Makoto Wada (和田誠, b. 1936) is best known as an illustrator whose work has adorned the pages of writers as diverse as Shinichi Hoshi, Haruki Murakami, and Agatha Christie.  In addition to illustration, he has also dabbled in film directing and animation – winning the Noburo Ofuji Award for 1964 for his comic animated short Murder (殺人).  In Murder, he spoofs a wide variety of famous film and literary icons including Poirot, Sam Spade, Dracula and James Bond.  He has also done a range of paintings inspired by film stars and classic movies.  This is my third in a series of posts looking at his art and his muses.  See also: Part 1: Early Hollywood and Part 2: Hollywood Classics

You can support this artist by ordering collections of his work such as:

Order: Makoto Wada Cinema Art

In November 2011, Makoto Wada held an exhibition entitled "World of European Films" 「ヨーロッパ映画の世界」at the  Dojima Avanza Entrance Hall in his native Osaka.  According to Kansai Art Beat, the exhibition featured paintings inspired by everything from the popular Harry Potter film adaptions to art cinema classics like Fellini's La Strada (1954).

One of the images used to promote the film was a striking image of Sean Connery as James Bond against a red background.

I believe this studio photo of Connery was used for the promotion of Goldfinger (1964).  

One of my favourites from Makoto's European film series is his rendering of the unforgettable moment from Godard's Breathless when Jean Seberg, in her Herald Tribute T-shirt kisses Jean-Paul Belmondo on the cheek:

The yellow background suits the mood of Breathless, I think, and Wada has captured the body language of the two protagonists perfectly.  Less successful, in my opinion, is Wada's rendering of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948):

Yes, this is one of the classic stills from the movie, but the adaptation lacks finesse.  Wada's body proportions for the ballet dancer Vicky Page are all wrong.  Actress Moira Shearer was much more delicately proportioned than that, and her nose was quite dainty in real life.  Wada makes her look more like one of Cinderella's evil stepsisters. 

In contrast, Wada's interpretation of Albert Lamorisse's fantasy featurette The Red Balloon (1956) is spot on in its use of colour and design.  

Next: Makoto Wada's Movie Inspired Art 4: Modern Classics

Eine Fotoreise durch das alte Japan (A Photographic Journey through Old Japan) was published by Harenberg in 1985.  The author, Ludwig Hoerner (b. 1919), claims that the photographs were taken by an unknown European traveller to Japan in the late 19^th century.  The 70 hand-tinted black and white photographs are from the author’s own collection and from the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek (the public library of Lower Saxony), known today as the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek (GWLB) after the 17^th century polymath and philosopher whose manuscripts and correspondence are held in their archive.  Ingrid Siegmund-Rux wrote an afterword to the book that provides readers with the historical context of the rapid modernisation of Japan during the Meiji Era.

Hoerner is an autodidactic researcher and author with a passion for 19^th century photography: both the photographs themselves and the history of the photographic industry.  He has published a number of books on the subject, most notably Das photographische Gewerbe in Deutschland 1839–1914 (The Photographic Industry in Germany, 1839-1914, GFW-Verlag, 1989).  At the time of the book’s publication, Ingrid Siegmund-Rux appears to have been a librarian.  I have found little biographical information about her online apart from the minutes of the European Association of Sinological Librarians annual conference in 1986, which lists her as representing the Universitätsbibliothek und Technische Informationsbibliothek  Hannover (German National Library of Science and Technology / University Library Hannover).  

Most of the photographs in this collection were taken in and around Tokyo and Yokohama including tourist destinations for Tokyoites such as Mt. Fuji, Nikko and Hakone.  There are a few images from Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Lake Biwa), as well as images of Nagoya, Nagasaki, and Tomioka (a ghost town today as it is the epicentre of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster).  There are also a large number of posed photographs clearly designed to educate Europeans about the customs of Japan (tea ceremony, music and dance, ikebana, etc) and the occupations of people from all strata of Japanese society (silk traders, acrobats, a pipe-maker, sumo wrestlers, a shoemaker, a Buddhist priest, samurai, etc.).

Here are some of the highlights (clock on photos to view larger / as a slideshow):

This book is out of print and can be ordered from second hand bookstores.

2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes 

Makoto Wada (和田誠, b. 1936) is best known as an illustrator whose work has adorned the book covers and pages of writers as diverse as Shinichi Hoshi, Haruki Murakami, and Agatha Christie.  In addition to illustration, he has also dabbled in film directing and animation – winning the Noburo Ofuji Award for 1964 for his comic animated short Murder (殺人).  In Murder, he spoofs a wide variety of famous film and literary icons including Poirot, Sam Spade, Dracula and James Bond.  He has also done a range of paintings inspired by film stars and classic movies.  This is my first in a series of posts looking at his art and his muses.  You can support this artist by ordering collections of his work such as:

Order: Makoto Wada Cinema Art

Charlie Chaplin is a popular subject in Wada's work.  This is the classic scene in The Gold Rush (1925) where the Tramp boils and eats his shoes, imagining that the shoelaces are spaghetti.  As is typical of Wada's style, he simplifies the background in order to put the emphasis on the central character and themes of the scene.   Makoto Wada is known for his love of colour, and I like his choice of green for the Tramp's vest.

This is the final scene in Chaplin's City Lights (1933) when the Tramp finds the Flower Girl again and discovers that she has regained her sight.  She does not recognize him at first and offers him a flower and a coin.  When he grabs her hand, she suddenly realizes that he is no stranger.  It's a moving scene that leaves audiences wiping a tear from their eyes every time.  The colour palette  of Wada's interpretation emphasizes the whiteness of the flower, and the blondness of Virginia Cherrill's hair - the latter of which we only get a notion of in the black and white film.

Wada captures Greta Garbo's austere regalness in her iconic role as Queen Christina of Sweden in Rouben Mamoulian's critical and financial hit for MGM studios.  He's got the Garbo Look just right by capturing the arc of her eyebrows.

I was amused by how fat Orson Welles' head is in Wada's interpretation of this iconic image from Citizen Kane, because I didn't recall Welles looking so fat-headed in this scene.  But then I discovered that some stills of this scene do make his head extraordinarily large.... and of course Charles Foster Kane was indeed getting progressively big-headed throughout the film in the figurative sense. 

The Puerto Rican singer and actor José Ferrer is not as well-known today as many of his contemporaries (Bogart, Peck, Wayne, Tracy, Stewart), but he was a superstar in his time, winning the Tony in 1947 for playing Cyrano on Broadway before going on to win an Oscar and a Golden Globe for this screen portrayal.  Ferrer was the first Hispanic to win an Oscar.  To hear him in action, his best Cyrano speeches are available on iTunes.  He is arguably the top English Cyrano of the 20th century.  

For more by Wada: 

Makoto Wada’s Movie Inspired Art 2: Classic Hollywood

2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes

 “Ame ni mo makezu” (Be not Defeated by the Rain) is one of the most famous poems in the Japanese language.  Written by beloved author Kenji Miyazawa, the poem was discovered among his possessions after his passing in 1933.  Like Max Ehrmann’s “Deriderata” (1927), “Ame ni mo makezu” is a kind of a mantra or a musing on how to live one’s best life.

This bilingual picture book edition Rain Won’t (雨ニモマケズ/ Ame ni mo makezu, 2013), has been translated by American poet and translator, Arthur Binard and illustrated by renowned animator Kōji Yamamura.  In the afterward, Binard suggests that he wanted to recapture the lost traditional landscapes of Miyazawa’s Iwate Prefecture. “Kenji lived in a land where people grew, raised, and caught all their food.  Now more than 60 perfect of what’s eaten in Japan is imported,” Binard writes, and goes on to lament the loss of arable lands and free-flowing rivers to commercial urban streetscapes and concrete riverbanks.  Binard seems to be using Miyazawa’s words as a rallying cry against nuclear power and multinational corporations and in favour of a return to living in harmony with the environment.

our Miyazawa noren

This message resonates very strongly for my family because this poem has special meaning to us.  My husband specialises in sustainable agriculture and shortly after the disaster of 3/11 we were visited by friends/colleagues from Japan.  One of them, brought us a noren from Iwate and told us what a close call he had the day of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (see intro to: Anime Adaptations of Kenji Miyazawa’s Stories and Poems to read full story).  Iwate is just north of Fukushima and was badly affected by the 2011 tsunami.  As part of the redevelopment of this area, some researchers are looking at how to restore Satoyama landscapes.

Order from amazon.co.jp.

With his lovingly drawn illustrations, Koji Yamamura has managed to capture the beauty and diversity off the Satoyama landscape of Miyazawa’s time (early Shōwa period).  Satoyama (里山) is the name of the landscape that is cushioned between the mountain foothills and arable land.  It “is characterized by a mosaic feature of different land uses such as woodland, grassland, paddy field, farmland, irrigation ponds and canals, and human settlements, which have been maintained in an integrated manner.” (source: satoyama-initiative.org).  Simply put, it is a landscape in which humans and the natural world are living in harmony with one another.  The most famous example in Japanese popular culture is the rural landscape that the Kusakabe family (Mei, Satsuki and their Dad) move to in Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro (1988).

Using a limited palette (green, brown, yellow, a little bit of red), Yamamura not only depicts the landscape suggested by the original poem, but also adds depictions of the creatures that thrive in a Satoyama landscape.  This includes a variety of insects (dragonflies, grasshoppers, ladybugs, wasps, etc.), birds (tits, swallows, egrets, owls, etc.), and mammals (tanuki, domestic animals), and, of course, people.   

The result is a beautiful picture book edition of Rain Won’t (雨ニモマゲズ/ Ame ni mo makezu, 2013) that is fully bilingual and can be enjoyed by the whole family.  Although it looks like a typical children’s storybook, the language and philosophy is geared more to an adult reader.  The illustrations are very detailed – the kind of book you can read again and again and always spot something new.

Order from amazon.co.jp.

Catherine Munroe Hotes

My thanks to Koji Yamamura for his generosity.

Related Post:  Anime Adaptations of Kenji Miyazawa’s Stories and Poems

Food for Film

Chirashi sushi (Glasses, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2007)

Napoli Egg (Handsome Suit, Tsutomu Hanabusa, Japan, 2008)

Chicken Nuggets (Chef of the South Pole, Shūichi Okita, Japan, 2009)

Boiled Tripe (Villon’s Wife, Kichitaro Negishi, Japan, 2009)

Rice Balls (Seagull Diner, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2006)

Cinnamon Rolls (Seagull Diner, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2006)

Noriben (Nonchan Noriben, Akira Ogata, Japan, 2009)

Travel the World

Fried Chicken (Fried Green Tomatoes, Jon Avnet, USA, 1991)

Hamburgers (Transamerica, Duncan Tucker, USA, 2005)

Hummus (Tuesdays with Morrie, Mick Jackson, USA, 1999)

Norimaki (The Man Without a Past, Aki Kauismäki, Finland, 2002)

Silken Crab with Vegetables (Eat Drink Man Woman, Ang Lee, Taiwan, 1994)

Pot-au-Feu (Overboard, Gary Marshall, USA, 1987)

Mojito (Volver, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2006)

Fish and Chips (Dear Frankie, Shona Auerbach,UK, 2004)

Water Spinach Stir Fry (The Scent of Green Papaya, Tran Anh Hung, Vietnam/France, 1993)

Paella (Blame it on Fidel!, Julie Gavras, France, 2006)

Yakiniku Korean BBQ (Rough Cut, Jang Hoon, South Korea, 2008)

Jeon and Porridge (The King and the Clown, Lee Jun-ik, South Korea, 2005)

Popcorn (Welcome to Dongmakgol, Park Kwang-hyun, South Korea, 2005)

Happy Brunch

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce (The Godfather Part III, Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1990)

Ratatouille (Ratatouille, Brad Bird, USA, 2007)

French Toast (Kramer vs. Kramer, Robert Benton, USA, 1979)

Quiche (Waitress, Adrienne Shelly, USA, 2007)

Scrambled Eggs (Misery, Rob Reiner, USA, 1990)

Pancakes (The Notebook, Nick Cassavetes, USA, 2004)

Baked Potatoes (Juno, Jason Reitman, USA, 2007)

Green Salad (Cinema Paradiso, Guiseppe Tonatore, Italy, 1988)

Yakisoba with Clams (The Shoe Fairy, Yun Chan Lee, Taiwan, 2005)

Egg Over Rice (Kabei: Our Mother, Yoji Yamada, Japan, 2008)

Fried Rice (Tampopo, Juzo Itami, Japan, 1985)

Spaghetti Basilico(Mostly Martha, Sandra Nettelbeck, Germany, 2001)

Zha Jiang Mian (Shower, Zhang Yang, China, 1999)

Vegetable Potage (Rinco’s Restaurant, Mai Tominaga, Japan, 2010)

Penne in Cream Sauce (The Unknown Woman, Guiseppe Tornatore, Italy, 2006)

Spaghetti Vongole (The Big Blue, Luc Besson, France, 1988)

Kidney Bean Soup (Red Like the Sky, Cristiano Bortone, Italy, 2006)

Delicious Family Dinners

Risotto (Big Night, Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, USA, 1996)

Guacamole (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Sharon Maguire, UK, 2001)

Sautéed Salmon (Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni, Italy, 1997)

Loco Moco (Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant, USA, 2000)

Roasts Chicken (Miracle on 34^th Street, George Seaton, USA, 1947)

Sandwiches (The War of the Roses, Danny DeVito, USA, 1989)

Roast Beef (The World According to Garp, George Roy Hill, USA, 1982)

Macaroni and Cheese (Soul Food, George Tillman, Jr., USA, 1997)

Steak (My Date With Drew, Jon Gunn/Brian Herlinger/Brett Winn, USA, 2004)

Mushroom Dumplings (The Road Home, Zhang Yimou, China, 1999)

Burritos (The Jane Austen Book Club, Robin Swicord, USA, 2007)

Grilled Fish (Paris, Cédric Klapisch, France, 2008)

Samosas (The Namesake, Mia Nair, USA/India, 2006)

Spring Rolls (Happily Ever After, Yvan Attal, France, 2004)

Oden (Tora-san Plays Daddy, Yoji Yamada, Japan, 1987)

Sukiyaki (Always: Sunset on Third Street, Takashi Yamazaki, Japan, 2005)

Curry (All Around Us, Ryosuke Hashiguchi, Japan, 2008)

Corn Fritters and Edamame Rice (Still Walking, Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan, 2008)

Ochazuke (The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice, Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1952)

Cinematic Sweets

Apple Pie (The Shawshank Redeption, Frank Darabont, USA, 1994)

Banana Cake (Stanger than Fiction, Marc Forster, USA, 2006)

Chiffon Cake (The Secret Life of Bees, Gina Prince-Blythwood, USA, 2008)

Love Cake (Donkey Skin, Jacques Demy, France, 1970)

Truffles (Chocolat, Lasse Hallström, USA/UK, 2000)

Crème Brûlée (Amélie,Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France, 2001)

Birthday Cake (Kitchen Stories, Bent Hamer, Norway/Sweden, 2003)

Iced Azuki (Glasses, Naoko Ogigami, Japan, 2007)

Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion

Il signore del chaos: Il cinema di Sono Sion

In December, the 29th Torino Film Festival (TFF, 25 November – 3 December 2011) honoured Sion Sono by featuring his oeuvre in their Rapporto confidenziale (Confidential Report) section.  This annual programme aims to take note of emerging auteurs, genres, and other trends in international cinema. 

In honouring Sono, TFF describes him as an “eccentric and mesmerizing Japanese poet, novelist and director” whose works had never before been screened in Italian cinemas.   They go on to call him a “visionary” and a “provocative and dynamic filmmaker.  .  .  [who] mixes mixes psychoanalysis and Grand Guignol, melodrama and pop culture, horror and politics, serial killers and dark ladies.” (source)

In addition to presenting almost all of Sono’s films, TFF teamed up with the Italian blog Sonatine: Appunti sul cinema giapponese contemporaneo (Sonatine: Notes on contemporary Japanese cinema) to publish a book of essays and film reviews called Il signore del chaos: Il cinema di Sono Sion (Lord of Chaos: The Cinema of Sono Sion).

The book is edited by Dario Tomasi and Franco Picollo and features the writing of not only the editors but also Claudia Bertolè, Matteo Boscarol, Luca Calderini, Giacomo Calorio, Emanuela Martini, Grazia Paganelli, and Fabio Rainelli.  The cover features a photograph of the director taken at TFF.  The book includes a complete filmography with titles in Japanese/romaji/English/ Italian

For non-Italian speakers, I recommend checking out the Sonatine website using Google Translate.  As Italian sentence structure is very similar to English it is quite readable – unlike the bizarre world of Google JP to EN!!  Check out the following reviews on Sonatine:

1984   Rabu songu (Love Song)