International Animation Day in Japan

International Animation Day in Japan

October 28th, 1892 marks the occasion when Émile Reynaud (1844 - 1918) presented the first public animation screening at the Musée Grévin in Paris.  Since 2002, ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d'Animation / the  International Animated Film Association) has celebrated this historic occasion as International Animation Day (IAD) with the goal of promoting and developing animation art all over the world simultaneously.  Too date, the event has been celebrated in over 40 countries. 

Each year, ASIFA asks a famous director to create the poster design for the IAD.  Poster design artists have included Daniela Bak, Iouri Tcherenkov, Eric Ledune, Paul Driessen, Noureddin Zarrinkelk, Abi Feijo, Michel Ocelot, Nina Paley, Raoul Servais, Ihab Shaker and Gianluigi Toccafondo.  This year’s poster has been designed by Oscar-nominated animator Kōji Yamamura (Mt. Head, Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor, Muybridge’s Strings).    

IAD 2014 in Japan will be held throughout October and November in three cities – Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Osaka (details and links below). The screenings will showcase inspiring animation films from Japan and overseas.  ASIFA JAPAN also makes available 3 DVDs of innovative Japanese animation shorts for ASIFA screenings abroad.

IAD 2014 in Kyoto (info)

October 31st, at 17:00-19:30

Eizo Hall in the Art and Culture Information Centre

Kyoto University of Art and Design.

IAD 2014 in Osaka (info)

November 6th

Osaka Designer’s College

IAD 2014 in Hiroshima (info)

October – November

Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library (Eizo Bunka Library)

+ eight public facilities in each of the eight wards in Hiroshima.

琉球王国 Made in Okinawa (2004)

When Renzō Kinoshita (木下蓮三, 1936 - 1997) passed away in 1997 at the early age of 60, he left behind an unfinished project called Ryūkyū Ōkoku – Made in Okinawa (琉球王国 – Made in Okinawa, 2004) dedicated to the history and people of the Ryūkyū Islands of Okinawa Prefecture.  The storyboard for the animated short was completed in 1996, and after his death his wife Sayoko Kinoshita (木下小夜子, b. 1945) completed the film. (Source: ASIFA JAPAN).  This animated 'documentary' short, which was shot on 35mm, played widely at international film and animation festivals from 2005-2007, and since then has shown at ASIFA screenings (Source: ASIFA JAPAN) at events such as International Animation Day. 

In a prologue to the title screen, the film presents a beautiful cutout sequence of the sea – the defining element of Okinawan island culture – along with other significant symbols of Okinawan culture.  A red-cheeked god, nanachi-bushi (the Big Dipper / Ursa Major), a traditional fan, the rising of the red sun out of the sea: these images all culminate with the face of the Ryūkyū god of nature in white dress.  He looks directly into the camera, as if to challenge the spectator to think carefully about the culture and history of these islands. He places his hands on a palm tree and its leaves flourish.  The sequence ends with a sequence of fish in their plenitude.

A Ryūkyū man dressed in a traditional bashōfu (芭蕉布 / banana plant cloth) kimono lies on the beach looking out to the sea.  As he lies there, we witness the passage of time on the islands.  At first there is peace and time seems to move slowly.  Only the music and the occasional movements of the man indicate the passage of time.  Finally a man carrying water passes by, followed by other people representative of times past: market vendors, peasants, the red-cheeked god dancing at a matsuri (festival).  But as the film progresses, the islands prove to be the meeting place of many cultures.

Okinawa has long been strategically important due to its central position in the East China Sea.  With Japan and Korea to the north, Taiwan and the Philippines to the south, and China to the west, the Ryūkyū were (and still are) significant for both for sea-going trade and political control in the region.  The Kinoshitas depict boats with various flags passing the islands, and present a montage of the cultural influences on Okinawan life.  This ranges from the benign (countries who want to trade with the people of the Ryūkyū Islands) to the threatening (countries who invaded/colonised the region).

The film is a great tool for teaching Okinawan history to secondary school children and university students, for there are visual references to many key historical events.  These include trade with the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the invasion of Ryūkyū Kingdom by the Satsuma Clan (1609) during the early days of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868), the Ryūkyūan missions to Edo (琉球江戸上り / Ryūkyū Edo Nobori) following the invasion, and the landing of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry at Naha Port on May 26, 1853.

The montage of events becomes more intense as the region enters the modern era beginning with the advent of the Meiji Period (1968-1912), which saw the abolition of the Ryūkyū Clan and establishment of Okinawa Prefecture (1879). The animated short also depicts the Crown Prince of Japan (Hirohito) visiting Okinawa briefly in 1921 at the outset of his famous extended tour of Europe.  The most dramatic sequences concern the terrible events experienced by Okinawans during the Second World War and the American Occupation of the islands.  Historical events are not presented in a strictly chronological order, but are often juxtaposed against past and future events in a complex way that provokes debate and critique. 

In conclusion, the film raises questions about the modernisation of Okinawa and leaves the audience much to consider regarding the region’s future.  As in their earlier films, particularly Pica-don (ピカドン, 1978) and The Last Air Raid Kumagaya (最後の空襲くまがや, 1993), the Kinoshitas do not shy away from presenting the harsh realities of the atrocities that have occurred in Okinawa.  The horrors of the Battle of Okinawa and the notorious forced mass suicides are difficult to watch, but clearly necessary to understanding the ongoing frictions between Okinawa and the Japanese government.  Although they are Japanese from Osaka and Tokyo respectively, Renzō and Sayoko Kinoshita clearly sympathize with the plight of the Okinawan people and the film expresses their desire for a peaceful future for the islands.   

Credits:

Directors:

Renzō Kinoshita

Sayoko Kinoshita

Producer:

Sayoko Kinoshita

Studio Lotus

Music:

Reijiro Koraku

Music Producer:

Yoshi Ando

Music Production:

Company Aza

Music Recording Studio:

Backpage Studio

Recording Engineer:

Mikio Obata

Sound Recording:

Kunio Ando

Sound Recording Studio:

Aoi Studio

Sound Production:

Magic Capsule

Sound Production Manager:

Rika Ishibashi

Okinawan Music:

Chibana Sanshin Club

Voices (Okinawan dialect):

Takashi Uehara

Masaru Taira

Camera:

Hisao Shirai

Teruo Tsuda

Editing:

Chikako Fukui

Yasuhito Fukui

Production Assistant:

Masahiro Hayashi

Production Manager:

Makiko Nagao

Laboratory:

Imagica

Selected Filmography

1972       Made in Japan   / Nippon Seizou                 

1977       Japonese                              

1978       Pica-don / ピカドン    

1986       Geba Geba Showtime / ゲバゲバショウタイム           

1989       Self Portrait, part of David Ehrlich’s collaborative work Animated Self Portraits

1993       The Last Air Raid Kumagaya / 最後の空襲くまがや 

1994       A Little Journey                 / ひろしくんは空がすき                         

2004       Ryūkyū Oukoku – Made in Okinawa        琉球王国Made in Okinawa       

For a complete filmography and links to secondary sources on the Kinoshitas, visit the Japanese Animation Filmography Project

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

While the Crow Weeps (カラスの涙, 2013)

Crows are an ever present feature of life in Japan.  They are a nuisance to many city-dwellers with their loud caws and their habit of riffling through garbage that has not been put under a protective net.  At the same time, there is much to admire in the crow.  They are clever birds who adapt well to new environments, from making their nests out of wire coat hangers to placing walnuts on the road so that they can be cracked open by cars running them over.

 

trailer "While The Crow Weeps" (2013) from Kohei Matsumura on Vimeo.

Because crows will feed on the carrion of animals, they have often been associated with death in the myths and legends of many cultures.  Their mysterious nature has also inspired many great works of poetry and other literature.  The corvid family appear frequently in Shakespeare, not to mention great poetic works like Ted Hughes’s collection of poems Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1970), Edgar Allan Poe’s narrative poem “The Raven” (1845), Vachel Lindsay’s poem “Two Old Crows” (1917), and Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow”:

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

- Robert Frost, New Hampshire, 1923

The young, Osaka-based animation duo of Makiko Sukikara (鋤柄真希子, b. 1982) and Kōhei Matsumura (松村康平, b. 1980) were inspired by stories, both literary and scientific, for their poetic animated short  While the Crow Weeps (カラスの涙 / Karasu no Namida, 2013).  The film first came to my attention when they won the New Face Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival 2013.  Jury member Toshikatsu Wada (和田 敏克, b. 1966), of Kakio 24 Animation Studio and adjunct professor at Tokyo Zokei University, praised While the Crow Weeps as “a powerful new work.  .  .  that depicts the grim reality of living in the wild. The brilliant texture and the accuracy of the portrayal is overwhelming, patiently depicting a cloudy sky at dawn, the thickness of a mist, or how crows rise up one-by-one into the air. And there is no anthropomorphic emotional interpretation whatsoever in the countenance of the crows. The uniform inclusion of a sense of strain in this world, and living and dying in it, is a single large idea, and the crows that live based on this are depicted with majesty. We can expect much from artists who create this kind of self- produced work.” (Source: j-mediaarts.jp)

Speaking to Sukikara and Matsumura at Hiroshima 2014, where While the Crow Weeps screened as part of the showcase Japanese Animation Today (現代日本のアニメーション), I learned about how the film was made.  Sukikara did the drawings, animation, and direction while Matsumura wrote the screenplay, and did the cinematography and editing.  They worked in collaboration with the experimental artist and composer Nobukazu Takemura (竹村延和, b. 1968), who is also a native of Osaka, though he is currently based in Germany.  Takemura was an inspired choice of collaborator as he has experimented with his own original animations. 

The film begins with the caw of crows and the camera appears to push through heavy fog and fronds of rice plants to settle on a large tree covered in crows.  Images of the crows at rest on the tree are interspersed with the skeletal form of one of their brethren on the ground.  The tranquil scene comes to an end when one of the crows lets off a loud caw and a spectacular overhead perspective shows the crows flying away from the tree.  This is followed by a view from below as the crows circle above in the cloudy sky.

A naturalistic sequence transforms into an artistic one as the crows form an unnatural circle and rotate in a formation that brings to mind a spinning Phenakistocope – an early animation device.  This sets up the dichotomy that evolves throughout the film: naturalistic observations about the behaviour of crows are interwoven with artistic interpretations of the bird.  Realistic imagery of a cat with a dead crow in its beak contrasts with surreal impressions of the spirit of a dead crow chasing off the cat and unrealistic scenarios such as crows flying in an unlikely formation like planes going to battle.  In his notes for the film, Matsumura writes of his fascination with cannibalism and crows, and how it challenges human ethics.  Like many animals, crows are opportunistic feeders and in rare cases have been known to even prey upon their own.  With such imagery, While the Crow Weeps is at once a celebration of the beauty of nature while acknowledging its savagery.   

The dissonance of Nobukazu Takemura’s soundtrack adds a sense of unease to the atmosphere of the film.  For me, the most beautiful aspect While the Crow Weeps is Makiko Sukikara’s artwork and animation.  Using a combination of techniques – sumi-e, watercolour, and cutouts – on a 12-layers animation table, she has created some striking images.  The beautiful but eerie opening sequence of the crows on the tree has lingered in my memory since I screened the film. 

Follow @sukimaky on twitter to learn about future screenings of this animated short.

Animation & Director: Makiko Sukikara

http://sukimaki.com/

Photography & Writer: Kōhei Matsumura

http://matsumurakohei.com/

Music: Nobukazu Takemura

http://nobukazutakemura.com/

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014