Astro Boy’s
ancestors

>>The Cinémathèque québécoise hosts a look
back at the roots of anime—the largest
ever outside Japan—and showcases a
fascinating universe of fables and fine
art, pop culture and propaganda

PUTTING “ART” IN “CARTOON”:
Masaoka Kenzo’s Sakura (1946)

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

With its iconography of saucer-eyed schoolgirls and titanic robots, never to mention its astounding technical standards, Japanese animation, or anime, has achieved international recognition for its excellence and diversity in recent decades. Its global profile can be traced back from Princess Mononoke and Ghost in the Shell, through Robotech and Goldorak, to the first broadcast in 1963 of Tetsuwan Atomu (“mighty atom”), better known over here as Astro Boy.

That’s where most people, Japanese included, pick up the thread, but the medium had decades of fascinating works to its credit in the first half of the 20th century. This month, the Cinémathèque québécoise presents To the Source of Anime: Japanese Animation (1924–1952), the most thorough overview of the country’s pre-TV animated output ever presented abroad. In exchange, the Cinémathèque is readying a comparable look at Canadian and Quebec cartoons to present in Japan next year.

The Japanese retrospective has already been shown in its entirety, but it’s too damn good not to merit a second run-through, starting this coming Wednesday. It touches on the earliest works, many of which are surprisingly inventive and carefully crafted. From there, the various programs examine cartoons as entertainment, educational devices, propaganda and high art (in the latter case, the works of mavericks Shigeji Ogino and Noburo Ofuji are highlighted), wrapping up with works from the post-war occupation period.

The Mirror sat down for an extensive chat with Akira Tochigi, a curator at Japan’s National Film Centre, who in conjunction with the Cinémathèque’s cartoon kingpin Marco De Blois coordinated this extensive undertaking. In fluent English, Tochigi shared his encyclopedic knowledge of, and passionate admiration for, these all but forgotten gems.

Mirror: Animation is, like comic books, a medium that the Japanese have worked exceptionally well in. I have my own theories as to why, related to the simplicity and clarity of Japanese visual arts going back centuries. But perhaps you have other ideas about this?

Akira Tochigi: I think there are a lot of connections to other art forms. Of course, Japanese traditional art is one of them. One of the films in the program is called Sakura, or Cherry Blossoms, by Masaoka Kenzo. He studied Japanese painting when he was young, and Sakura is a beautifully designed animation, easily associated with Japanese paintings. But also, many of the early animation filmmakers came from a background not only of Japanese but of Western painting too. Many of them were very Modernist-oriented. Animation was a field that was pretty open to newcomers who had ideas, who were very influenced by Western painting, but could not find their niche, or keep their own career in the painting world. They went to animation, which was the new media at the time. Also, I’d like to point out that there’s an enormous tradition of vocal performing arts, like the katsuben, the silent film narration, and kamishibai, with drawings—

M: That’s like a puppet show, but with pictures, right?

AT: Yes! With this, the narrator told a story, so to Japanese audiences, it was very familiar, the tradition of the picture with narration. Animation was very popular in the time of silent cinema, because it was related to these kind of oral performing arts. All these different traditions came together to make Japanese animation very popular—and peculiar.

Pop and propaganda

M: In assembling this retrospective, you’ve had to choose from a vast selection of films. What were your criteria for the final selections?

AT: One was to focus on certain time periods, so finally we focused on the period from the very early days in the 1920s up to 1952, the end of the occupation period. This was because, first of all, most of the films from that time are now not under the control of a copyright holder. Many of the independent filmmaking companies did not survive, so we didn’t care about copyright. Also, some of the films were commissioned work for the government, so they seem to be public domain.

M: You could say, hey, my grandfather’s taxes paid for that!

AT: (laughs) Yeah! After that period, the major companies like Toei started making theatrical features, and there was more TV animation, and many of them are still under control of the copyright holders. Also—and this is related to our policy of film acquisition—in Japan, the survival rate of film prints is very, very bad, especially the films from before World War II. We’ve relied heavily on private collectors, and because of that policy, we’ve luckily compiled a lot of animations from the pre-war period. Another thing is that Japanese animation from this period was not fully introduced into the international circuit of film archives. Even to Japanese audiences, they are not so well known, so it’s been a challenge for us.

Many of these animations were categorized as educational films, made with government support, but also, there were some alternatives to this mainstream, educational animation. What I mean is, some animators came from a background of the leftist movement of the late ’20s and early ’30s, and they used animation as a propaganda tool for leftist activities. Some others came from very private home moviemaking. One very good example is Shigeji Ogino—we made a tribute program to him because he made a lot of interesting animation in the 1930s, which included very experimental and expressionist type of animation.

FUNNY FABLES:
The Drumming of a Raccoon Dog of Shojoji Temple (1935)
and Princess of the Moon Palace (1934)

Manga and Marxism

M: More so than in America, Japan’s animation was very subordinate to—or affected by, in the case of the leftists—the country’s government and politics. We see the different stages in this retrospective, before, during and after the war.

AT: The situation was more interesting in the pre-war period, rather than post-war. The content was very different from during and after the war.

M: The wartime material was very clearly propaganda—if you weren’t making a propaganda film, then grab a rifle and go fight. After the war, it was about reconnecting with Western culture and the economics of the time. But what about the pre-war period, with its competing forces, the nationalists and the leftists?

AT: The leftist movement of the ’20s and ’30s was somehow limited to an elite, middle-class people, but they were still very conscious of creating their own culture influenced by Marxist ideology. They wanted to use the performing and visual arts, including cinema. They used portable cameras, 9.5mm or 16mm, to make their own films to record strikes, demonstrations or the funerals of labour-movement icons. They set up their own screenings to show their newsreels, documentaries and also animation, which were kind of propaganda for their ideology. It was very close to the home filmmaking of the time—they shared the handmade expression with camera in a small-gauge format. But in the mid-’30s, Japanese elements became more and more militaristic and nationalistic. The ban on this movement was severe, the Communist Party was disbanded and the movement had a lot of pressure on it. In this situation, animation filmmakers and producers, as well as manga cartoonists, who were associated with the leftist movement, found a sort of niche in animation to continue their own interest in the art.

One interesting example is Yoshitsugu Tanaka, whose film Perot the Chimney Sweeper was one of the films shown at the first public screening of the Proletariat Kinema League. The film features the chimney workers facing tragedy in a fictional nation, because this nation is at war, and the chimney workers struggle to survive the situation. This one was also puppet animation, originally in 16mm. But after the ban on this movement, Tanaka went to the famous studios to continue in animation filmmaking, but disguised as very entertaining animation, using Ninja Boy or that sort of thing.

At the Cinémathèque Québécoise
from Wednesday, March 19 to
Saturday, April 5. For full
program information,
consult Listings or go to
www.cinematheque.qc.ca

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