’ dance performance.  When it is time for him to leave, they offer him two trunks as a departing gift.  The grandfather is reluctant to take either one of the trunks, but fearful of being rude he agrees to take the lighter of the two trunks home with him.

When he arrives at home, the man is chastised by his wife for not taking the heavier trunk.  Her irritation grows upon opening the trunk and discovering that it is full of treasure.  She decides to go to the Sparrow’s Lodge herself in order to get the heavier trunk.  Upon arriving at the lodge, the grandmother receives the same hospitality as her husband but her reaction is different.  She rudely scarfs down all the food and drink offered to her, and ignores the dancing.  When it is time to go, she avariciously wants to take both trunks but as she cannot carry them both, takes only the heavy one.  She is so overwhelmed with greedy curiosity that she stops partway home to open the trunk and is given a nasty surprise. 

The Art

As with all of Masaoka and Kumagawa’s early work, The Sparrows’ Lodge has been impeccably drawn.  Apart from the nasty grandmother the characters all have round and friendly faces.  Unlike the full face of the kindly grandfather, the grandmother’s face is lean and scrunched as is fitting her character.  The depiction of interior spaces and landscapes follow a typical Japanese aesthetic.   From an animation perspective, I find the transitions particularly interesting.  In order to collapse time on the walks to and from the Sparrows’ Lodge, Masaoka uses a series of irises.  Dissolves are much more commonly used for this effect, but I suspect the production team went with iris wipes because it creates a similar effect using more paper than expensive celluloid.  The iris wipes drew my attention to the changing scenery – not only is it aesthetically pleasing but it emphasizes the effort involved in walking all the way to the Sparrows’ Lodge.

Another lovely touch is the little sparrow face in the border of the inter-titles.  One of my favourite things about silent movies is the variety of cleverly designed title cards.  The Digital Meme version of this film features the excellent benshi narrator Midori Sawato (澤登翠), whose performance, as  always, enhances this silent movie. There is also musical orchestration.  The film was produced by Oku Shōkai (奥商会) and distributed by Towa Shōji (東和商事映画部).  It’s a delightful little tale with a satisfying conclusion (a positive twist on the gory usual ending) – an excellent example of early anime.

For more films by Masaoka, check out the Anido DVD of his selected works.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Read more reviews of Masaoka’s works:

Benkei vs. Ushiwaka (1939) 

The Spider and the Tulip (1943)

Sakura (1946)

Tora-chan, the Abandoned Kitten (1947)