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Showing posts with label NC2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NC2012. Show all posts

16 August 2012

Tada’s Do-It-All House (まほろ駅前多田便利軒, 2011)



The fictitious town of Mahoro in Kanagawa prefecture is one of those inbetween communities framing the edges of Metro Tokyo.  Not a major city center in itself and with most people commuting to jobs in Tokyo, there’s really not much of interest going on.  It doesn't even draw tourists as it’s too far from the sea and not in the mountains.  The people who live there don’t really have much ambition to leave, and if they do, they usually come drifting back. 

At least, that is how it seems to Keisuke Tada (Eita), who runs a benri-ya (do-it-all-house) near the train station.  He advertises himself as a jack-of-all-trades doing everything from babysitting a chihuahua to working as a handyman.  He’s handsome and seems intelligent, so it is a bit of a mystery as to why he is doing such low paying work instead of working for a company in Tokyo. 
Mahoroeki Maetada Benriken / Japanese Movie


This mystery is the main element that creates tension in the film and awakes our curiosity to learn more about him.  The mystery deepens one evening when, after finishing up a job spying on bus drivers for their suspicious boss, Tada discovers that the chihuahua he is babysitting has gone missing from his truck.  He finds the dog sitting on the lap of a guy who looks a bit down on his luck at the bus stop.  It turns out that this man, Haruhiko Gyoten (Ryuhei Matsuda), went to school together with Tada, and that Tada had been responsible for Gyoten seriously injuring himself on a table saw during shop class.

Gyoten uses this old injury to guilt Tada into letting him crash at his place for the night.  One night turns into several days, and before long Gyoten is a permanent fixture at the benri-ya tagging along on jobs as Tada’s semi-reluctant assistant.  Although he seems like a deadbeat, there are many clues that Gyoten too may have once had a regular job.  He chastises Tada for not marketing himself properly and wonders why Tada, who seemed to have a promising future in front of him, is stuck in a dead end business.

Both men also seem determined to stay on the fringes of life, but they keep getting pulled into sticky situations due to their natural desires to help others.  They are drawn into action by a young boy called Yura (Kota Yokoyama) whose mother (Manami Honjou) has hired them to pick him up from cram school.  They start to realize that Yura’s strange behaviour is more than just insolence but is hiding the fact that someone is using him and they decide to help him get out of his predicament.  This subplot is tied up with another subplot about a “Columbian” prostitute called Lulu (Reiko Kataoka) and her fellow prostitute and house mate Haishi (Anne Suzuki) and the dodgy men in their lives.

The film is adapted from Miuri Shion’s bestselling novel of the same name which won the Naoki Sanjugo Prize in 2006.  It starts out well, and the relationship between Tada and Gyoten evolves in an interesting way.  Both Eita and Matsuda are excellent actors and the mystery surrounding their circumstances generates interest in what little plot is retained in this adaptation.  Unfortunately, the film has trouble sustaining interest and has many moments that just don't make sense at all (yes it's great to rescue a prostitute from a stalker but throwing her onto a train without belongings/money/somewhere to go/telling her friend is a bit odd to say the least).  One could argue that the directionlessness of the plot mimics the directionlessness of the two main protagonists, but the there are just too many head-scratching moments that lessen one’s enjoyment of the film.  The film’s biggest flaws are the one-dimensional female characters who would be laughable if they weren’t so disturbing.   

Director Omori Tatsushi won international acclaim for his avant-garde directorial debut The Whispering of the Gods (2005). While Tada’s Do-It-All House shows that he is quite good at getting great performances out of his male actors, the film just suffers from a problem quite prevalent in contemporary Japanese films: weak editorial decisions.  With a few nips and tucks to the second half of the film, this could have been a great star vehicle of Eita and Matsuda.


Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

This film screened at Nippon Connection 2012:



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17 July 2012

Coming Out Story (カミングアウトストーリー, 2011)



And in the journal you kept by the side of your bed.  .  . 
Confessing childhood secrets of dressing up in women's clothes
Compulsions you never knew the reasons to
“Searching for a Former Clarity”, Against Me!, 2005

Although there are many manga and anime that feature positive transgender characters, the reality of coming out as transgender in Japan is pretty harsh.  The social pressure to fit into the expectations of the community is so enormous, that most transgender people keep their struggle with their identity a secret for years.  Sex change operations did not even become available in Japan until the late 1990s, and it was only in 2004 that laws changed so that some transsexuals (unmarried, childless) could change their officially registered gender (learn more).

These small, but significant changes are thanks to the hard work of activists fighting for recognition and acceptance of transgender people in their communities.  Kei Umezawa’s award-winning documentary Coming Out Story (2011) follows the story of one such activist: Itsuki Dohi.  Dohi is a middle-aged high school math teacher born a boy in the 1960s who has been slowly making the transition to living as a woman for more than a decade.  Dohi always knew that she wanted to be a woman, but as a child there was no one to whom she could speak to about her feelings and so she kept them hidden until well into adulthood.  It wasn't until a co-worker came out to her as gay and lent her a book that mentioned transsexuality, that she even had a word for the deep truths that she felt about herself.  Before that, she feared that she was "hentai" (a pervert).  Now, aged 49, she is finally ready to go through with gender reassignment surgery.

Umezawa’s documentary is remarkable for its ordinariness.  There are no flashy camera movements or artsy shots.  The focus is simply on telling the story of Dohi, her friends, her community, the other transgender people whose lives she has touched, and her efforts to bring awareness to the human rights concerns of those of varying sexualities/genders.  Many films about transgender people focus on outlandish transvestites or people who have been the victims of hate crimes.  The transgendered in this film are shown to be just regular folks who are active members of their community.  Dohi teaches math and runs a broadcasting club, one of the young people she is mentoring is an out and proud young trans man working in a care home for the elderly, while others are students just barely out of puberty who are just embarking on the path of coming to terms with their true identities.

It is an understatement to say that the journey these transgender people are on is a challenging one.  One of the more poignant moments in the film comes when a friend Dohi has tried to mentor loses his/her grip on reality, dresses as a woman and tries to rob a store.  The resulting newspaper headlines lead Dohi to feel that she could have done more to save her friend.  Although many of Dohi’s friends – mostly women and other transgender people – testify about their experience with her, it struck me that there were no interviews with family members of the transgendered featured in this doc.  Their absence spoke volumes as to the difficulties transgender people face in coming out to their family and friends.  The greatest fear of all is rejection by the people and communities they care so much about.  Films like Coming Out Story are crucial to educating people to love and accept all members of their community without prejudice.


Another great little film about growing up transgender in Japan: the short fiction film Jellyfish Boy


Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012




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28 June 2012

Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (星を追う子ども, 2011)



“.  .  .  it came in a language
Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,
Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,
So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope
Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.”

- from “Orpheus Alone” by Mark Strand 
The Continuous Life: Poems
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990

For his latest anime, Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, 2011), animator Makoto Shinkai delves into legends about the underworld.  In Japanese creation mythology, it is said that the female deity Izanami dies and goes to Yomi – the “shadowy land of the dead.”  The male deity Izanagi goes after her and tries to bring her back to the land of the living.  The tale has many similarities to the ancient Greek tale of Orpheus and his wife Eurydice, and Shinkai draws on the symbolism of both of these tales in this, his most complex animated film to date.

The central character is a lonely preteen girl called Asuna Watase.  Her father died when she was very young and her mother often works night shifts at the hospital which means that Asuna is frequently left to fend for herself.  In addition to her schoolwork she cleans her own clothes, makes her own meals, and does other chores around the house to help out as much as she can.  Although she is doing well in school and seems to get along well with her classmates, Asuna spends a lot of time on her own.  She often sits on the hillside listening to strange music that she can pick up on the crystal radio left to her by her father.




One day while crossing the rail bridge, she is attacked by a giant, bear-like creature.  A mysterious boy named Shun rescues her and the next day they bond with each other listening to the crystal radio.  Shun tells her that he comes from another land called Agartha and there appears to be a connection between his native land and the music Asuna listens to on her radio.  They promise to meet up again the next day, but Shun has disappeared and is rumoured to have fallen to his death into the river.

Meanwhile, Asuna’s teacher goes on pregnancy leave and is replaced by a charismatic male teacher called Morisaki.  Asuna is fascinated by Mr. Morisaki’s tales of the underworld and visits him at his house to learn more.  It turns out that both Asuna and Morisaki are destined to journey into the underworld (Agartha) together – Asuna is drawn there by her natural curiosity and her desire to be loved, whereas Morisaki has been driven mad by his grief for his late wife and he uses violence to go on his Orphean quest to resurrect his wife.


Makoto Shinkai has admitted in interviews that he has been deeply influenced by the films of Hayao Miyazaki and the influence is very strong in Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below.  Asuna has a little cat-like creature – which the medicine man in the underworld calls a yadoriko – which is very similar to the fox-like creature Teto in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984).  The Quetzalcoatls resemble some of the kami from Princess Mononoke (1997) as well as the stone robots of Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1987). The use of a flying ship – the Shakuna Vimana ark – is also very Miyazaki. 

While the Miyazaki influence is undeniable, I am not one of those critics declaring Shinkai as the next Miyazaki.  First of all, I think that’s putting way too much pressure too soon on a director who has not yet fully matured as an artist.  Second of all, Shinkai’s films have a very different feeling to me than Studio Ghibli films.  Shinkai’s work takes itself much more seriously than a Studio Ghibli film.  A typical Ghibli film is full of visual gags and self referential humour, whereas there are few laughs in Shinkai.  What sets Shinkai apart from his peers is that he is the master of dreamy landscapes.  He uses such a colourful palette – and not just for landscapes.  Some of the interior sequences of the medicine man's home looked as colourful and intricate as a patchwork quilt.  One of the more interesting sequences was the flashback to all the famous world leaders from Caesar to Napolean, from Hitler to Stalin who, according to the legends of the bottom-dwellers – tried to plunder the riches of the underworld.  The sequence was painted like an elaborate wall mural.

Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is on the one hand the moving story of a lonely girl’s quest to make sense of the world she is living in.  On the other hand, for the viewer it is a philosophical journey into the realms of the possible.  Although there is some influence of the Orpheus myth, the ideas in this film largely come from Shintō, Buddhist, and even some Sanskrit thought, with the medicine man reminding us that while it is normal to grieve the dead, we should not pity them for the cycle of life and death is a natural one.  Death is not to be feared but accepted.  We need to count our blessings and learn to let go of the past in order to continue on our journey into the future.  

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

This film screened at:


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16 June 2012

Japan in Germany 8: Kozue Kodama


Kozue Kodama and animator Atsushi Wada at NC2012

One of the most beautiful and engaging sights at Nippon Connection 2012 was the artist Kozue Kodama (こだまこずえ)  doing live painting.  Dressed in a kimono covered with paint splatters, Kodama spent hours at her canvas every day for the duration of the festival.  At first, the canvas was just black and white, but as she progressed she added more and more layers to the canvas and it soon was awash with bright yellow, pink, and blue hues.  The central image of the painting is a majestic red-crowned crane (タンチョウ/tanchō).  After the festival, the painting was auctioned off and the money raised went to earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in the Tohoku region.


Kodama grew up in Hiroshima and studied oil painting at Hiroshima University.  She is best known for doing paintings on large canvases, but she has also dabbled in acting, animation, and at the Nippon Connection karaoke bar she demonstrated that she has an amazing set of pipes as well.


Some of Kodama’s accomplishments include showing at the Biennale in Venice in 2005, creating concert fliers for the jazz musician Naruyoshi Kikuchi, and a huge 16 meter painting on the wall of a bridge which won her the Design Art Sign Award as part of the project Revitalizing the City of Hiroshima (2008).  Her animated short Suipas Zuirapusa (スイ��スズイラプサ, 2009) which she made in collaboration with Yoko Tanabe, was nominated for the NHK Digista Best Selection.  It also featured in the indie film Plum Essence (2009) which Kodama also starred in.

Since early 2011, Kodama has been based in Düsseldorf – the largest centre for Japanese culture in Germany.  Her husband, Seiichi Sato is a professional hair stylist at the chic salon Leo’s Düsseldorf.  Kodama’s next event is another Charity Live Painting.  It will be held at the Tres Chicas Bistro and Café in Düsseldorf next Friday night Friday, June 29th (note the date change!), from 18:00 – 23:00 with all money going to earthquake and tsunami relief.  Learn more about Kodama on her official website and YouTubechannel.




cmmhotes 2012







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15 June 2012

Muybridge’s Strings (マイブリッジの糸, 2011)




In his first collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the animator Kōji Yamamura takes us on a journey into cinematic history.  Muybridge’s Strings (2011) is a poetic investigation of the nature of time – a concept which has occupied philosophers since ancient times.

Our relationship to time underwent a radical transformation in the 19th century with the development of photography and related technologies.  The English photographer Eadweard Muybridge was among the first to recognize the scientific potential for photography in the study of human and animal locomotion.  The most significant of these was Muybridge’s 1878 series “Sallie Gardner at a Gallop” which settled the debate over whether or not all four of a horse’s four hooves leave the ground while galloping.  Most artists of the day usually painted a horse with at least one hoof on the ground, for the action was too fast for the human eye to determine all parts of horse locomotion.

To set up this experiment, Muybridge placed 24 trip wires (strings) at equidistant intervals (27 inches/68.58cm) that would trigger cameras to take a photograph.  It is these strings that inspired Yamamura to make Muybridge’s Strings.  The motif of strings interlaces itself throughout the film in a manner reminiscent of “the red string of fate” of East Asian folklore that is said to bind us together “regardless of time, place, or circumstance / the thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.” (see my discussion of Kazuhiko Okushita’s animated short The Red Thread to learn more.)

Two distinct storylines are woven together in Muybridge’s Strings.  The first is the remarkable life of Muybridge himself which Yamamura explores first through the man’s life's work – the film is replete with images from Muybridge’s famous photographic series (the elephant, American bison, naked man running,  mother and child, and so on) – and also through an investigation of the man himself through vignettes from his troubled marriage which ended in his murdering of his wife’s lover and being cleared on the grounds of “justifiable homicide”, through to his celebrated zoopraxiscope lectures at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

The second storyline is that of a mother and child in present day Tokyo, which was inspired by Yamamura’s observation of his own daughter growing up.  The speed with which children grow up draws attention to the passage of time – a constant reminder of how fleeting our time here on earth really is.  Visually, Yamamura distinguishes the two time periods by adding warmer hues to the Tokyo storyline, in contrast to the shades of grey of the past.  The two parallel stories are linked through the use of similar motifs: Muybridge’s stopwatch, mother and child, the clasping of hands, horses, and; of course, strings.

Strings bind the Tokyo mother and daughter together in a beautiful abstract sequence, but strings also appear as a motif in the piano that they play together.  The soundtrack of the film was arranged by the legendary NFB music director Normand Roger.  In keeping with the theme of non-linear time, they decided upon the use of J.S. Bach’s Crab Canon (1747) as a key musical motif in the film.  This is significant for the Crab Canon is a musical palindrome – an arrangement of two musical lines that are both complementary and backward.  Here you can see a video of the tune being visualized as a Möbius strip. 

The soundtrack also foregrounds the sounds of technology: from click clack of photos being taken to the and the whir and clatter of the zoopraxiscope, which is considered the first device for the projection of moving images.  Although the technologies have changed in the ensuing 125+ years, our desire to photograph and capture fleeting moments of time has only increased.  With Muybridge’s Strings Yamamura manages not only to pay tribute one of the moving images pioneers, but to also open our minds to a consideration of our own relationship to the passage of time.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012


Muybridge’s Strings is available for purchase from the NFB on DVD and Bluray as part of the Animation Express 2 collection.  It will also be released on Bluray in Japan in August.

An exhibition of Koji Yamamura's works is currently on at Skip City until July 22.

 Order the Flip Books today:















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07 June 2012

onedotzero: j-star 11


onedotzero is a London-based moving image and digital arts organisation which commissions, showcases and promotes innovation across all aspects of moving image, digital and interactive arts.  Founded in 1996, onedotzero has gained a reputation for representing a diverse array of artistic endeavour via the annual onedotzero: adventures in motion festival and its associated touring. Suppported by the BFI and the Arts Council England, it has a cross media and collaborative approach attuned to technological advances and fast paced change within digital arts and the contemporary culture landscape.


The Japanese portion of the festival selection j-star 11 screened at Nippon Connection 2012.  It’s an eclectic mixture of music videos, innovative commercials, and short films.  Thank You World from the Sapporo Short Fest 2011 and Blind by Yukihiro Shoda were made as a direct response to the 3/11 disaster.  I had not heard of Construction by Mirai Mizue, but it turned out to be a low res excerpt of Tatamp (2011) featuring twoth.  Some of the highlights for me were Toshiaki Hanzaki’s animated music video for Mr. Children – a popular band who have a long history of supporting alternative animation – tangefilms’ phenakistoscope inspired animated music video for Hitomi Azuma, the surreal geometric play of Shinya Sato’s video for Chateau Marmont, and Yasuda Takahiro’s two tone approach to the primal scream of Kaisoku Tokyo’s Copy.  For those of you who missed this event, a number of the films are featured on Vimeo.


cmmhotes 2012


Thank You World by Seiichi HISHIKAWA, J 2011, HDcam, 2’59 Min.
Christmas / Amazarashi by YKBX, J 2011, HDcam, 6’24 Min.
Blind by Yukihiro SHODA, J 2011, HDcam, 5’17 Min.
Construction by Mirai MIZUE, J 2011, HDcam, 3’15 Min.
Tsuchinoko / Gaka by Yuto NAKAMURA, Ayahiko SATO [rakudasan], J 2011, HDcam, 5’37 Min.
Nnet Station Op by Fantasista UTAMARO, J 2011, HDcam, 0’24 Min.
The Smell Of The Flowers / Mr. Children by Toshiaki HANZAKI, J 2009, HDcam, 5’23 Min.
Senkyou / Mergrim by Makoto YABUKI, J 2011, HDcam, 3’09 Min.
Xylophone by Seiichi HISHIKAWA, J 2011, HDcam, 3’05 Min.
Polygon Graffiti: An Uguisu Morph by QNQ/AUJIK, J 2011, HDcam, 4’32 Min.
Kira Kira / Azuma Hitomi by TANGEFILMS, J 2011, HDcam, 3’09 Min.
Assimilation by Takuya HOSOGANE, J 2011, HDcam, 1’29 Min.
Anomie / Amazarashi by YKBX, J 2011, HDcam, 4’37 Min.
Electropia / Joyz / Uk + by Noriko OKAKU, J 2011, HDcam, 4’39 Min.
One Hundred Realities / Chateau Marmont by Shinya SATO, J 2010, HDcam, 3’25 Min.
Kyu by Yyu FUJII, J 2011, HDcam, 1’29 Min.
Copy / Kaisoku Tokyo by Yasuda TAKAHIRO, J 2011, HDcam, 1’33 Min.
Damn What Ringtone / Hifana by Takashi OHASHI, J 2011, HDcam, 0’53 Min.
The TV Show / Takayuiki Manabe by Kousuke SUGIMOTO, J 2009, HDcam, 3’28 Min.
Henshin Gattai! by Shota SAKAMOTO, J 2011, HDcam, 1’33 Min.


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The Great Rabbit (グレートラビット, 2012)




If you believe in the Rabbit, it means that you’ll believe anything.
If you don’t believe in the Rabbit, it means that you wouldn’t believe anything.

Ë           Ë          Ë          Ë          Ë

Once we called the noble, profound and mysterious existence The Great. 
We have moved with the time, our thought and consciousness has changed. 
And yet what makes us still keep calling it The Great?

Ë           Ë          Ë          Ë          Ë


The Great Rabbit (2012) marks a new development in the career of animator Atsushi Wada, for it is the first time that he has made an international co-production.  It is a co-production between CaRTe bLaNChe (who also represents artists like Keiichi Tanaami, Keita Kurosaka, and other CALF animators among many others) and the French production company Sacre Bleu who specialize in short films.   

At Nippon Connection 2012, Wada explained that it was also the first time that he had ever used a sound designer – in this case Masumi Takino who has also done the sound for Ryo Okawara’s latest film A Wind Egg (Kara no tamago, 2012) which is screening this week at Annecy.  Wada told us he was a bit shy initially for it turns out that for many of the sound effects in his films, he strips off and uses his own body (ie. for the sounds of slapping, etc.). 


Ë           Ë          Ë          Ë          Ë

The film opens with a cubby boy in a tight close up, panting with exertion, who carries a giant, ball-shaped egg.  When a hand stops him to push the egg, he covers it with his shirt.  He pauses to  interact with a weasel who has rubbed up against his leg like a cat.  Suddenly a bird swoops down and removes the boy’s shirt and the egg falls silently to the ground.  He looks around as if to see where the egg has fallen, sighs deeply and bends to remove his shorts, his flabby tummy bouncing gently as he does.  He then carefully wraps his shoes up in his shorts and tosses them away from himself.

A rabbit sits on an alter munching on something.  Indecipherable whispers, almost guttural in nature can be heard. 

A human-rabbit hybrid stands on a chair with a small, shirtless boy holding the chair steady as a queue of chubby boys – reminiscent of the queue of salarymen having their noses examined in Wada’s Day of Nose (2005) – with giant ball-like eggs approach to have the egg inspected by the humanoid rabbit.  Once the rabbit-man has touched the egg, the chubby boys tuck it under the shirts – the same routine that opened the film but this time in a long shot. 

The rabbit-man touches his rabbit ears and we hear a humming.   Cut to CCTV footage of a typical urban alleyway with a time code in the top left corner.  A figure can be briefly glimpsed carrying a giant egg.  A new angle of the playground shows that it is the weasel, with the giant egg tucked on his back held by his tail.  In the third shot, the weasel and his egg are captured in a net on a grassy field.  His captor is a boy sitting on a tree branch, much like the one in In a Pig’s Eye.  The boy licks his lips as though anticipating a feast.  He takes the struggling weasel out of the net, then takes his place inside the net, mimicking the weasel’s movements.

A panting boy walks by with crumbs or shards of some kind on his shorts.  A mother bird with her brood tucked in a shirt is abruptly taken from her perch by a giant boy with glasses and the chicks are made to poke at the bottom of the boy in the net.  The boy falls free of the net to land on the ground next to two small animals staring silently and one of the giant eggs.  He picks up the egg and there is a swish pan to the queue in front of the rabbit-man.

Incoherent whispering, a chubby boy a cloth wrapped over his face gestures and moves strangely, like a blind man trying to find his way through an unfamiliar room.

The rabbit sits at the altar, chews benignly.  Or is everything as it seems?  The frame is rewound and played back slowly and we see hands pushing the weasel inside of the rabbit’s mouth.  A chubby boy with a remote control looks at the TV image off camera and whispers to himself, looking around him as if concerned that someone is watching his every move as well.

Ë           Ë          Ë          Ë          Ë




There is an irony in calling a rabbit “great” for a rabbit is really such a benign creature.  As herbivores, they do not really pose a threat to anyone except for the fact that they notoriously reproduce at a rapid rate.  At Nippon Connection 2012, Atsushi Wada told us that he randomly chose the rabbit as a central symbol for this film because he started making The Great Rabbit during the year of the Rabbit.

From a Buddhist perspective; however, nothing is random and it is significant that Wada chose a rabbit as the central animal in this film.  To be sure, Wada has shown in previous films to be drawn to animals that are quiet and move in subtle ways.  Because he has often used sheep in previous films, I was reminded in The Great Rabbit of the idiom “the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” for although the rabbit appears to sit and do nothing, except perhaps be worshipped, in the slow motion playback we realize that appearances can be deceiving. 

The visual reference to Wada’s earlier film Day of Nose with the men queuing for inspection emphasizes the theme of societal pressures on people to follow the dictates of the ruling elites.  This is heightened by the suggestion that Big Brother is watching our every move through the use of CCTV footage to capture the weasel stealing an egg.  In the wake of 3/11, The Great Rabbit reads like a warning for us not to follow in the dictates of the government or to believe everything we see on the news.  We must follow Atsushi Wada’s example of looking at the subtle clues of movement and gesture, and question the validity of what the powers that be are telling us.

As Atsushi Wada explains: “A situation of disobedience stands only when there is a relationship between a person who forces somebody to obey and a personal who obeys him/her.  Nowadays, the status of relationships between superiors and inferiors, good and evil, aristocrats and commoners is less visible, and it’s becoming more difficult to judge what is right or wrong.  Sometimes we even don’t know what we are forced to obey.”  The Great Rabbit is Wada’s expression of this ambiguity.

When The Great Rabbit won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale earlier this year, the jury commented: “This dreamlike film uses a unique, surreal language to tickle our unconscious while showing us the confusion of the modern world in animated form. Using a delicate hand drawn style, Atsushi Wada decodes reality with absurd sequences of characters caught in time.” (source)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Ë           Ë          Ë          Ë          Ë




7'10"/colour/stereo/2012
Production : Sacrebleu Productions, CaRTe bLaNChe
Sound Design: Masumi Takino
Colour Design: Misa Amako
Direction, Script, Editing, Voice, Animation: Atsushi Wada

To support this animator, please order his DVD: Atsushi Wada Collected Works 2002-2010.

If you live in the Tokyo area, be sure to check out the screenings of The Great Rabbit this summer at Image Forum.


This film screened at:



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02 June 2012

Akino Kondoh’s Kiya Kiya (きやきや, 2010-2011)



At Nippon Connection 2012, we had the rare opportunity to see the latest animated short by the artist Akino Kondoh.  It took Kondoh more than a year to complete Kiya Kiya (2010-2011), which is remarkable considering that each frame of an Akino Kondoh animation is as highly detailed as her paintings and illustrations.  Kiya Kiya film is about six-and-a-half minutes long with Kondoh creating 15 frames per second.

Eiko, the bob-haired girl with the beguiling smile, sits in a cabinet with a kamishibai (紙芝居) on her lap.  Kamishibai, which translates as “paper drama,” is a traditional form of storytelling that dates back to 12th century.  It underwent a revival in Japan in the early part of the 20th century when kamishibai storytellers (gaito kamishibaiya) would bicycle from village to village with their portable wooden display boxes.  Today in Japan, kamishibai sets are often used in schools in lieu of storybooks as they are easier for storytelling to an audience.  The pictures are on the front of the large cards and the text is on the back for the storyteller to read. 



In Kiya Kiya, Eiko is the storyteller.  As she changes the pictures in her kamishibai, her lips move and instead of hearing her words, cursive script begins to appear in columns as if written by a calligrapher’s hand in the traditional direction of top to bottom, right to left.  At first it appears to be hiragana (the cursive Japanese syllabary which Japanese children today learn first), but is actually illegible.  In an interview, Kondoh explains that she made the script by combining parts of hiragana with four letters from the Latin alphabet.

The illegibility of the text works on two levels in the film.  The first is that it gives the impression of text without allowing words to distract from the animation itself – which is what Kondoh herself has stated as her intention in the aforementioned interview.  The ambiguity of the text is heightened when it metamorphoses into shapes, and then into playful little tailed creatures in blue and red.

The indecipherable text also adds to the elusive character of Eiko herself.  Eiko is a kind of trickster character.  In one moment she charms with her smile, while in the next moment she shocks with a cruel or disturbing act.  The stark blacks and whites of Kondoh’s colour palette also highlight the dual nature of Eiko.  In Kiya Kiya, two more colours are added: red and blue.  In the third section of the film Eiko splits into two and a red Eiko and a blue Eiko chase each other and embrace each other like two kittens at play.  This sequence recalls Kondoh’s earlier animated film Ladybirds’ Requiem (てんとう虫のおとむらい, 2005-2006) which features a sequence in which a red ladybird (or “ladybug” in North American English) with black spots and a black ladybird with red spots embrace and spin around together.


Kiya Kiya is divided into three sections which are indicated by the insertion of title cards.  There is also a short introductory sequence and an upside-down title card before the end credits begin.  When I first heard the title of this film, I thought that “kiya kiya” might be an obscure onomatopoeia (sound word) for the sound made by one of the wonderful insects Akino Kondoh likes to use in her works.  It turns out that the title comes from an archaic expression that Kondoh found in Shojo korekushon josetsu (1985), a collection of short stories about girls by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa – a writer, critic, and translator of French literature (including Jean Cocteau and de Sade) who was close friends with Yukio Mishima.  In the glossary of the Shojo korekushon josetsu, Kondoh came across the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” (胸がきやきやする/a “kiya kiya” in one’s chest) which was translated as “a keen feeling experienced after an episode of déjà vu hat is unsettling and disturbing yet also familiar” (source). 

The Japanese language is rich with onomatopoeia which not only mimic sounds (giseigo) but also can describe actions or feelings (gitaigo).  For example, the giseigo “doki doki” is the onomatopoeia for the sound of a beating heart, but when it is turned into a verb “doki doki suru” it is used to describe the feelings one has when one’s heart is racing – such as nervousness or excitement.  “Kiya kiya” may have also at some point have had a sound associated with it, but Kondoh seems to have been drawn to the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” because it expresses the feeling of unease mixed with nostalgia that she expresses in her work.



This feeling of unease is amplified in Kiya Kiya by the soundtrack which was composed by the American avant-garde artist John Zorn – for whom Kondoh designed the album cover of The Goddess: Music for the Ancient Days (2010).  The soundtrack is predominantly high female voices and percussive instruments.  Like the images, the music repeats motifs - sometimes so much so that it sounds like a skipping record.  Repetitive images build throughout the film: Eiko lying as if dead in the overturned cabinet, Eiko being strangled by the branches of a tree, Eiko catching the tailed creatures in her hands like she did the ladybirds in Ladybirds’ Requiem.  The images build and build until finally Eiko stretches out naked on her back on a branch over a precipice and she smiles up at us inviting us to both admire and fear her beauty.


Akino Kondoh art comes out of the traditions of alternative manga (Garo, Ax).  In particular, she cites the controversial artist Toshio Saeki as an influence (source).  However, unlike the more exploitative and voyeuristic view of women in Saeki’s work, Kondoh’s work is an exploration of the self.  Eiko is the artist’s alter ego, developed out of Kondoh’s own, often disturbing, childhood memories.  Eiko’s trickster nature means she is hard to pin down, sometimes appearing as a girl while at other times a young woman, sometimes she seems to be the victim, while at other times she is the perpetrator.  Innocent and knowing, kind and cruel, drawing us in and pushing us away – Eiko both seduces and unnerves with her unusual charms.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits

Animation by Akino Kondoh

Music by John Zorn

Special Thanks to

Emi Nishiwaki
Marc Urselli
Masahiro Katayama
Tomoe Tsusumi
Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan
Mizuma Art Gallery
Pola Art Foundation

To learn more about Akino Kondoh and Kiya Kiya, check out:

Akino Kondoh’s official website
Her profile at Mizuma Art Gallery
My chat with Kondoh at Shinsedai 2010
A glimpse of the studio in Astoria (Queens, NYC) where Kondoh made Kiya Kiya
Kamijo, Keiko.  “Manga x Culture Vol. 1 Akino Kondoh.”  Cat’s Forehead. Trans. Luke Baker, 2011.
Huynh, Matt.  “Q+A with Akino Kondoh.” Yellow Trace. 19 April 2011.

This film screened at:
http://nipponconnection.com/

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