A retrospective of the career of Japanese alternative animation pioneer Taku Furukawa has opened this week at the Kichijoji Art Museum in Musashino. Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) has worked as an animator, illustrator, teacher and mentor for over 40 years.  He has won many prestigious awards in his career including the Special Grand Jury Prize at Annecy (1975), the Bungeishunju Manga Award (1978) for his book The Takun Humor, and the Noburo Ofuji Award (1980). 

The exhibition is called Taku Furukawa “A Playful Heart” Exhibition: “From a Single Line” (古川タク展「あそびココロ」“1本の線から”). “From a Single Line” refers to his minimalistic line drawing aesthetic. Furukawa has cited the influence of renowned New Yorker illustrator Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) on his trademark style. Furukawa was also influenced early in his career by his mentor Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, b. 1928). Furukawa worked his way up at Kuri’s studio in the 1960s, eventually doing key animation on many important films such as AOS (1964) and Au Fou! (1965). In 1966, he ventured out as a freelance animator, eventually forming his own studio, Takun Box, in 1970.

The “Playful Heart” in the title of the exhibition refers not only to Furukawa’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humour in his art, but also to playful spirit with which he approaches animation. Handmade films like Nice to See You (1974) follow in the experimental traditions of animators like Norman McLaren, Len Lye, and Oskar Fischinger. In Calligraphiti (1982), Furukawa even experiments with direct animation which involves drawing directly onto the film stock itself.

Furukawa’s most notable work combines his experimental tendencies with his playful sense of humour. In Phenakistoscope (Odorokiban, 1975), the film that won him the prestigious Special Grand Jury Prize at Annecy, Furukawa drew his inspiration from the 19th century pre-cinema device of the same name. Using frame-by-frame hand drawn animation techniques, Furukawa replicates the Phenakistoscope discs, animating all 18 stages of successive action at once. Some of the images he depicts are nods to the original subjects of the Phenakistoscope discs, such as a couple dancing, but he moves away from just recreating human movement into a realm of fantasy and the colourfully abstract: a skyscraper with looping freeways above it transforming into a tree, a bride and groom with their bodies elongating and shrinking like an accordion, a woman drinking soda through a straw whose head turns into a bubble that floats away. (Read my review of Phenakistascope to learn more and see same Phenakistascope illustrations).

Not only does Furukawa adapt old technologies to modern sensibilities, but when personal computers came on the scene in the 1980s he also demonstrated a willingness to experiment with new technologies. To the contemporary spectator, the playful doodle animation Mac the Movie (1985) seems unsophisticated to us today; however, it is significant as an early example of animation on an Apple Mac personal computer. The first Macintosh, with its groundbreaking graphics painting software program MacPaint, had only just been introduced the year before in January 1984. Furukawa highlights the playful nature of this experimental film by employing an equally lighthearted soundtrack: a synthesizer interpretation of ‘Singing in the Rain’. Qualities specific to this early personal computer technology include the flicker of the screen and the extra large pixel sizes. Play Jazz (1987) offers a more sophisticated early example of computer animation (I am guessing he did this on a Macintosh II because it’s in colour – the title may be a reference to Lotus Jazz), due in part to the advances in computer technology. The improvisational nature of the Matisse-inspired animation is reflected in the jazz music soundtrack. This combination of experimentation, improvisation, music and animation inevitably reminds one of Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart’s interpretation of Oscar Peterson’s jazz music in Begone Dull Care (NFB, 1949).

To learn morea bout Taku Furukawa, you can read my reviews of his films Speed, which won the Noburo Ofuji Prize for 1980 and Jyōkyō Monogatari (aka Tyo Story, 1999) - an animated reworking of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953). He also made a number of shorts for the long-running NHK series Minna no Uta.

In addition to showcasing a selection of Furukawa's animations, illustrations and drawings, this exhibition also features installations by Furukawa.  If you are not lucky enough to be in Tokyo for this event, you can support this artist by ordering a selection of Furukawa's works from Anido.  

It is amazing to think that Taku Furukawa’s award-winning animated short Speed (1980) is just over 30 years old because the style and the message seem just as fresh and relevant today as they did then. Our “high speed society,” as the opening title card calls it, has only gotten faster and more frenetic in the intervening years. 

Using his trademark sketchy, casually rendered illustration style, Furukawa depicts the various methods humankind has used over the centuries to do things more quickly and conveniently. Furukawa’s minimalist drawing style has much in common with the New Yorker illustrations of Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) or Ed Arno (1916-2008).

In the first section of the film, a man and a monkey sit at the foot of a tall, fruit bearing tree. The man shakes the tree in order to get the fruit. In order to obtain more, he climbs the tree. The monkey seems shocked by the man’s aggressiveness. The man does not share with the monkey. In fact, in his greed to have the last fruit on the tree he disregards his own safety and causes the branch to break. He falls with it to the ground. This scene is followed by a number of comical short vignettes which depict man trying to master skills such as starting a fire, fishing, making wine, and so on.

In the climactic point of this sequence, the man blasts off into outer space with the rocket ship landing in the eye of the moon in a visual reference to Georges Méliès’s pioneering film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune, 1902). Coloured shapes burst like confetti from the mouth of the moon and the sequence of events appears backwards at an accelerated speed with a black background replacing the white and neon-bright coloured lines replacing the black lines (see comparison above).

Once the images are back at the beginning of the story, Furukawa reverts to the original black on white style and a new story of mankind’s advancing progess takes place this time with an emphasis on art and design. The third section of the film takes advances in transportation over the centuries as its theme. If Furukawa were making the film today, I could imagine him doing a fourth section with the theme of communication.

In the wake of the disaster at Fukushima, it would seem that we need to heed Furukawa’s warning more than ever: faster does not necessarily mean better, and perhaps we need to slow down and appreciate the world in its natural state and be respectful of the other living things that we share this planet with. Although it may have a serious message at its heart, the message is related with Furukawa’s characteristic sense of humour.

This review is part of Nishikata Review’s 2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

Speed appears on the Anido DVD Takun Films. Please support this artist by purchasing his work.

Japan-Woche Mainz 2010 gave me the opportunity to watch Taku Furukawa’s Tyo Story (Jyōkyō Monogatari, 1999) for the second time. I first saw it at Nippon Connection in 2008, but as it does not appear on Takun Films, Anido’s DVD of Furukawa’s collected works (1968-1990), one has to rely on festival screenings to see it again.

‘Jyōkyō’ means ‘to go to Tokyo’ and Jyōkyō Monogatari is an animated adaptation of Yasujiro Ozu’s famous Tōkyō Monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953).   I suspect the English title "Tyo Story" is a play on Toy Story (1995).  John Lasseter was a guest at Hiroshima 1987, and is known to be a huge fan of Japanese animation - and Taku Furukawa is famous for his playful attitude towards animation.

Furukawa employs his familiar doodling style drawn animation, which is influenced by the style of his mentor in the 1960s Yōji Kuri and the New Yorker caricaturist Saul Steinberg, to depict an older couple on the train to Tokyo to visit their children. In addition to being a humorous take on an Ozu story, Furukawa also gives a nod to silent film comedies, but using a rollicking score similar to that played during silent movies and using bilingual (Japanese / English) title cards to impart story information.

During the train ride, Furukawa gives us the back story of the family through the techniques of flashback and montage. The father looks at the wedding photo of his daughter, which triggers a photo montage of her life from birth through to the present. The same is repeated with the couple’s son. The memories are bitter sweet, and Furukawa employs visual gags to elicit laughter from the audience.

Once in Tokyo, the story follows its expected path with the parents finding, as they did in Tokyo Story, that their children’s lives are too busy to fit any quality time in with their parents. The modern distraction is of course the keitai denwa (cell phone). There is an amusing sequence in which every time a keitai goes off, the character whose phone it is buzzes just like their phone. Other modern touches include the grandsons playing violent computer games and ignoring their grandparents, and instead of making a home cooked meal their daughter-in-law orders in pizza. 

Tokyo is shown to be a much noisier place than the seaside town where the couple live. The noise culprits include traffic, people, crows, and even a noisy jidouhanbaiki (vending machine) that calls out ‘arigatou gozaimasu’ after every transaction. For a laugh, Furukawa even has the Roadrunner call out ‘meep meep’ before being chased along the overpass by Wile E. Coyote.  Just as in Tokyo Story, the grandparents eventually are left to fend for themselves going on a tour of Tokyo. But then being modern grandparents they also go bowling, rock it out at a Rolling Stones concert (Furukawa’s exaggerated caricatures of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are particularly amusing), and go to Tokyo Disneyland.

On the surface, Furukawa’s film appears to be a tongue-in-cheek critique of the superficiality of modern urban lifestyles. Yet, unlike Tokyo Story, the story has a surprise twist at the end which is very amusing.

Japan-Woche Mainz 2010 is also screening Furukawa's recent work Paper Film (image above) on Wednesday evening, but unfortunately  I will not be able to attend due to scheduling conflicts. 

Taku Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) is one of the best known independent animators in Japan and has worked as an experimental animator, teacher, and mentor for over 40 years. His films range from an intricate tribute to the 19th century animation device the Phenakistiscope to early computer animations on the Mac, to humorous narrative shorts like his contribution to Tokyo Loop in 2006. Over the years he has contributed numerous animated shorts to the NHK’s Minna no Uta series. He won the Special Grand Jury Prize at Annecy in 1975 for Odorokiban and his manga The Takun Humor won the Bungeishunjū Manga Award for 1978. He lectures regularly at universities and art schools.

Tokyo Loop

Animation

This is arguably Taku Furukawa’s greatest film. It combines his love of Norman McLaren-style experimentation, which inspired his purely experimental films like Nice To See You (1975), Motion Lumine (モーション・ルミネ, 1978), and Calligraphiti (カリグラフィティ, 1982), with his darkly humorous caricature-style characters. Furukawa’s style of drawing human figures has been　influenced by the work of Saul Steinberg (ソール・スタインバーグ, 1914-1999) who worked as a cartoonist and illustrator for The New Yorker for over half a century.

Phenakistiscpe (驚き版/Odorokiban, 1975) is a clever tribute to the 19th century animation device the phenakistiscope (フェナキストスコープ/ can also be spelled phenakistoscope), a predecessor of the zoetrope (回転のぞき絵 / ゾエトロープ orゾートロープ). The device was invented in 1832 by Joesph Plateau in Belgium and Simon von Stampfer (who called his invention a stroboscope) in Austria quite independently of one another. There were many variations on the device but it was typically two large discs mounted onto the same axis. The phenakistiscope uses the persistence of motion principle to create an illusion of motion. The first disc has slots around the edge, and the second contains drawings of successive action, drawn around the disc in concentric circles. When spun like a record and viewed in a mirror through the first disc's slots, the pictures on the second disc appear to move.


The film Odorokiban is accompanied by the clacking sound associated with the phenakistiscope. Furukawa (古川タク)　depicts 18 stages of successive action around the disc. The clacking is then interwoven with other electronic sounds. Normally, the phenakistiscope can only be viewed by one spectator at a time, so for fans of early animation technologies this film delights because it opens up the magic of the phenakistiscope to group viewing. Some of the images give a nod to the subject matter of the original discs. For example, the phenakistiscope disc above this paragraph was designed by Eadward Muybridge (1839-1904, whose work also inspired Furukawa’s film Motion Lumine). Furukawa also features a dancing couple in Odorokiban, but with a twist: when the dancing couple turns the woman’s bare bottom is revealed.

Whereas the original phenakistiscopes (examples can be viewed here) normally recreated real human movement (jumping, dancing, walking, hammering), Furukawa’s phenakistiscope features a series of brightly coloured flights of fantasy which are sometimes surreal and often amusing: a skyscraper with looping freeways above it transforming into a tree, a bride and groom with their bodies elongating and shrinking like an accordion, a woman drinking soda through a straw whose head turns into a bubble that floats away. The final image is a large crowd of typical Furukawa figures running. The male figure in this final sequence is later featured drinking coffee in Furukawa’s 1977 film Coffee Break.


With Odorokiban, Furukawa won the prestigious Special Jury Prize at Annecy in 1975. It is fitting that he should have been the second Japanese animator to win this prize as it had previously been won by his mentor Yōji Kuri in 1962 for Ningen Dōbutsuen (人間動物園 / Human Zoo). Odorokiban can be found on the anido DVD Takun Films (read the anipages review of the DVD here). Furukawa has also contributed 26 films to the NHK’s Minna no Uta series. In recent years, he has slowed down his animation output, but his work is featured in both Winter Days and Tokyo Loop. Fans can read his blog here.

For fans of art animation and experimental film, the ‘naughties’ have been an exceptional decade in terms of the wider availability of both individual films and collections. Previously, such films were only available to a lucky few privileged enough to have an animation festival, art house cinema, or cinémathèque in their community. The life story of an animated short usually went follows:

In the past decade, however, art animation and experimental film has become much more widely available and via video-streaming sites many filmmakers have picked up new fans who previously would not have been likely to encounter their work. Thanks to the efforts of companies like Geneon Universal and Image Forum, not to mention collectives like Anido, the complete works of significant animators have become available on DVD. Younger artists like Tomoyasu Murata, Naoyuki Tsuji, and Yasuhiro Yoshiura have worked hard to promote themselves either through self-incorporation (Murata) or coordination with other production companies. Some of the more farseeing entrepreneurs of the contemporary art animation scene like Yoshiura and Kato Kunio, have allowed their work to be made available on video streaming and downloading sites like Yahoo Japan and crunchyroll.

The order of the DVDs listed below is not a true ranking. There are too many variables to consider for such a thing. To be included in this list, the DVD merely had to contain content that I believe is of important cultural and historical content. I haven’t been able to view the recently released complete works of Takashi Ito yet, but as the other Image Forum DVDs are of such a high quality I presume that it is equally as good. Clicking on most of the images below will take you to the DVD’s listing at cdjapan.co.jp. Most of films do not require subtitles for enjoyment (exceptions: Okamoto, Kawamoto, Tezuka). Some more farseeing organizations like Ufer! do think about the international appeal of their artists (ie Tabaimo) and provide subtitles. Others, like Geneon, should really make more of an effort in this area. Some artists like Kawamoto and Tezuka can be found on DVD in English speaking countries. The exception to this is Naoyuki Tsuji, whose Facets DVD should be avoided (read why here) – his work does not require subtitles to be enjoyed.

I am looking forward to the 2010s and hoping that even more animation gems will make their way onto DVD or another digital format soon. To read about which ones, see my earlier piece here.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009

Kato Kunio’s Oscar win this year for La maison en petits cubes (Tsumiki no ie, 2008) has sparked the interest of many anime fans in alternatives to mainstream Japanese animation. My review of his film last November is one of the most often read posts on this blog. If you have fallen under the spell of Kato Kunio’s green-blue colour palette, here are 15 other must see innovative animations from Japan that I highly recommend (with links to where you can find them).


1. Taku Furukawa’s Phenakistiscope (Odorokiban, 1975)

This animation was inspired by an early animation device that was a precursor of the zoetrope. It consisted of a spinning disc with the various stages of the animation painted in a circle like the numbers on a clock. When the disc was spun using a handle, the viewer would peer through a hole and see the resulting short animation. Popular subjects were human figures engaged in various activities like dancing or playing leap frog. Furukawa pays tribute to this early animation device while at the same time using the concept to create more abstract images. This film won Furukawa the special jury prize at Annecy – the second Japanese to do so after Yoji Kuri in 1962 with Ningen Doubutsuen. Available via anido.


2. Koji Yamamura’s Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor (Kafuka Inaka Isha, 2007)

This film actually ties with Atama Yama (2003) as my favourite Yamamura films. Read my reviews of these films here and here. Available to purchase here (no subtitles).


3. Yoji Kuri’s The Chair (Isu, 1964)

Kuri’s best known for his humorous line-drawing animations with their experimental soundtracks, but this early experimental film wins my heart for its ingenuity. Read my view here. Order it here.


4. Tadanari Okamoto’s The Restaurant of Many Orders (Chuumon no Ooi Ryooriten, 1991)

This was Okamoto’s final film and was completed by his friend and colleague Kawamoto The look was heavily influenced by the participation of Reiko Okuyama in my opinion, and it has been very influential on the younger generation of animators -- particularly Yamamura’s recent dark, psychological tales Atama Yama and Kafuka Inaka Isha. Available on DVD or DVD Boxset.


5. Kihachiro Kawamoto’s Dojoji Temple (Dōjōji, 1976)

All of Kawamoto’s puppet films are of an incredibly high standard of doll-making craft and storytelling skills. It is hard to choose just one to recommend. Dojoji Temple is perhaps the most quintessential Kawamoto film: a traditional story told in the bunraku tradition with lovingly crafted puppets and accomplished voice acting. Available with English subtitles, or from Geneon without.


6. Tomoyasu Murata’s Indigo Road (Ai no Michi, 2006)

Murata’s films range from screwball comedy (Sakadachikun) to the ethereally beautiful (Fuyu no Niji, 2005). He has mastered the art of a wide range of animation styles, but for me he is at his best doing puppet animaton. The My Road puppet animations tackle very difficult themes. I love them all, but I identify the most with Indigo Road. Can be ordered via Murata’s website.


7. Mami Kosemura’s Woman in the Mirror (Kyōdai no Onna, 2006)

Kosemura is an installation artist who specializes in ‘moving paintings.’ Her animations are usually displayed in galleries (though you can see some online here) in traditional Japanese settings. This is my favourite work of hers. The animation screened on a traditional kyōdai – a Japanese dresser with a low table for sitting on the floor and doing make-up with a tall full-length mirror on top. The ‘screen’ was the mirror. As the viewer watches, they hear the rustling of a kimono and catch glimpses of a female figure in her kimono. This piece is so fascinating and suggestive that I recall sitting in the Yokohama Museum of Art and watching it for at least 20 minutes even though it was only on a 8 minute loop.


8. Naoyuki Tsuji’s A Trilogy About Clouds (Mitsu no Kumo, 2005)

Tsuji has dabbled in puppet and line-drawing animation, but for me his most successful works have been his charcoal animations, inspired in part by the works of William Kentridge. A Trilogy About Clouds is a truly mesmerizing viewing experience. The films are made in a similar way to early chalkboard animations in that the artist draws an image, photographs it, then erases (or smudges in the case of charcoal) and draws the next frame. With charcoal, this means that an ‘after image’ is left of the previous frames, reminding the viewer of what has gone before. Tsuji does not storyboard before making his films, which give them a kind of stream-of-consciousness logic. Order his DVD here.


9. Osamu Tezuka’s Jumping (1984)

'Tezuka? Isn’t he mainstream?' I hear you ask. Tezuka was actually an innovator in the truest sense and participated in the early animation festivals of the 1960s and early 1970s at Sogetsu Hall. Some of his truly remarkable ‘experimental’ films include his interpretation of Mussorgy’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1966). Jumping is a remarkable short film shot from the point of view of a girl jumping down the street. The jumps get bigger and bigger, first over a car, them into a garden and over houses, and then into the most unlikely of places. What makes this film so amazing is that it was entirely done the old-school way with approximately 4,000 hand-drawn images. Such effects today have become commonplace thanks to computer animation, but this film still wows after 25 years. Available from Geneon (no subtitles) or this company in Oz (with English subtitles).


10. Maya Yonesho’s Üks Uks (2003)

Yonesho’s art is in the abstract tradition pioneered by artists like Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren. Yonesho takes abstract painted animation one step further by adding stop motion objects (books) into the mix. Her painted designs jump from book to book, with each book representing a door into a different aspect of human nature. Yonesho’s meticulous use of three dimension space is particularly striking. Her films are available via anido.


11. Takeshi Ishida’s Gestalt (Heya/Keitai, 1999)

As much as I love Ishida’s more recent installation animation projects like Wall of the Sea (2007), this early low-budget work drawn on the walls of his student dorm room over the course of a year. The varying quality of light through the window creates a beautiful , haunting effect when combined with the flowing lines and geometric patterns shifting form on the wall. Available on Thinking and Drawing.


12. Keiichi Tanaami and Nobuhiro Aihara’s Scrap Diary (2002)

Over the past 10 years, Tanaami and Aihara, who are both professors at the Kyoto Univerisity of Art and Design, have collaborated on a number of animated shorts. Some of these are known as ‘animation battles’ and others as ‘animation correspondence.’ In both cases, the artists take turns at the ‘canvas.’ Scrap Diary to me is the quintessential example of such an animation correspondence. Tanaami’s trademark goldfish-inspired figures and figures with oversized features are counterbalanced by Aihara’s full-screen, highly detailed, kaleidoscope-like designs. Tanaami and Aihara still work the old-fashioned way by hand on animation paper that they photograph on 16mm. With sound design by their frequent collaborator Takashi Inagaki. DVD available here.


13. Tabaimo’s Public Convenience (2006)

The animated installations created by Tabaimo are probably best viewed within a gallery space, but as we are not all so lucky as to be able to attend one of her exhibitions, the next best thing are her Ufer! documentaries. Anyone who has used a public restroom in an older train station or subway station in Japan will be able to relate to the setting of this piece, which Tabaimo layers with levels of symbolic meaning. The installation can be seen on imo-la and the film version on the Tokyo Loop DVD.


14. Mika Seike’s Fishing Vine (2006)

Seike’s films have a unique look created by scanning real objects (such as leaves in this film) and colouring and animating them on the computer. Her films are highly symbolic poetic films that require several screenings in order unravel all the layers of meaning. I discover a new aspect each time I watch this film. Can be seen on Tokyo Loop. For more of her films check out Thinking and Drawing.


15. Norito Iki’s Kaidan (2003)

This little ghost story was one of my favourite films on Thinking and Drawing. I love the use of black and white photographs and fish eye lens. Iki hasn’t updated his blog since 2007 and I haven’t heard of any new films being on the animation festival circuit. I do hope he hasn’t given up on art animation, because Kaidan demonstrates that he has a lot of creative potential.