Youth (青春 / Seishun, 2008)

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind.  .  .

For her first stop motion animation, the young puppet animator Aki Kōno (河野亜季, b. 1985) was inspired by the famous poem “Youth” by Samuel Ullman (1840-1924).  In the tradition of Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata” (1927) or Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (1916), Ullman’s “Youth” teaches a kind of Horatian Carpe diem philosophy on how life should be lived.

Ullman, a German Jew who immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a boy and served in the Confederate Army, is a rare example of a poet who is not that well known in the English-speaking world but has a high degree of fame in Japan.  His poem “Youth” was brought to Japan by General Douglas MacArthur, who kept a framed copy of the poem on the wall of his Tokyo office during the Occupation of Japan and regularly quoted the poem in his speeches. 

According to Margaret England Armbrester, a Japanese businessman by the name of Yoshio Okada read about MacArthur’s love of the poem in the December 1945 issue of Reader’s Digest.  He found the poem very moving and translated it into Japanese to display in his own office.  Through word of mouth, the poem eventually gained renown in the Japanese media and became quite popular (Samuel Ullman and “Youth”: the Life, the Legacy, 1993, p. ix).  The poem remains much loved by Japanese businessmen.  In fact, co-founder of Sony Akio Morita (1921-99) and a number of other prominent Japanese executives were instrumental in saving Ullman’s Birmingham, Alabama home and turning it into a museum (See: Akio Morita Library).  The Birmingham Boys Choir even went to Japan in 2009 and performed a song version of the poem for audiences there.

There was more than one version of the poem, but the following is considered the standard:

Youth

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

Source: Samuel Ullman Museum, Birmingham, Alabama

Aki Kōno’s puppet animation is set during the Second World War.  An active soldier dies (possibly kills himself?) and his comrade finds him with a letter to his mother clutched in his hand.  The injured comrade takes the letter to the man’s mother but he unknowingly just misses seeing her as she walks in her geta-clad feet in the opposite direction down the street.  He sees posters advertising a Pierrot performance for children and as the mother is not at home he decides to watch the show.  He enjoys the Pierrot performance so much that it moves him to tears, for the horror of war has meant that he had almost forgotten how to smile.  When he later calls again at the elderly mother’s house he suddenly realizes that she is the actor behind Pierrot.  The film’s poignant message is that age does not matter when one is young at heart – or in the words of Ullman: “Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind.”

The animated short has no dialogue, though Kōno does impart additional story information using occasional inter-titles.  The lack of dialogue matches well with the Pierrot theme.  The nostalgic atmosphere of the film is created subtly with two songs: a haunting rendition of the Kyūshū folk song “Itsuki Lullaby” (五木の子寺唄/Itsuki no Komoriuta) sung by Hideko Seno, and the melancholy strains of Claude Debussy’s “Claire de lune” (piano for both songs: Misaki Takada).  The expressive puppets are beautifully crafted and the puppet movements are excellent for such a young animator. 

Aki Kōno made Youth during her undergraduate studies at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto (2008).  She went on to do her graduate studies at Tokyo Univeristy of the Arts where she made a beautiful silhouette animation called Promise (約束 / Yakusoku, 2011).  Check out her website to learn more about her animation, illustration, and other art projects.  She has posted the film on Youtube:

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