Floating Worlds

A Short History of Japanese Animation

Maria Roberta Novielli

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351334815
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

Through the analysis of the work of the main Japanese animators starting from the pioneers of 1917, the book will overview the whole history of Japanese animated film, including the latest tendencies and the experimental movies. In addition to some of the most acclaimed directors Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao, Shinkai Makoto, Tezuka Osamu and Kon Satoshi, the works of masters of animation such as Kawamoto Kihachir?, Kuri Y?ji, ?fuji Nobur? and Yamamura K?ji will be analysed in their cultural and historical context. Moreover, their themes and styles will be the linking thread to overview the Japanese producing system and the social and political events which have often influenced their works.

Key Features

• Insight into both mainstream and independent cinema
• Scientific reliability
• Easy readability
• Social and cultural context

CHAPTER 1

From Pre-Cinema to the Birth of Industry

THE FIRST ANIMATED MOVIE in Japan was presented in 1917, representing the most recent artistic development of the long-standing history of “moving images” in the country. Many important precursors had experimented with different kinds of visual storytelling, including the emakimono (“handscrolls”) used from in the eleventh century by traveling storytellers to narrate legends and religious anecdotes.^* The emakimono were held with both hands and slowly unrolled from the right to the left, so as to gradually let the images flow like a moving panorama, according to a chronological order of narration based on the poetry structure known as kishōtenketsu: ki (“enter”) as an introduction, shō (“join and expand”) as the development, ten (“turn”) as the pivotal event and ketsu (“solution”) as the ending.

Originated in the Chinese performative tradition, kagee (“shadow play”) may be considered a precursor of animation in Japan. Very popular during the Edo period among both children and adults, practitioners often performed repertoires derived from the kabuki theater with musical background. Similarly, the magic lantern imported from the Netherlands at the end of the eighteenth century became very popular as an animation tool. Known as utsushie (“reflected pictures”), the original metal device was completely modified: made with wood and fitted with two lenses, it was easily portable and movable, and could accentuate the moving effect of the screened images. By the end of the nineteenth century, magic lanterns were also used in different contexts, such as in theaters, temples and schools, as a form of educational entertainment.

Among the street theater arts, which may be considered as precursors of animation, kamishibai (“paper play”) has the longest history. Presumably dating back to the twelfth century, this form of storytelling reached its highest popularity during the 1920s and 1930s.^* The itinerant presenters used to move from village to village, carrying a miniature stage-like device, in which different images could be alternated to narrate a story. During World War II, kamishibai was often used for propaganda purposes, not only due to its popularity but also because the storytellers could easily convey the nationalistic ideology.

The traditional bunraku puppet theater may be regarded as another source of inspiration; the theatrical form emerged in the seventeenth century when puppetry was coupled with the musical performances of jōruri. The puppets are animated by three performers known as kuroko (“black persons”), whose black clothes, including a hood, metaphorically hide their presence on the stage. Puppets have a complex system of joints, so that they can be easily moved, including their fingers and neck. However, their heads were not realistic and, classified by their gender and age, representing different human typologies: young women, warriors, ghosts, demons and so on. Together with the figures of ukiyoe prints, these puppets are considered the ancestors of the stylized characters of most Japanese animations.

However, the media most similar to animation is undoubtedly manga, the Japanese comics, and its origin may be found in the cultural settings mentioned above, especially in emakimono. While woodblock prints and painting art were flourishing during the Edo period, the Japanese artist Hokusai created a collection of sketches known as Hokusai Manga (15 volumes published between 1814 and 1878), also presented at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1867. This work, a collection of landscapes, animals and figures, is now considered the first manga in the modern sense of the word.

During the Meiji period, when Japan ended its isolation and opened its frontiers to other cultures, many newspapers and magazines introduced strips as part of their narration. The new-born cartoon magazine Japan Punch, which was published in Yokohama by English cartoonist Charles Wirgman, added some novelties. One example is putting, text in balloons in the strips, which accounts for calling it manga ponchi (from the English word “punch”) at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1905, the Japanese artist Kitazawa Rakuten (1876–1955, nom de plume Kitazawa Yasuji), strongly influenced by Western comics, established the satirical magazine Tōkyō Puck, where some of the pioneers of animation took their first steps. From 1912, artist Okamoto Ippei (1886–1948) became a renowned manga kisha (“comic journalist”) for the Asahi Newspaper. His strips about chronicles and travel reports already contained many filmic elements, with new and dynamic effects. Decades later, “the God of manga” Tezuka Osamu asserted that he had been an admirer of both Kitazawa’s and Okamoto’s works.

PIONEERS

In July 2005, a fragment of an animated filmstrip (unknown author) was discovered in Kyoto. Fifty frames (about 4 seconds) of paintings on celluloid cels show a young man writing the word “cinema” (katsudō shashin, “images in movement,” as it was called in that period) on a wall, who then turns toward the audience and greets the public, taking his hat off. According to Matsumoto Natsuki, the professor at Osaka University who had discovered the filmstrip along with and some other animation historians, this movie was made in 1907,^* which would make it the oldest animation in the world.

Until this filmstrip was found, historians had traced the first Japanese animation back to 1917, even if many foreign animated movies had already been screened in Japan before this date.^† The pioneers of Japanese animation were Shimokawa Ōten, Kōuchi Jun’ichi and Kitayama Seitarō, all making their debut in 1917. Their works were unfortunately almost completely destroyed during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The growing popularity of foreign animation prompted the creation of departments inside the studios to experiment with the new art.^‡ Among others, the Tennen Shoku Katsudō Shashin (Natural Color Moving Picture Company, known as Tenkatsu) in 1916 commissioned Shimokawa Ōten^§ with making an animated short movie. He experimented with several techniques, including chalkboard animation, and in the end, his first movie, a 5-minute short, was ready. The Story of the Concierge Mukuzō Imukawa (Imokawa Mukuzō, genkanban no maki) was distributed in January 1917 as the first Japanese animation. In the same year, Shimokawa made four other short movies, but because of his eye problems, he had to quit animation and worked only on comics, a field in which he became very famous.

The second pioneer, Kōuchi Jun’ichi (1886–1970, also known as Kōuchi Sumikazu), a former illustrator for the magazine Tōkyō Puck, was hired in 1916 by the production company Kobayashi Shōkai. His first short animated movie was The Dull Sword (Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki, literally Hanawa Hekonai’s Sword, also known with the title Namakura katana), distributed on June 30, 1917. In this movie, a samurai complains to a merchant who sold him a dull sword, but the man scorns and even kicks him.^* In his following works, Kōuichi also experimented with various techniques, such as using cels as frames for animation (invented in 1914 by Earl Hurd), shadow effects, synchronized sound,^† and papercutting animation (kirie). In 1923, Kōuichi established his own production company, the Sumikazu Eiga, and specialized in folk stories; however, he soon abandoned animation to become a cartoonist, just like Shimokawa.

The third pioneer, Kitayama Seitarō (1888–1945), had previously been an illustrator for the Contemporary Western Art (Gendai no yōga) magazine and a collaborator of the post-impressionistic artistic group Fyūzankai. He joined the oldest Japanese production company, Nikkatsu (short for Nippon Katsudō Shashin Kabushiki Kaisha—Japan Motion Pictures Company, founded in 1912), and in 1915, he started working on his first animation, made with paintings on paper, Battle of a Monkey and a Crab(Saru to kani no gassen), presented only in 1917. The movie, now lost, was the adaptation of a traditional tale of the fourteenth century, but the style of the paintings was Western. Kitayama was the first artist to organize a staff of animators for his works, which allowed him to make more than 20 short movies in only 2 years. In 1921, he founded his own independent production company, the Kitayama Movie Laboratory (Kitayama Eiga Seisakujō), gathering some of the most talented illustrators, and soon specializing in commercials and educational short movies. The only work by Kitayama now visible is Urashima Tarō (ibid., 1918), digitalized in 2008 (the legendary history of a fisherman who follows a turtle under the sea), and an essay that he published in 1930, entitled How to Make Animated Films (Sen eiga no tsukurikata).^*

These three pioneers paved the way for many young animators, some of whom had trained with them. In a few years, animation became a popular art and a field of uninterrupted experimentation.

CULTURAL TURMOIL

The Taishō Era (1912–1926) represented one of the liveliest periods in the history of Japan, invigorated by the urge for renewal and modernization and engaged in blending Western influences with the traditional culture of the country. Many media that had developed in the previous era—publishing industry, cinema and cartoons—quickly progressed, achieving their full maturity. During the 1920s, many cultural debates tried to define each media as a unique form of art, and animation would soon become an independent artistic expression.

Both live cinema and animation soon underwent governmental regulations. Among the others, in 1911, the Ministry of Education established the “Committee for the popular educational enquiry” (Tsūzoku kyōiku chōsa iinkai), in charge of controlling every entertainment field (including literature and cinema) (Salamon, 2002). In 1917, the committee formed a set of rules known as “Revision of the Provisions for the Regulation of Motion Pictures” (Katsudō shashin kōgyō torishimari kisoku), meant as a tool of moral tutelage. The committee also promoted the production of kyōiku eiga (“educational films”). Among the most influential, in 1917, Kitayama Seitarō made some shorts, such as Recommendations for Your Savings (Chokin no susume) and Even Dust Piled Up Will Become a Mountain (Chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru), on behalf of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication.

A prompt to the popularity of animation paroxysmally derived from the tragedy of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which almost completely destroyed the area of Tokyo and Yokohama, causing the deaths of over 100,000 people. In the aftermath of the destruction, the whole country worked hard to rebuild the architecture of the towns and to boost the morale of the survivors. Animation contributed to the recovery, presenting stories derived from tradition and mythology, able to give positive impulse to rise from the ashes stronger than before. For example, the young animator Yamamoto Sanae^* made the optimistic The Mountain Where the Old Women Are Abandoned (Ubasute yama, 1923), based on an old legend according to which old people used to be taken to the top of a mountain to die, as they could not contribute to the community. However, in Yamamoto’s movie, the protagonist of the story refuses to abandon his own mother, thus representing the possibility of overcoming the hardship of life.^†

Yamamoto also made some educational movies, including Reforestation (Shokurin, 1924) for the Ministry of Agriculture, The Mail’s Journey (Yūbin no tabi, 1924) for the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication and The Spread of Syphilis (Baidoku no denpa, 1926) for the Ministry of Education.

ŌFUJI NOBURŌ

Thanks to his tireless experimentation and to the high quality of his work, in the 1960s the most prestigious award was established in his honor to recognize excellence and innovation in Japanese animation, a prize won by authors such as Miyazaki Hayao, Ōtomo Katsuhiro and Kon Satoshi. Ōfuji was also the first film director and animator to be internationally esteemed and receive awards in prestigious film festivals.

Ōfuji Noburō (Nom de plume of Ōfuji Shinshichirō, 1900–1961) started his career when he was only 18 years old as an apprentice to Kōuchi Jun’ichi. In 1921,^* he founded his own production company, the “Laboratory of Research on Free Cinema” (Jiyū Eiga Kenkyūjō one year later renamed “Chiyōgami Productions”—Chiyōgami Eigasha), where he experimented with some new Western techniques, including mixing live action and animation (A Story of Cigarettes—Kemurigusa monogatari, 1924). Inspired by the silhouette animations by Lotte Reiniger, he made some works by using the Japanese washi paper painted in the chiyōgami^† style. By advertising one of his first movies by using this technique, Burglar of Baghdad Castle (Bagudajo no tōzoku, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Author
• CHAPTER 1 ■ From Pre-Cinema to the Birth of Industry
• CHAPTER 2 ■ Winds of War and Reconstruction
• CHAPTER 3 ■ A New World
• CHAPTER 4 ■ How the West Was Won
• CHAPTER 5 ■ Simulacra
• CHAPTER 6 ■ Alone, Not Lonely Generation X
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX