The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治, 1963)

The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治 / Wanpaku Ōji no Daija taiji, 1963) is the first feature film that I watched on my new Toshiba Satellite Ultrabook with its cinema-wide 21:9 ratio screen and it looked fantastic.  Directed by Yūgo Serikawa, Toei Dōga’s sixth animated feature film was shot using Toei’s anamorphic process Toeiscope (東映スコープ), whose slogan at the time was “Picture Size Three Times as Large; Interest One Hundred Times as Great” (Anderson/Richie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, p.252).  In so-doing, Toei Dōga was following in the steps of Walt Disney who had produced the first animated film in Cinemascope, Lady and the Tramp (1955), less than a decade earlier.  In terms of its unique art design and colour palette, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon has much more in common with Disney’s spectacular Sleeping Beauty (1958) which was the first animated film shot using the Super Technirama 70 widescreen process.  The epic scope of the story is in keeping with the trend of the times.  I’m thinking of the classic Hollywood epics of the 1950s and 60s, such as The Robe (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and El Cid (1961), which all employed widescreen technologies and spectacular colours in order to keep cinema competitive against the threat of the new medium of television.

Ichirō Ikeda and Takashi Iijima’s screenplay is an adaptation of various mythological stories surrounding Susanō (voiced by Morio Kazama, at the time going by his birth name, Tomohito Sumita), the Shintō god of the sea and storms.  Many of the key details of the stories are unchanged from how they appeared in the original sources (the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki), but others have been altered or modernized.  One of the main reason for the changes is that children were the target audience, thus many salacious and grotesque details were excised and the stories have been repackaged as the childhood exploits of Susanō.  According to legend, Susanō was the youngest child of the gods of creation, Izanagi (Setsuo Shinoda) and Izanami (Mitsuko Tomobe).  He was reputedly brave; however, his quick-temper would often get him into trouble.

Susanō’s hot-headed nature is established in the opening scenes of the film in which he plays with his friends in the form anthropomorphic animals.  Talking animals are a modern twist to the Susanō story. This may have been influenced by Disney, but certainly anthropomorphic animals appeared in early pre-war anime as well.  Susanō’s sidekick, the rabbit Akahana (literally “red nose”, voiced by Chiharu Kuri), is being chased by a tiger and Susanō comes to his rescue. The young boy almost loses his temper completely with the tiger but his mother, Izanami, intervenes.  The loving bond between mother and child is illustrated with a bathing scene where Izanami washes her son and sings a sweet song to him.  Their actions are mirrored by a tanuki mother and child.   

Susanō’s idyllic childhood comes to a sudden halt when he learns of his mother’s death.  He refuses to accept that she has passed on and in spite of his father’s protests, Susanō sets off to sea with Akahana determined to recover his mother from the Underworld.  His adventures, which are punctuated by dramatic fight sequences with a giant fish and a fire god, take Susanō to visit his brother Tsukuyomi (Hideo Kinoshita), the moon god, in his crystal palace and later to his sister Amaterasu (Noriko Shindō), the sun goddess, where the famous story of the cave takes place.   Because of the trouble Susanō causes Amaterasu, he is asked to leave her realm which leads to climax of the film:  the tale of Yamata no Orochi, the eight-headed dragon.  Susanō meets Kushinada-hime (Yukiko Okada) and learns of the sad fate of her sisters who have been sacrificed to Yamata no Orochi.  Susanō’s fight with the giant beast is one of the most visually dynamic fight scenes in all of anime history, which was principally animated by Yasuo Otsuka and Sadao Tsukioka (Learn more about this scene from: Anipages)

This is the first Japanese animation to formally introduce the role of animation director, who in this case was the legendary Yasuji Mori (filmography).  As animation director, Mori would have supervised all the work done by the key animators (Hideo Furusawa, Masao Kumagawa, Yasuo Ōtsuka, Daikichirō Kusube, Makoto Nagasawa, Chikao Katsui, Yōichi Kotabe, Masatake Kita) in order to correct any errors and maintain continuity.  I associate Mori with the idealised animal characters of Magic Boy (少年猿飛佐助, 1959) and Fables of the Green Forest (山ねずみロッキーチャック, 1973), but this film has a unique look that makes it stand out among other animation of this era.  The central characters (Susanō, Kushinada-hime, Akahana, the Tiger) have broad heads, except for Izanami and Amaterasu who have the more typical idealized doll-like oval heads.  The most unique character designs are the angular ones of Tsukuyomi and his people who look as though they have been hewn from blocks of ice.  (See the Ghibli Blog for original character sketches).

Romantic pastels are a rarity in the mostly high contrast colour palette of this film.  Although the choice of colours and many of the character designs are typical of early to mid-century illustration and animation art, the composition of the widescreen frames seems heavily influenced by traditional Japanese aesthetics.   Frames are not composed according to Western principles as used by Disney, but according to the Japanese aesthetic as seen in art such as sansui-ga and woodblock prints.  From a filmic perspective, the innovative variety of shots from extreme close-ups to extreme high angles keep the spectator actively engaged from start to finish. 

Another element that makes this one of the top anime of all time is the dramatic score.   It was composed and arranged by Akira Ifukube, of Godzilla fame.  He really was the ideal choice for a Shintō epic for he had both a deep knowledge of traditional Japanese and Ainu music (his father was a Shintō priest in Hokkaido) and was inspired to become a composer after hearing a radio performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (coincidentally used in Fantasia).  It is a wonderful score – which can be enjoyed on its own as an audio track as well as with the visuals.  His soundtrack would easily make my list of top ten animated feature film soundtracks of the 20^th century. 

Akira Ifukube no Geijutsu 7

Tetsuji Honna, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra

Wanpaku Ouji no Daija Taiji

The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon won Toei Dōga the Noburo Ofuji Award for 1963 – the only feature length film to do so until Hayao Miyazaki won for Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979).  Among those in the anime industry in Japan, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon is considered one of the best anime of all time.  It ranked 10^th in the Laputa Top 150 Japanese and World Animation survey (2003).  It is available on DVD (JP only).

©Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  Noburo Ofuji Award series.

A Wind Egg (空の卵, 2012)

Priest: If men don't trust each other, this earth might as well be hell.

Commoner: Right. The world's a kind of hell.

Priest: No! I don't want to believe that!

Commoner: No one will hear you, no matter how loud you shout. 

Just think. Which one of these stories do you believe?

Woodcutter: None makes any sense.

Commoner: Don't worry about it. It isn't as if men were reasonable.

- scene from Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

I was reminded of Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon while watching the latest film by young CALF animator Ryo Ōkawara:  A Wind Egg (空の卵 / Kara no Tamago, 2012).   Just as the plot of Rashomon circles around an act of senseless violence, so too this animation centres on violence of a most disturbing nature.  A Wind Egg also employs a Rashomon narrative structure with the story being told in fragments from five different points of view.  However, in this case the story is told purely with visuals, music, and sound effects --- no dialogue whatsoever.

Summary

The animation opens with an act of violence: we see the boy from the point-of-view of his abuser as he suddenly gets slapped hard twice across the face.  The opening credits are followed by an establishing shot of a desolate grey farm and  then a close-up of a rooster crowing.  The animation then cuts to the first of five POV vignettes.  The vignettes show fragments of the same period of time.  It is only when they have all been viewed that one can piece together the order of the events that take place.

The Father (父/chichi)

A red nosed, unshaven, aggressive-looking man examines eggs in a shed. He scowls suspiciously from side to side, as if making sure that he is alone, then he furtively caresses and kisses one of the eggs.  He licks the egg lasciviously before being startled by the door opening.  The mother comes in with a box of eggs and drops them ungraciously on table.  He glares at her, quivering with resentment.  The boy’s face pops up from his hiding place under the table.

The Younger Sister (妹/imōto)

With her crazy smile, the younger sister spies on her family.  She grins madly upon witnessing her brother being struck by their father.  The younger sister crawls up the wall like a spider to watch her mother entering the shed.  She shivers in the window and witnesses her brother falling from the sky.

The Mother (母/haha)

The mother walks from the hen house to the shed.  An egg falls from her basket in slow motion to the ground.  Reprise of the scene in shed from her perspective.  She goes outside and strips off her clothes. There is a surreal dream sequence which draws a parallel between the caressing of the egg and sex which ends with the man licking the egg and the boy jumping from the roof.

The Boy (少年/shōnen)

The boy sits in the cage with the chickens.  He watches one defecate and picks it up, puts it in his mouth, chews on it, then spits it out.  He watches geese flying overhead then sinks into the earth.  He watches his mother from the roof as she walks from the hen house to the shed.  He then witnesses his mother enter chicken coop and attack a chicken. He dives off of house.

The Family (家族/kazoku)

This final vignette brings more elements of the story together. We see the full context of the boy hiding under his father’s table, his sister tattling on him then laughing wildly as the father strikes the boy and throws him into an empty shed.  The boy has an egg with him.  The egg hatches a miniature Doppelgänger of the boy.  A final surreal montage: whispering into the ear, a scream, a crazy dinner table scene, the zipping of the mouth, a family in chaos.  .  . the boy on the rooftop in the shape of rooster with glasses on.  .  .  does he fall to his death or fly to his freedom?    

Style

This is Ōkawara’s graduation film for the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) graduate animation programme and his first in which he experiments with narrative form.  His earlier animated shorts were more conceptual.  Orchestra (2008), which he co-directed with fellow students Masaki Okuda and Yutaro Ogara, and Animal Dance (2009) bring music and movement together in a way reminiscent of the works of Norman McLaren, and insomniac (2008) visually depicts the way sounds and images clutter the mind and prevent sleep.

Stylistically, A Wind Egg, has much in common with the works of his Geidai mentor Kōji Yamamura.  The grey washed backgrounds and layering of the image with paint flecks during the dream (or rather nightmare) sequence are reminiscent of the techniques used by Yamamura in films like Mt. Head (2002) and Muybridge’s Strings (2011). Colour is kept to a minimal with grey and black being the predominant hues.  

Theme of Abuse

A Wind Egg played at Nippon Connection 2013 as part of the omnibus of Geidai films presented by Prof. Mitsuko Okamoto.  The audience at Nippon Connection has been following the Japanese independent scene for the past decade and there has been much discussion in recent years about the prevalence of abuse and violence in animation by young independent filmmakers.  This trend includes the films of Saori Shiroki – particularly MAGGOT (2007) and The Woman Who Stole Fingers (2010) – and Kei Oyama (Hand Soap, 2008), and Atsushi Wada’s Gentle Whistle, Bird and Stone (2010). 

I cannot speculate on if this reflects anything about modern Japanese society; however, I do believe the personal nature of independent animation allows for artists to address these darker issues of human nature.  I have long been of the opinion that animation has the power to address subject matter that is too difficult for viewers to witness with live action – Renzō and Sayoko Kinoshita’s Pica-don (1978) and Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) are two films that automatically spring to mind. 

Just as Pica-don and Grave of the Fireflies deal with the trauma of inhumane wartime violence, A Wind Egg takes on the deeply confronting issues surrounding the trauma caused by sexual perversion and domestic violence within the family unit.  The fractured nature of the narrative is indicative of the way in which abuse – be it psychological, sexual or physical – disrupts family life and traumatizes its victims.  Initially, this film appears to be full of despair, but upon further reflection there is indeed a glimmer of hope at the end.  Eggs are symbolic of birth and creation, and roosters are associated with Amaterasu, the Shintō goddess of the sun.  Perhaps the boy has indeed been reborn at the end of the film and is indeed flapping his way into a brighter future. 

A Wind Egg won the Lotte Reiniger Promotion Award for Animated Film at the Stuttgart Trickfilm Festival.  It appears on the DVD Geidai Animation 3^rd Graduate Works 2012.  You can follow Ryo Okawara on Twitter.

#nippon13 #nc2013

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Japan in Germany 12: Hokkaidokürbis

Since moving to the Hessian countryside from Tokyo in 2007, my German husband and I have been amused every autumn to see the Hokkaidokürbis (lit. Hokkaido pumpkin aka kuri kabocha  栗カボチャ) go on sale.  .  .  and not only for the cute extra emphasis Germans put on the letter “i” when they say “Ho–ka–ee–do”.  Having traversed the width and breadth of Hokkaido, we had never seen this onion-shaped, relatively small dark orange pumpkin either on sale or growing in Japan’s northernmost island.  The majority of pumpkin growing does indeed take place in Hokkaido but the dark green kabocha (かぼちゃ) and the larger orange pumpkin associated with Halloween are the most commonly seen in Japanese supermarkets.  Whenever we have Japanese guests in the fall and winter months, I serve them the a dish made with Hokkaidokürbis and they are inevitably also amused when we tell them what the Germans call the winter squash.  My curiosity was further piqued by the fact that Hokkaidokürbis only has dedicated Wikipedia pages in German, French (potimarron), and English (red kuri squash)

Carving a pumpkin with my kids in Nishikata (Bunkyo-ku) in October 2006

This year, I decided to satisfy my curiosity by doing some research into the Hokkaidokürbis.  First, the riddle of how my husband, a botanist who grew up here in Germany, was unfamiliar with this variety of squash.  Squash, apparently, was not as common on the table of his childhood home in Lower Saxony as it was for me growing up in Canada.  It also turns out that the Hokkaidokürbis variety of squash was introduced to Europe in the 1990s – a decade in which my husband had begun to spend extended periods of time studying or doing research in Hokkaido.  I guess it just hadn’t become fashionable yet among his student friends in Marburg during the times he was on home soil.

 

Red kuri squash bread - the "Orange Revolution" (Gießen, October 2013)

Hokkaidokürbisbort (red kuri squash bread) from Siebenkorn.

Next, the question of the origins of the Hokkaidokürbis itself.  Obviously, pumpkins are not native to Japan.  Winter squash come from the Americas and did not even make their way to Europe until sometime after 1492.  According to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine, the first pumpkin to make its way to Japan was the Hubbard squash (known in Japan as Masakari kabocha) in 1878.  It was introduced to farmers in Hokkaido by American agricultural experts, but the locals were not satisfied with the qualities of the humble Hubbard squash.  They cultivated the squash from dark green-blue into a bright blood orange colour which they named Kuri aji (Cucurbita maxima convar Hubbardiana).  “Kuri” means chestnut and “aji” means taste – hence the French name potimarron (“poti” from potiron=pumpkin; marron=chestnut).  And indeed, the Hokkaidokürbis does have a nutty flavour to it.  Trawling around the internet, I found a similar looking pumpkin on Yasai Navi that goes by the name Akaikuru-kuri-kabocha (赤皮栗かぼちゃ) – literally red-skinned chestnut pumpkin. 

I must admit that I do like the flavour of and diversity of uses for the Hokkaidokürbis.  As much as I enjoy kabocha, the mild, nutty taste of the Hokkaidokürbis has really grown on me.  As I discover just how flexible the squash is for cooking, it has even begun to surpass my heretofore favourite squash – the cream-coloured butternut squash (バタ—ナッツ) – in my affections.  Its medium size (1 to 2kg) makes it perfect for soup for 4-5 people.  It holds its form well and with its bright red-orange skin it looks lovely in a risotto or other mixed dish.  It also bakes well in the oven.  Now that I’ve come to know the pumpkin here in Germany, I’m actually surprised that is a specialty variety in Japan itself.  I think with a bit of marketing behind it, the beautiful and delicious red kuri squash could give dark green kabocha a run for its money.  

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013