Nishikata Film Review: comedy

Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts

13 March 2017

The Dull Sword (なまくら刀, 1917)

Japan is celebrating the centenary of anime this year. Due to the paucity of early cinema records in Japan there is much debate as to when exactly animation was first publicly screened in the country. However, we do know that the 1910s saw screenings of foreign works by Émile Cohl, James Stuart Blackton, James Randolph Bray, and Raoul Barré. There is also evidence that many people were experimenting with the animation medium before 1917, but it was the year that the first studio was organised to make animation for public screenings.

The cartoonists Ōten Shimokawa (下川凹天, 1892-1973), Seitarō Kitayama (北山清太郎, 1888-1945), and Jun’ichi Kōuchi (幸内純一, 1886-1970) produced at least 20 short animated films in 1917. The earliest of these is generally thought to have been Shimokawa’s The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa (芋川椋三玄関番之巻, 1917), but there is evidence that there may have been an earlier work. You can read “Some remarks on the first Japanese animation films in 1917” by Frederick S. Litten to learn what is known about this time period.

What is clear; however, is that almost all the Japanese animation films from the 1910s have been lost. Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (なまくら刀 / Namakura Gatana, 1917), also known as The Sword of Hanawa Hekonai (塙凹内名刀之巻 / Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki), is the earliest known extant work. The Dull Sword and Kitayama’s Urashima Taro (1918) were miraculously discovered in an Osaka antique shop in 2008 (source). The film originally debuted on 30th of June 1917.

Watch a news item on the discovery:

A one-reel silent film, The Dull Sword was digitally restored and can be screened on the National Film Centre’s film archive website with subtitles by Dean Shimauchi.

The film has a couple of title cards, but much of the apparent dialogue is un-titled. It is likely that these segments of dialogue were filled in by a benshi, or film narrator, as was standard practice in Japanese silent cinema. Watching the film completely silent on the NFC archive website, without the comic interpretation of a benshi, means that the full comic impact of the film is greatly reduced. One of the title cards is actually on its side (90° clockwise). The film was found with this splicing error and left as it was found by the restoration team.

The Dull Sword is a slapstick comedy, which was a popular genre of the silent period. It is likely Kōuchi and his early animation peers would have been familiar with imported comedies of the day such as the films of “the first international movie star” Max Linder of France, and American slapsticks such as those of Fatty Arbuckle, The Keystone Cops (1912-1917), and Charlie Chaplin. There are also elements of slapstick in many Japanese theatrical traditions such as manzai (漫才) and kyōgen (狂言). Add to the mix that Kōuchi was already an established mangaka and caricaturist when he made The Dull Sword, comedy would have come naturally to him.

The opening title card, tinted yellow, immediately sets the scene as a jidaigeki with the profile of a samurai and a bent sword. The first section of the film is tinted a dark cyan. A samurai appears in an iris shot examining his sword and testing it for sharpness. His eyes roll comically and his sword overlaps the iris matte in a cinematic visual gag. He cuts his finger on the sword then takes it to the swordsmith “Dull Smith”. The dialogue between the swordsmith and the samurai does not have title cards, but it is clearly humorous in nature with much eye-rolling from both men. There is a slapstick routine of the samurai trying and failing to sheath his sword. Once the sword is finally sheathed, the samurai pays the swordsmith and leaves.

In the next scene, the samurai is walking along the riverbank across from a large town. He gets out his sword and examines it. A title card reveals his desire to try out the sword. The film cuts to a bald, blind man with a cane playing a flute next to a tree. The samurai approaches him from behind. A yellow-tinted title card reveals that the samurai sees the blind man as a possible person to test his sword out on. He says something (presumably threatening judging from his facial expression) to the blind man. The blind man surprises the samurai by jumping up and kicking him in the face with his geta-clad feet.

The remainder of the film is tinted yellow. The style is also different with silhouette figures instead of detailed caricatures. A traveller with his luggage on a stick carried over his shoulder is running through the forest and encounters the samurai. The samurai tries to attack him, but the traveller outwits him, hitting him on the head with his stick. The traveller runs away as the samurai struggles to raise his head. Via a speech bubble, the samurai accuses the traveller of being a murderer. The samurai tries to stagger off using his sword as a cane, but it breaks and he falls on his face. He throws the useless sword away. He exits frame left and the film concludes with a company logo reading Y.N. & Co. I am not sure what the Y.N. stands for as Kōuchi made the film for the short-lived company Kobayashi Shōkai (小林商会, 1914-17) run by Kisaburō Kobayashi (小林喜三郎, 1880-1961)

The film was transferred to digital format at 16 fps. There were many frames missing from the two film fragments (the cyan-tinted fragment and the yellow-tinted fragment) that had to be compensated for during the film restoration. The final restoration consists of a total of 3,180 frames. For such an early work, the animation is done quite well. Much of the cyan fragment has been hand drawn with cutouts used to save money and celluloid. I am not sure why the film switches to silhouette for the second half. The reason may be budgetary rather than stylistic. My own personal view is that such a short film would have been stronger if it had stuck to one style throughout.

The most interesting thing about The Dull Sword is its use of a Japanese setting and subject matter. According to Jonathan Clements, the film received praise at the time for doing so (Anime: A History, p. 29). Before the discovery of these earliest works, we only had examples of anime from the 1920s-1940s which demonstrated the influence of popular American character design like Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Betty Boop, and Felix the Cat. This earliest extant anime has been drawn in a caricature style typical of the 1910s and the character design is such a contrast with today’s manga and anime styles. It is a wonderful glimpse into a film culture that we know so little about, due to the destruction wreaked by the Great Kantō earthquake if 1923, the firebombing of Tokyo, the flammability of early film stock, and the general neglect of early films after their initial screening runs. I hope one day to see this film interpreted by a benshi performance in order to get the complete cinematic experience.

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2017

03 December 2014

Dot (点, 1971)

In his long and varied career in animation, Shin’ichi Suzuki has worked behind the scenes on many anime classics. He was a key animator on Osamu Tezuka’s unfinished masterpiece Legend of the Forest (森の伝説, 1987), Taku Sugiyama’s classic science fiction anime Phoenix 2772 (火の鳥2772 愛のコスモゾーン, 1980), and Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s ground-breaking Akira (1988). In addition to key animation and inbetweening, he has worked as a character designer and animation director.

Anime projects involve a lot of artists and it is not always easy for us as spectators to recognize the contributions of individuals to the process. Fortunately in the case of Suzuki, he made some independent works in the 1960s and 70s that give us some insight into his talent as an animator and a comic artist. His short film Dot (点, 1971) played at the 8th and last of the Animation Festivals held at Sōgetsu Hall alongside films by fellow innovators such as Goro Sugimoto and Keiichi Tanaami.

Dot (点/Ten, 1971), also known as Dots or Spots, opens and closes with self-reflexivity – a look behind-the-scenes at the methods behind the magic of animation. The overhead camera used to shoot the frame-by-frame hand drawn animation has been placed higher than usual in order to capture not only the page but the animation desk, the animator and all of his assistants. By increasing the playback speed, the action has been sped up to show the animation team at work. Upon closer inspection of the sheets of paper being put on the animation table to be filmed, one can make out the names of Suzuki and his crew in Japanese. Some of the names where difficult to make out because the print was too small, but the ones that I am sure of are: 鈴木伸一 (Suzuki), 坂東昭雄 (Akio Bandō, the cameraman), 矢沢祐二 (Yūji Yazawa), 佐藤茂夫 (Shigeo Satō), 西出栄子 (Eiko Nishide, editor), 藤田紘一 (Kōichi Fujita), 明田川進 (Susumu Aketagawa, sound), plus four others. The soundtrack squeals over the opening credits like an old recording playing back at an increased speed.

A larger white piece of paper is placed on the animation table and the camera zooms in to reveal a small black dot. This is followed by a montage of dots of varying sizes and colours, then a series of vignettes showing dots in various contexts. A boy in kimono has dots for eyes, one of which repeatedly tries to escape his face but the box keeps placing it back. A montage of the Chinese character for dot (点) in different sizes and colours. A man spills a container of dots and then tries to vacuum them up, but one of the dots resists. A dog barks at a dot, which transforms into a set of jaws that attacks the dog. A man tries to pummel a dot but is sucked into the earth. A man walking gets a dot stuck in his geta (Japanese clogs) and turns himself into a pretzel trying to free his geta. A team of men play with the dot as if it’s a ball. A man lights the dot as if it is a bomb, but he himself explodes. A bird tries to carry off the dot, but it turns into a pole. A man eats a dot and it goes through his body as if the stomach is a pachinko machine. The dot turns into the planet earth, and a rocket blasts out of it to an explosion of American flags. The dot turns into a noose onto which a man is hung to the sound of a toilet flushing.

The soundtrack is a mixture of funky music, pinging noises, sound effects to complement onscreen actions, and found recordings (such as the sound of a rocket launch). The film demonstrates Suzuki’s skill as an animator, his love of visual gags, and his sense of poetic irony. It’s a small gem of a film with bonus footage during the opening and closing credits that act as a documentary of how low budget animated films were made in the early 1970s.

Shin’ichi Suzuki (鈴木 伸一, b. 1933) http://sam.or.jp/

Born in Nagasaki, Suzuki began his career as a manga-ka when he was a high school student, submitting his works to magazines such as Manga Shōnen. In 1956, he joined Otogi Pro under the mentorship of anime pioneer Ryuichi Yokoyama where he worked on the series Instant History (later renamed Otogi Manga Calendar, 1961-64). Together with his fellow manga-ka Fujio Fujiko, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Jirō Tsunoda, Fujio Akatsuka, and others, he established the short-lived Studio Zero (スタジオ・ゼロ1963-1971). He has been involved in the production of a variety of animation from indie to mainstream. Suzuki is one of the founding members of the Suginami Animation Museum and since 2005 has been its director.

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976)

The Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん, 1976) is an independent animated short by Shin’ichi Suzuki. Suzuki belongs to the first generation of post-war indie animators who pushed new boundaries in animation in the 1960s and 1970s. His short film Dot (点, 1971) played at the 8^th and last of the Animation Festivals held at Sōgetsu Hall alongside films by fellow innovators such as Goro Sugimoto and Keiichi Tanaami.

A “gourd bottle”, or hyōtan in Japanese, is a bottle made from the calabash fruit (lagenaria siceraria). It is also variously called “bottle gourd”, “opo squash” or “long melon”. It is an edible fruit when harvested young, but if left to mature it can be dried and made into a bottle. In some Asian countries it is also used for making utensils or pipes.

For The Gourd Bottle, Suzuki uses his pared-down caricature style that fans of his manga will be familiar with. It is a comic tale with a simple, but absurd conceit: a drunk salaryman with a bow-tie is at a bar. He notices that his glass is empty, but rather than ordering another one, he pulls out a gourd bottle from under the table. The man sitting next to him gets sucked into the bottle, like a reverse of the genie coming out of the lamp in Aladdin, and the drunk shakes the bottle and drinks its liquid. The barkeep spots the drunk with his own liquor bottle and orders him to leave. The barkeep also gets sucked into the bottle. The process repeats itself with others the drunk encounters along his way: a sexy lady, a cop, a dog peeing against the side of the bottle, until he accidentally leaves the bottle on the ground and finds the tables turned on him.

On the whole, it is a relatively simply executed animation, with its minimalist style allowing the audience to focus on the humour. There are two brief, but brilliant animation sequences: 1) the man pointing the cop’s gun at the “camera” and shooting the gun straight at the spectator and 2) the final sequence in which a car runs over the gourd. The best gag in the film is when the guy sucks the dog up into the gourd bottle, and when he drinks its liquid wets his own pants. It’s a comic classic its era in the vein of Marv Newland’s Bambi Meets Godzilla, (1969), Makoto Wada’s Murder (1964), and the films of Yoji Kuri and Taku Furukawa. Tongue-in-cheek sense of humour meets unadorned, expert animation.

Crew:

Kōichi Fujita / 藤田紘一

Katsumi Ōnishi / 大西克実

Masatoshi Mizumachi / 水町正俊 (Sound)

Akio Bando / 坂東昭雄 (Camera)

Eiko Nishide / 西出栄子 (Editor)

Shin’ichi Suzuki (鈴木 伸一, b. 1933) http://sam.or.jp/

Born in Nagasaki, Suzuki began his career as a manga-ka when he was a high school student, submitting his works to magazines such as Manga Shōnen. In 1956, he joined Otogi Pro under the mentorship of anime pioneer Ryuichi Yokoyama where he worked on the series Instant History (later renamed Otogi Manga Calendar, 1961-64). Together with his fellow manga-ka Fujio Fujiko, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Jirō Tsunoda, Fujio Akatsuka, and others, he established the short-lived Studio Zero (1963-1971). He has been involved in the production of a variety of animation from indie to mainstream. Some of the big name projects he worked on include Phoenix 2772 (Taku Sugiyama, 1980), Akira (Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988), and Legend of the Forest (Osamu Tezuka, 1987). Suzuki is one of the founding members of the Suginami Animation Museum and since 2005 has been its director.

Cathy Munroe Hotes 2014

27 October 2014

Sumo Lake (相撲の湖, 2011)

http://gregholfeld.com/

http://www.sumolake.blogspot.de/

http://www.benjaminspeed.com/

Sumo Lake (相撲の湖, 2011) is a humorous, hand-drawn animated short by Canadian-Australian artist Greg Holfeld (グレッグホルフェルド, b. 1965). The official Japanese name that appears in the film is an attempt at a katakana rendering of the English title: スーモー・ルエク. Unfortunately, as Holfeld told me himself at Hiroshima 2014 (he was on this year’s selection committee), he found out too late that this was inaccurate. To begin with, “sumo” does not have a long “u”, and “ルエク” is not commonly used for “Lake” in Japanese. So, I have amended the title to more authentically capture the English title of the film, which is a play on Swan Lake (白鳥の湖), the nineteenth century ballet composed by Tchaikovsky.

Sumo Lake from Panic Productions on Vimeo.

Holfeld’s interest in sumo wrestling dates back to 1990, when he lived in Tokyo. His attention was captured by the sight of the Hawaiian wrestler Konishiki, the heaviest rikishi ever in sumo with a peak weight of 287kg. Around this time David Benjamin asked him to illustrate The Joy of Sumo: A Fan’s Notes (1992), which is currently in print in its revised form: Sumo: A Thinking Man’s Guide to the National Sport (2010). The initial inspiration for this film; however, was a pitch painting by Eddie White and Ari Gibson, co-directors of the animated short The Cat Piano (2009), about a sumo wrestler who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. Learn more here.

As with all great comedy, Holfeld takes a simple conceit, the notion of a large, ungainly sumo wrestler doing ballet, and executes it brilliantly for the screen. The story begins with a wind-up sumo doll performing shiko (四股), the side-to-side stomping that sumo wrestlers ritually perform at the beginning out each bout in order to drive away any demons. A wider shot shows the tiny doll is facing a large sumo wrestler, who also performs shiko, causing the wind-up doll to fall over, face down. The wrestler picks up the doll and tries again, but his time the doll clatters away and disappears as if falling into water. A moment later, the figure re-emerges from the water like “The Lady of the Lake” of Arthurian legend, but the wind-up doll has transformed into a lifelike sumo wrestler on his toes like a ballet dancer.

The two wrestlers face-off and begin to wrestle one another, but midway through their fight transforms into a graceful pas de deux. One wrestler sinks into the water yet again, then re-emerges for another showdown. However, this battle gets interrupted by the stomping foot of a Godzilla-esque kaiju. Thus commences the climax of the film, which is a hilarious combination of epic battle and dance off. The icing on the cake is the glorious soundtrack composed by Benjamin Speed in a style similar to that of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. It is a beautifully drawn film, as you can see from some of materials Holfeld has shared on his website. The three-minute film consists of 1,300 drawings – a total of 6.24 kg of paper. The simplicity of the pencil sketch on paper style is delightful, particularly when paired with the complexity of character movement.

Sumo Lake can be viewed on Vimeo. You can support Greg Holfeld by buying his books and comics.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

10 May 2012

Takashi Iitsuka’s Super Organic Battle Action Adventure

The young filmmaker Takashi Iitsuka (飯塚貴士, b. 1985) wowed Nippon Connection 2012 with the international premiere of his short film Encounters (エンカウンターズ, 2011). The half hour action adventure action figure drama has previously screened at festivals in Japan such as the Sendai Short Film Festival and the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.

Encounters uses neither stop motion animation nor any CG effects. It is purely old school live action puppet action – a technique which Iizuka has christened “Super Organic Battle Action.” Using handmade action figures and monster puppets, Iizuka carefully manipulates the characters either by hand or fishing wire. The result is a loving send up of the great monster movies of Ishirō Honda (Godzilla, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Mothra vs. Godzilla). The campiness of the film and the use of marionette effects recalls the “supermarionation” techniques employed in the UK cult classic Thunderbirds (Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, 1965-6).

The story centers on two buddies, Max and John, who have taken a trip to the countryside to help Max get his mind off his girlfriend troubles. Just as the countryside and a chance encounter with a friendly stray dog named Kifune seem to be lifting Max’s spirits, a furry super-monster crashes into the scene and has a confrontation with some armed forces. The story then spirals into a pastiche plot line that throws in all the elements typical in a Japanese scifi action adventure: a mad scientist, fear of robots, love and friendship conquering all, and so on.

Talking to Iitsuka at Nippon Connection, I discovered that he did indeed play alone with action figures a lot as a kid. He was an only child and did not have the means to buy too many toys. He had a hero figure in Ultraman but lacked monsters – a problem he remedied by creating his own monsters using PET bottles. His aim with Encounters was to transfer the fun and spontaneity of such child’s play into the film.

His eyes lit up with delight when I mentioned the Thunderbirds and he added that he was also a big fan of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-8), a dark scifi “supermarionation” also by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. In terms of action films, in addition to being inspired by the Ultraman franchise, Iitsuka is also a big fan of The Delta Force movies starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin. This would explain his choice of Waffen Film Studio for the name of his one man production company. “Waffen” is German for “weapons”.

All levels of production were done by Iizuka himself: cinematography, editing, sound, music, set building, costumes and special effects. He made about 5 or 6 sets and manipulated the figures either marionette-style using fishing wire (which you can cheesily still see in some frames) or by hand (but without the hands being seen). For one sequence, for example, he built the set on top of the bathtub so that he could manipulate the figures from underneath. Some of the figures and sets were made using materials that he already had but others were built with supplies from the hobby shop. Some of the most interesting designs were done using papercraft and based on photographs Iitsuka took himself.

Iitsuka even does all the voices including a falsetto for Max’s girlfriend in a flashback sequence. The subtitles are kind of odd – at times very inspired – as when a wordy curse in Japanese is translated to English simply as “Jesus!” At other times the English subs are awkward and badly spelled – but that just adds to the fun. The subtitles, which were done by Naoki Suzuki of the Sendai Short Film Festival, complement the kitschiness of the film and the quirkiness of the Japanese dialogue. Iitsuka designed the dialogue as a spoof of the unusual Japanese dub s done on Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Shazzan (1967-9) and The Fantastic Four (1967-9) when they were first imported to Japan.

See opening to Japanese dub of Shazzan here, and The Fantastic Four here:

The film was shot on a Sony Video Z5J and edited using Abobe Software, Premiere, Aftereffects, etc. Iitsuka told me that he hopes that people will get a message of hope from the film. He is working on his next Super Organic Battle Action Adventure and was planning to explore German hobby shops for materials after the festival. An art school grad, Iitsuka has a natural eye for framing - doubtless honed by years of TV watching. The concept could easily have turned out completely schlocky, but I found the result brilliant. I hope that Iitsuka’s Encounters obtains the cult following that it deserves, and I look forward to seeing where his imagination takes him to next.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

You can follow Iitsuka on Twitter (JP only)
A 20 minute cut of the film is available on imdb (JP/EN)

01 April 2012

Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (1999)

Takashi Namiki (なみきたかし, b. 1952) of Anido has been documenting the world of animation both at home and abroad since the 1970s through his writings, photographs, and by collecting materials for his private archive. Last fall, I wrote about his book Animated People in Photo, which is a photo essay of his encounters with animators and animation festivals over the years. His 1999 documentary film Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (人形と生きる〜川本喜八郎の世界) screened on Day 3 of the Kawamoto-Norsteinevent at Forum des Images in Paris. It was introduced by Ilan Nguyen (Tokyo University of the Arts), who said that he believed that it was the first time for the film to screen outside of Japan.

The subject of the documentary is not Kawamoto the puppet animator, but Kawamoto the puppet maker and puppet theatre director. Starting in 1972, Kawamoto joined forces with his good friend Tadanari Okamoto to host a number of puppet animation festivals known as the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows. As they did not produce enough animated shorts to fill a full programme, Kawamoto came up with the idea of including live puppet theatre performances. Not only would this lengthen the programme, but live shows could also incorporate the humorous aspects of puppet performances. Apart from his first independent animation The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Kawamoto’s animated works tend to be more serious and contemplative. Yet everyone who knew Kawamoto personally speaks of his warm sense of humour. The live puppet shows demonstrate this other side to his personality.

The Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows ceased in 1980, and with Okamoto passing away in 1990, a revival of the event seemed unlikely. However, 27 years after the first Kawamoto + Okamoto event, Kawamoto decided to put on the puppet show one more time. Namiki’s film documents the event from the cramped rehearsals in Kawamoto’s tiny Sendagaya studio to the one night only performance at the Mitsukoshi Theatre in September 1999. The show featured a parade of the puppets from the NHK drama Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国志/Sangokushi) as well as performances of four original theatrical works written by Kawamoto:

Hito mo Migakite no Chi ni Koso (人も磨き手後にこそ)

This puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972. It features an old, tattooed man in a sentō (communal bath house). When bathing in Japan, one first squats with a shower or water in a basin. One must wash oneself thoroughly before entering the communal hot bath. The tattooed man sits with the wash basin blocking the view of his penis from the theatre audience. This is a wordless drama in which the comedy comes from the fact that the man’s movements are in time with the accompanying classical music. As the tempo increases, so too do his movements with dramatic pauses being made comical by him tipping the wash basin towards his private parts. At one point, the increase in tempo and volume results in him quite vigorously scrubbing his penis which caused a great deal of laughter. Another uproarious moment occurs when he stretches out his arm and plays it like a fiddle – in the style of an air guitar performance.

There is also the humour of familiarity in this piece, as public bathing is an important cultural tradition with etiquette that all of the audience members would recognize. Thus another funny sequence involves the old man trying to get from the wash basin to the hot bath in a dignified manner by trying to hold the small white towel over his private parts. He then sticks his toe into the bath and jumps back in shock at how hot the water is, before easing himself in.

If I had seen this puppet play before hearing Ilan Nguyen and Serge Éric Ségura’s lecture on the life and career of Kawamoto, I would have presumed that the old man was a yakuza because of his ornately tattooed body. Nguyen and Ségura revealed that Kawamoto himself had elaborate tattoos on his back and upper arms that he acquired in the late 1950s / early 1960s in order to mark himself as an individual. With this in mind, it is likely that there is an element of autobiography to this amusing piece.

Kurui toki no Kami da no mi (くるしいときのカミだのみ)

This puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972. Like

Hito mo Migakite no Chi ni Koso, this puppet play is a wordless physical comedy set to music. It features a salaryman going to the toilet – quite literally “toilet humour”! The title suggests that the struggle that one sometimes has on the toilet can be a religious experience.

Good Night, I said! (おやすみなさいったら！/Oyasumi-nasaittara!)

This comic puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972. It is also set to music. All parents struggle with getting their kids to bed at night. In this puppet drama the struggle is multiplied as a mother tries to convince four babies to go to sleep. The piece is performed to the German lullaby “Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf’ ein” by Mozart. The mother dozes off herself while waiting for her little ones to sleep and the babies crawl around under the blankets. The large bed is vertical on the stage and leaning slightly backward so as to accommodate both the spectators watching the action and the puppeteers.

Scheming World from Inside and Out (世間胸算用近頃腹裏表/ Seken Munazanyou Chikagoro to Tatemae)

This puppet play was performed at the fifth Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1976 and was also a part of the reprise event in 1979. In an introductory interview Kawamoto explains that audiences found the subject matter of this play quite shocking when it was first performed. Times have changed in the ensuing quarter century and he thinks that the audience in 1999 will find it fairly tame.

This puppet play does have dialogue and concerns the inner workings of a Japanese home. Traditionally in a Japanese family, when the eldest son marries he becomes the head of the family. This usually means that three generations of a family will live together under one roof. Unsurprisingly, this often results in the new wife and her mother-in-law butting heads on the way in which the household is run. Mother-in-laws tend to have very fixed ideas about how to manage the home having been in charge of their own homes for at least two decades. The young wife may bring modern ways or even different ways of doing things learned from her own mother into the home. No matter what one's cultural background, we can all recognize that this is a recipe for trouble.

This puppet play reenacts the strife that results from his scenario with the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law being sweet to each other’s faces but saying things to each other that are either sarcastic or have a double-meaning. Behind each other’s backs they complain about each other and take out their frustrations with having to live together on the chores. The mother-in-law takes out her frustration on the laundry. She even goes so far as to spit on her daughter-in-law’s shirt before ironing it. Her main complaint is that she things her daughter-in-law is lazy and unskilled in housework.

The daughter-in-law is mainly upset at the restrictions her mother-in-law imposes on her life. On this day, her mother-in-law has chosen not to go out, and this means that the daughter-in-law must also stay at home at do chores when she would rather be gossiping with her friends. She cannot allow the mother-in-law does not do all the chores and take all the credit for the housekeeping. The daughter-in-law takes out her frustration on preparing supper. She attacks the fish with all her pent up rage. At the end of the play, the mother-in-law pretends to enjoy the food her daughter-in-law has prepared and the daughter-in-law feigns delight with her neatly shirt. The masks of domestic harmony are back up again and the women continue in their struggle to live together for the sake of the family.

One only gets a taste of these puppet plays for the original theatrical performance lasted 3 hours and the documentary is a comfortable 40 minutes. The puppeteers, in the tradition of Bunraku, perform entirely in black with the faces also masked in black. It was hard to tell if they were also using 3 puppeteers for each puppet as I was so wrapped up in the performance that I forgot to pay attention. The puppets were large and did have a minimum of 2 puppeteers – as you can see in the screencaps of the performances.

Kawamoto wrote, directed, produced, and performed in the puppet dramas. He talks at some length about the craft of the puppet theatre and the challenge of preparing the puppeteers for the performance – they were quite young and many were new to puppeteering. Most of Kawamoto’s original collaborators had either passed away or had moved on to other things in their lives since the 1970s. He mentioned one puppet master in particular named Koga who had passed away and whom he greatly missed. They spent two months rehearsing for the performance. In order to bring the puppet convincing to life, Kawamoto explained that the performers need to have mutual respect for each other and work towards being in harmony with one another. Although they made a few errors during the live show, Kawamoto seemed content with the final result.

The documentary is a very low resolution video with amateur English subtitles. However, the singularity of the subject matter makes the film must-see viewing for fans of Kawamoto and scholars of Japanese puppet theatre. It reveals a very different side of Kawamoto as not only a puppet designer and creator, but also a comic writer, theatrical director, and media personality. It is impossible to recreate the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows of the 70s now that the key figures have passed away, but this documentary gives us a glimpse of what the theatrical portion of these shows must have been like. There is also footage from a TV talk show that shows Kawamoto having a comical exchange with his good friend the actress and TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. She teases him about how tiny his studio is and wonders how he could possibly work in such a cramped space. Kuroyanagi did voice acting for several Kawamoto puppet animations: The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Rennyo and his Mother (1981), and The Book of the Dead (2005).

Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto is available for loan from Anido. Click here for more information.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

06 February 2012

Wild Berries (蛇イチゴ, 2003)

There are many theories as to how the Asian variety of mock strawberry hebi ichigo (Duchesnea chrysantha) – quite literally “snake strawberry” got its name. The name is so old – the Japanese adopted the name from the Chinese – that no one knows its origin for certain. This pretty little flowering plant of the rose family is found growing in the wild all over Japan. It resembles a wild strawberry, but disappoints when eaten for it is bland. After watching Miwa Nishikawa’s debut feature film Hebi Ichigo (Wild Berries/蛇イチゴ, 2003), I had to think of the English idiom “snake in the grass”, for in her film the members of the Akechi family are like the hebi ichigo: on the surface they appear as lovely as wild strawberries but it is all a façade. In fact, the more we learn about their true personalities, the more they appear to be a den of venomous snakes.

The Akechi family have mastered the art of tatemae (建前, the public face one is expected to uphold for the sake of family/work) to such a high degree that not even other members of the family are aware of each other’s honne (本音, one’s true feelings and desires). The father, Yoshiro Akechi (Sei Hiraizumi), has lost his job as a salaryman but puts on a pretense of going off to “work” each day in the desperate hope of finding a job so that he does not lose face with his family. His wife, Akiko (Naoko Otani) plays the role of dutiful housewife, taking care of the household and her increasingly senile father-in-law Kyozo Akechi played with terrific comic timing by the great rakugo storyteller Matsunosuke Shofukutei. Akiko never complains, despite the fact that her situation has become intolerable.

When their daughter, the straight-laced school teacher Tomoko (Miho Tsumiki), brings her boyfriend Kamata (Toru Tezuka) home to meet the folks, he is totally taken in by the Akechi family’s apparent normalcy. Having been raised in a privileged family of inherited wealth, Kamata thinks that he has found a potential wife from the ideal family in which the mother and father selflessly sacrifice themselves by working hard for the good of the family. This public façade (tatemae) comes crashing down at the grandfather’s funeral when one-by-one the members of the Akechi family begin to reveal their true selves (honne). The greatest family secret of all is Tomoko's disowned brother Shuji (Hirayuki Miyasako), the proverbial black sheep of the family, whose unexpected return brings even more chaos.

On the surface, this sounds like an absolutely depressing tale, but Nishikawa has written a brilliant black comedy on par, in my opinion, with the classic Alec Guinness vehicle Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949). It’s the kind of humour that has one cringing and laughing at the same time. On the Japanese DVD release of Hebi Ichigo the acerbic dialogue has been excellently translated by Linda Hoaglund (director of ANPO: Art X War) for the English subtitles. It is rare for a debut feature film to look and sound so terrific, but Nishikawa was fortunate to have the guiding hand of Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life, Still Walking) as her producer. Not only did the film go on to win Nishikawa the Best New Director award at the 2004 Yokohama Film Festival, but it marked the beginning of a directorial career that has been brilliant so far with Sway (2006) and Dear Doctor (2009) bringing her much critical praise.

Hebi Ichigo is available via cdjapan:

Hebi Ichigo (English Subtitles)

01 November 2011

Sawako Decides (川の底からこんにちは, 2010)

Hollywood has lost the plot when it comes to romantic comedies. Back in the genre’s golden years, actresses with solid acting chops and modest looks (Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn) won over audiences by playing terrific characters that female audiences could identify with. These days, female leads in romantic comedies tend to be cookie-cutter beautiful with shallow, egocentric issues that have little to do with the day-to-day concerns of real women.

This is not the case in Sawako Decides (川の底からこんにちは / Kawa no soko kara konnichi wa, 2010), where the main leading lady ranks herself as “lower middle” in the spectrum of women. Sawako has average looks, meagre self esteem, and is lacking in professional ambition. In the five years since she left her home town for Tokyo after a falling out with her widowed father, she has suffered through five dissatisfying jobs and is in her fifth disappointing relationship after being dumped by her previous four boyfriends. She seems to be stuck in a cyclical rut when she gets word that her father is terminally ill with cirrhosis brought on by heavy drinking.

Sawako resists moving back to her home town to support her dying father and his wayward brother because it means having to face up to unresolved problems from her past, but her recently divorced boyfriend Kenichi coerces her into going. Kenichi is looking for a fresh start for his life with his young daughter and sees potential in Sawako’s family business of packing freshwater crabs. His daughter Kayoko, with her big mournful eyes, is more cautious than her father, but ultimately will be the first person to really connect with Sawako.

The choices that Sawako faces in this film are difficult and her decisions are not predictable, which only serves to make her character all the more human and likable. Hikari Mitsushima (Love Exposure, Kakera) brings her trademark shy charm to the role and contrasts well with the more brash female characters such as her old childhood friend with a grudge and the gaggle of crab-packing women who are determined to make Sawako suffer a bit for her past sins before welcoming her back into the fold. The wacky, screwball aspects of Yūya Ishii’s film keep it from wallowing too long in self-doubt and misery – though the unlikely subplot of a random Tokyo graduate student seducing a married fisherman should have been left on the cutting room floor.

All in all it is an enjoyable film that reminds us that no matter how average a person is, they need only work hard and look out for others in their community to enjoy a successful life. As Sawako's family vegetable patch demonstrates, sometimes the most beautiful flowers can grow in the biggest dung heap.

Sawako Decides recently came out on DVD in the UK. The distributor Third Window Films has been struggling to get back on top since they lost their stock in the Sony warehousefire during the London riots this summer. Please support them by ordering their films on DVD or, if you like in the UK, watching them on MUBI. The DVD includes an interview with the director as an extra.

Director and Screenwriter

Yūya Ishii

Cinematographer

Yukihiro Okimura

Original Music

Chiaki Nomura

Cast

Sawako

Hikari Mitsushima

Kenichi

Masashi Endo

Kayoko

Kira Aihara

Tadao

Kotaro Shiga

Nobuo

Ryo Iwamatsu

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

12 August 2011

Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (亀は意外と速く泳ぐ, 2005)

Suzume “Sparrow” Katagura (Juri Ueno of Swing Girls and Nodame Contabile) has an unusual turtle named Taro with a green and red painted shell as a pet. As far as pets go, turtles are not the most engaging of creatures. To make matters worse, when Suzume’s husband calls home from abroad he seems more interested in Taro the turtle’s welfare than in his wife.

Suzume’s life is much like that of the turtle: slow moving and mundane. This is in stark contrast to the life of her best friend Kujaku “Peacock” Ogitani (Yū Aoi of One Million Yen Girl and Hula Girls) whose life seems full of adventure and has big plans to move to Paris and live with a Frenchman in view of the Eiffel Tower. All that changes one day when Suzume is the unfortunate victim of an apple cart spilling its wares done the flight of 100 steps Suzume regularly must climb to get home. As she cowers on the steps to protect herself from the onslaught of apples, Suzume spots a tiny “Spies Wanted” poster on the railing.

Replying to the ad, Suzume meets the Kugitanis – an unusual couple who claim to be part of an important espionage operation. They test Suzume and pronounce that her ordinariness makes her the perfect candidate to be a spy. Thus begins Suzume’s spy training – a journey that gives her a sense of purpose in her life for the very first time. The irony in all this, of course, is in the fact that the Kugitanis' mission and employers are never made clear.

Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (亀は意外と速く泳ぐ, 2005) is a quirky little comedy that will delight viewers who enjoy slow-paced, off-the-wall humour. Director Satoshi Miki’s choice of stylized sets and costumes are the big hint that this film should be read as a flight of fancy and not realism. Taro the painted turtle is quite literally a turtle whose shell has been painted red and green. The red and green motif repeats itself in Suzume’s costumes and in many elements of the set. It is a light film with a simple message: if one looks closely enough one can find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

I was particularly delighted with the opening credits of the film which were designed and animated by Tobira Oda. Suzume is flipping through a giant pad of paper with flip book illustrations in its corner. The flip book animation – which is interspersed with film credits – shows an animated version of Suzume performing the mundane daily tasks of a housewife: preparing meals, hanging laundry, cycling to run errands, vacuuming, and so on. A simple concept executed in a very cleverly way.

Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers ( Kame wa igai to hayaku oyogu ) ( Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

Order Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers Now

This month I will be featuring reviews of Japanese feature films released by independent distributors in the UK. I was saddened by the news (read more at VCinema) that one of the many victims of the riots this week in England was the Sony DADC warehouse in Enfield. One of the biggest distribution warehouses in the London area, it held the stock of more than a hundred independent record labels and film distributors. While insurance will cover the cost of the stock that went up in flames, with no current stock to sell many of these companies have been put into extremely difficult financial circumstances.

Third Window Films is the distributor for Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers in the UK. They have written a long piece about the fallout from the fire on Facebook. Other Third Window Films titles that I recommend include Fine, Totally Fine (read my review) and Confessions of a Dog (read my review). Please support Third Window Films by ordering films that are currently in stock in their Amazon Store (also available to order as an import via Amazon in the US, France and Germany). If you live in the UK you can rent many Third Window Film titles on Mubi. UK residents can also support Third Window Films at the cinema by supporting the release of Lee Sang-il's Villain (Akunin) on August 19th. Check out the official Facebook page for details.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

To order to Japan:

Kame wa Igai to Hayaku Oyogu / Japanese Movie

Kame wa Igai to Hayaku Oyogu Deluxe Edition

06 May 2011

Here Comes the Bride, My Mom! (オカンの嫁入り, 2010)

Kotatsu shots aplenty in this film set in traditional Osaka houses.

Saddled with an unfortunately awkward English title and an even more unfortunate trailer, I had not been expecting great things from Mipo O’s Here Comes the Bride, My Mom! (Okan no Yomeiri, 2010). I went to see the film anyway thanks to a recommendation from Franco Picollo of the Italian blog about Japanese cinema Sonatine.

The trailer suggests that the film will be some kind of a screwball comedy romp à la Waterboys (Shinobu Yaguchi, 2001) or Nodame Cantabile (Hideki Takeuchi, 2008). Instead, I was delighted to find a heartfelt family drama that counterbalanced just enough comic moments to keep the film from becoming too depressing. Thematically, it has much in common with Yōji Yamada’s About Her Brother (2010), but instead of siblings the focus is on a mother-daughter relationship.

Tsukiko Morii is the only child of a single mother Yoko Morii (Shibobu Otake). Initially, Tsukiko seems the more mature of the two: making her mother’s bento, walking the dog, and taking care of the household chores. Their apparently cozy home life is thrown into disarray when her mother turns up drunk one rainy night with a young man in tow called Kenji-kun (Kenta Kiritani) whom she refers to as an “omiyage” (souvenir/gift).

Far from being a present for her daughter, the young, unemployed chef turns out to be her own fiancé. Tsukiko flies into a sulk and she, along with their gossipy landlady Saku, are appalled by Yoko’s infatuation with a man 10 years her junior. Tsukiko is jittery around Kenji, a pleasant young man who tries to break the ice by cooking meals and offering to help look after the dog. Will her mother change her mind and look towards someone her own age, like Tsukiko’s only father figure Dr. Murakami, or will Tsukiko find a way to reconcile herself to this new phase of her mother’s life? These are some of the questions that push the plot forward.

At first, the film unfolds in a relatively predictable fashion, until we learn some of the tragic background for why Tsukiko is not working and is nervous around young men. Apart from these events from a year ago, the plot delves very little into the reasons for Yukiko and her mother having no other family. This may frustrate some viewers, but I found it refreshing that the film contented itself with dealing with just the current relationship and issues between the mother and daughter instead of dragging up every little detail from the past that led to them being the women that they have become.

The film has clearly been written for and conceived by women and is the perfect film to see with close girlfriends or female relatives. It broaches a number of difficult topics faced by women including the precarious position of women in the workplace, stalking and harassment, and the impossible expectations that society has for mothers and daughters. At its core, the film tries to impart the message that we should live our lives openly and honestly with each other. When it comes to familial love, the pain of deception hurts much more than brutal honesty.

Director/Screenwriter

Mipo O (aka Mipo Oh)

Based on the novel by

Tsukine Sakuno

Cinematographer

Shohei Tanikawa

Cast

Shibobu Otake as Yoko Morii

Aoi Miyazaki as Tsukiko Morii

Kenta Kiritani as Kenji Hattori

Moeko Ezawa as Saku Ueno

Jun Kunimura as Dr. Akira Murakami


Nippon Connection 2011 © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

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