The Musicians in the Woods (もりのおんがくたい, 1960)

The Musicians in the Woods (もりのおんがくたい / Mori no Ongakutai, 1960) is an adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale (グリム童話) Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (Town Musicians of Bremen / ブレーメンの音楽隊 / Bremen no Ongakutai).  It is the 27^th tale in the volume one of the 1819 publication of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales.  The Japanese title, which I would translate to The Town Musicians of Mori, changes the name of the German city of "Bremen" to the common Japanese family name of "Mori" (which means forest).  This choice was likely intended to make it easier for children to understand.  The film was distributed on 16mm in the United States by Coronet Films under the title The Musicians in the Woods in 1961. 

The film opens with a man riding in a wagon pulled by donkey.  He becomes frustrated by the donkey’s poor performance and tries to get him to move forward by offering him a carrot.  When the donkey shows no interest he pulls on the reins.  The donkey resists and the farmer is sent flying backwards.  This angers the farmer, who unties the donkey and tells him to get lost, giving him a kick in the backside for good measure.  The donkey decides to try his luck in town.

In the next scene, a hunter is frustrated by his old dog, who is too tired to help chase a rabbit.  The donkey sees takes pity on the dog and him to join his journey to town.  This scene is followed by one in which a farmer’s wife places a basket of eggs on the ground.  As soon as her back is turned, an army of mice line up and steal many eggs.  The housewife blames her old cat for this.  The cat tries to catch the mice but she is too old and the housewife throws the cat out the window.  She lands on the donkey and joins the two other animals on their way to the city.  

They have hardly walked a step when they hear the cries of a rooster.  With a visual flashback, we learn that the rooster is in danger of being turned into dinner.  He joins the menagerie on their journey.  They traverse a bridge and a barren landscape before coming across a cottage in the forest. They peer in the lit windows of the house and discover it is the lair of a group of bandits dressed like stereotypical pirates.  The animals watch the bandits feasting and reveling in their ill-gotten gains.  They almost get caught by one of the bandits when they make too much noise outside.  They then scare the bandits by standing on top of one another and making fearsome shadows on the windows while making terrible noises.  

The bandits run away in fear and the animals run into the house and eat the food left behind.  When the animals go to bed for the night, we see that the bandits are keeping watch on the house from the hill.  They discuss whether or not the animals are bakemono (化け物 / preternatural creatures of Japanese folklore).  One of the men sneaks back into the house but is frightened by the eyes of an “o-bake”.  All four animals attack the man, but because it is dark he thinks it is bakemono.  The bandit runs back to his companions and tells them of his nightmarish experience.  They all run away in terror.  The next day, the animals celebrate their success by putting on an orchestral performance using items they found around the house and they presumably live happily ever after.

This animated short produced by Haruo Itoh (伊藤治雄) and directed by Matsue Jinbo (神保まつえ) is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten with scenery and puppets made in the Western style.  The story is quite similar to the original except for the scene in which the animals attack the bandit.  In the original, the man tells his companions that he was scratched by the long fingernails of a witch (the cat), cut by an ogre with his knife (the dog), hit by an ogre with a club (the donkey) and that a judge had screamed from the rooftop (the rooster).  They simplify this to blame the attack on bakemono or o-bake – a concept that Japanese children would be familiar with from folk tales. 

I particularly enjoyed the simple but effective techniques used to create specials effects in this stop motion puppet film.  The rooster’s flashback is cleverly indicated by a black matte shaped like an egg.  The suffering felt by the bandit when the animal quartet attacks him is amplified by the use of cartoonish “pow” shapes superimposed over the image.  The animation team was able to have a lot of fun with the man’s nightmarish flashback sequence which uses experimental techniques of superimposing symbols to convey the idea of trauma.  It reminded me of Salvador Dali’s set design for the dream sequence in Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945). 

According to the Gakken 70^th Anniversary website, this film won a West German film festival prize 西独逸映画祭入賞.  Unfortunately, it does give the German name for this prize and I have as yet been unable to find more information about where the film might have screened in Germany at that time.  I have eliminated the Berlinale, the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, and Oberhausen by checking their archives.  I will update if I learn more information. 

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Kasa Jizō (かさじぞう, 1960)

Kasa Jizō (かさじぞう, 1960) is a black and white puppet animation by Gakken, who are celebrating their 70^th anniversary this year.  This short film was produced by Haruo Itoh (伊藤治雄) and directed by Kazuhiko Watanabe (渡辺隆平).  Along with his Gakken colleague Matsue Jinbo, Watanabe is one of Japan’s puppet animation pioneers.  He is not as well known as Tadahito Mochinaga, Kihachirō Kawamoto, and Tadanari Okamoto, but hopefully Gakken’s decision to make his work available on YouTube during their 70^th anniversary celebrations will boost his profile.   Disc 10 of Kinokuniya’s Japanese Art Animation Film Collection: 12 Volume Set also features Watanabe’s work including The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (1959), Princess Kaguya (1961), The Jakata Tale of the Golden Deer (1962), The Tale of the Crane (1965), The Little Match Girl (1967).

Kasa Jizō is adapted from the traditional Japanese folk tale (日本むかし話) of the same name (笠地蔵).  There are several regional variants of this story, but the one chosen by Gakken is the most common.  It is set in the winter a long time ago in rural Japan.  An elderly couple are doing chores in their thatched house.  New Year’s is the following day, but they are running low on rice.  The elderly man decides to head to town to sell some of his handmade kasa (woven straw hats) so that may have enough rice to celebrate Shōgatsu (the New Year).  The wife helps her husband to dress for the snowy conditions on the long trek to town.

Along the way the elderly man stops to pay his respects to a row of Jizō (the Japanese version of Ksitigarbha, the bodhisattva usually in the form of a Buddhist monk).  The snow continues to fall heavily.  After a while, the man passes by the Jizō again on his return from town, trudging slowly and steadily through the deep snow.  It occurs to him that the Jizō must be getting cold in all this snow, so he puts his remaining kasa on their heads.  He discovers that he is short one kasa and decides to donate his own kasa to the last Jizō.

The elderly man returns to the comfort of the wood burning fire of his hearth.  His wife is patiently sewing.  He is covered with snow.  As he is hat-less, his eyebrows and the small tufts of hair above his ears are full of frost.  His wife asks about the kasa and the man is tells her about the Jizō.  She agrees that he did the right thing and they laugh cheerfully together. 

There is a lovely cutaway to a full moon glowing between the trees to indicate that night has fallen.  The camera pans over curious prints in the snow and male voices can be heard singing in the distance.  The singing awakes the couple and they sit up on their futons.  The man sees the shadow of men wearing kasa passing the window.  The volume of singing increases and their door opens.  To their shock, gifts come flying through the door.  To show their gratitude, the Jizō have brought supplies for the New Year.

The animation tells the story in a straight-forward manner with a couple of overhead shots and interesting shot compositions.  It appears that the film has been transferred from 16mm to digital without restoration (and possible via a video copy first) so some of the scenes are lacking in sharpness.  I really enjoy the character design of the elderly couple.  They are depicted as cheerful and sympathetic, in spite of their penniless circumstances.  It is a lovely tale for sharing with family over the New Year holiday. 

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes

The Dove and the Ant (ありとはと, 1959)

The Dove and the Ant (ありとはと / Ari to Hato, 1959) is a short animation adapted from the tale of the same name from Aesop's Fables (イソップ寓話).  It was released in the United States in 1962 by Coronet Instructional Films under the title The Ant and the Dove.  The Japanese translation of this fable traditionally puts the ant first in the title, but in English it is more common for the dove to be named first.  Coronet went with the literal translation of the Japanese title, but I prefer to use the standard English title of the fable.

A narrator tells us that this story takes place in a forest.  With a cheerful soundtrack melody in the background, a cute little ant wearing a hat is rolling a coin back to his hole. Exerting some effort (“Yoisho! Yoisho!”), he rolls the coin into a long tunnel that looks like it has been decorated with graffiti by a child.  He eventually adds the coin to a pile of loot in his living room and goes back outside in search of more treasures. 

The ant encounters a snail and takes a ride on its back.  The snail climbs a tree stump where the ant discovers a dragonfly.  The dragonfly takes the ant for a ride.  They pass by the dove and the ant calls out a greeting “Hato-san konnichi-wa!”  Suddenly, he slides off the dragonfly and lands in the water.  The ant cannot swim and calls for help.  The dove hears the ant’s cries and flies to help.  Along the way, the dove picks a leaf which she drops near the ant.  The ant crawls on the leaf and floats to safety.  The ant calls out his thanks.

No worse for his adventure, the ant returns to collecting treasures.  The next day, a hunter is spotted in the forest.  He shoots at a tree and has an apple fall comically onto his head.  Curious and concerned, the ant follows the hunter’s every move.  He suddenly realises that his friend the dove, who is sleeping in the tree, is in danger of being shot.  He grabs some tweezers and runs up the body of the hunter.  The cry the hunter makes when the ant plucks one of his leg hairs startles the dove who flies to safety.  The ant is relieved and skips his delight as the hunter leaves disappointed.  The tale ends happily.  The final curtain is of grass, with a ladybug in the foreground for good measure. 

This animation was produced by Shinichi Kanbayashi (神林伸一) and directed by Kazuhiko Watanabe (渡辺和彦).  The technique used is stop motion using cutouts and 2D puppets.  The Gakken version adds more wildlife to the forest scene (the snail, the dragonfly), likely in order to teach children about forest wildlife.  Insects are a popular theme for all ages in Japan, and preschoolers learn about them at an early age.  My children’s nursery school in Tokyo had a pet beetle in the classroom, for example.  No credit is given onscreen for the narrator, but I had the impression that one female voice did both the ant and the narration.  It is a sweet film, suitable for a preschool audience.  The “shots” fired by the hunter are only implied not actually heard, so it is unlikely that children would be disturbed by this tame portrayal of hunting. 

2016 Cathy Munroe Hotes