Legacy Leaders: Those Who Carried On
Two major names stand out after the “big three” have walked off the stage, as it were, and they are
Ofuji Noboro (1900-1961)
A student under Jun'ichi Kōuchi, he experimented with many styles, including mixing live-action with animation, as in his
A Story of Tobacco (1928) which has a cartoon man berate a human woman for taking his cigarette. The interaction between the two is pretty fluid, given the time, and the state of Japanese animation then. None of these are on YouTube, unsurprisingly, but I came across a Japanese animation archive where you can view them:
https://animation.filmarchives.jp/en/works/view/41025
In 1921 or possibly 1925 (two sources at least differ) he founded his own production company, Jiyu Eiga Kenkyujo, and produced
Bagudajo no tozoku (Burglars of Baghdad Castle) in 1926. This is a parody of the famous Hollywood movie
The Thief of Baghdad, and used a form of animation that utilised ornamental paper called chiyogami. It’s very primitive for the time, considering what was going on on the other side of the world.
https://animation.filmarchives.jp/en/works/view/15479
His major film came the next year though, and
Kujia (The Whale) so impressed a French distributor that they bought it in order to show it in Europe. Rather surprisingly, this is not held at the archive, and though there is a version on YT it’s a reissued one from 1952, so it would make little sense linking it here, at least until we get closer to that era. Staying with the twenties,
The Golden Flower (1929) runs for 17 minutes, though from what I can see it’s very similar to the
Burglars of Baghdad Castle, showing, to me, little progress in three years, but what do I know?
I am interested to see the usage of a Chinese dragon (I guess a Japanese one, but I’m used to associating that figure with Chinese mythology and celebrations, not Japanese ones) - okay, it mentions the Harvest Festival, so I guess they used dragons too. What’s also notable is that the animation contains a puppet theatre, and given the popularity of that in both Japan and China that’s not too surprising but it is quite innovative to marry the two.
https://animation.filmarchives.jp/en/works/view/42165
Ofuji’s first attempt at a movie with sound (which failed) was the same year, and
The Black Cat was followed by
At the Inspection Station, released 1930, his first successful attempt. Sadly, I can’t get any of these, not even from the archives. Even sadder, seven years later he managed his first colour animation, but
Princess Katsura is also lost to time it would seem. Unlike Disney and Fleischer to some degree, and Paul Terry in the USA, Ofuji did not see animation as a means of comic entertainment, but wanted to create a more cinematic, dramatic atmosphere with them, and was devoted to his art. He was recognised as one of the very greatest Japanese animators after his death, when the Ofuji Award was instigated, presented to outstanding animators annually.
Masaoko Kenzo (1898-1988)
Again, it amuses me how the birth date here is a numerical anagram for the date of his birth, but enough out of me. Unlike the other artists we’ve read about so far, Masaoko worked in Kyoto, where his first major film,
Saragushima (The Monkey’s Island), made in 1930, was wildly popular and spawned a sequel, something I haven’t seen been true of any of his contemporaries, not even the so-called godfathers of Japanese anime. The animation is pretty primitive, again compared to that going on in the west; the motion of the ship in the first scene is almost zero, a slight movement back and forth, though the storm is well done. Unfortunately, it seems Masaoko tried to use the same effect for the sea with the result that it looks as if the ship, supposed to be tossing on the waves, is actually in the clouds! For some reason someone has left a baby in a box on deck, and it’s getting wet. You can guarantee it’s going overboard, and so it does, and floats towards (anyone?) Monkey Island, where it’s found by (again, anyone?) monkeys.
An interesting point here I see is that, unlike Kitayama’s monkey in
Monkey and the Crabs, these ones walk on all fours, like animals, not upright. The animation when they scatter up the trees as the baby howls is quite smooth, and while I’ve not of course watched all that much early anime I think this may be the first time we see a Japanese animator using the trope that would become synonymous with western cartoon, the shower of stars to indicate an impact or something happening.
It’s also significant, I feel, that Masaoko here shies from the Disney idea of exaggerating and distorting the laws of physics: when the monkeys venture back down from the trees they don’t elongate and touch the ground, the trees don’t bend down and smile or shrink back in shock from the baby. No. Real physics is used. In order to slowly descend from their perches a monkey each lowers his mate down in a sort of two-man chain, just as perhaps humans would do, if they were in such a position.
The cartoon seems to somewhat follow Kipling’s
Jungle Book, as the monkeys discover the castaway baby and I assume raise him as their own (I haven’t watched the whole thing) and while the action is limited, being on an island and with just - so far as I can see - these protagonists, it works quite well and is well drawn, certainly an improvement over Kitayama’s effort. I think this may also be the longest Japanese anime to this date, exceeding Ofuji Noboro’s
The Golden Flower by seven minutes.
Chikara to onna no yononaka (The World of Power and Women, 1933) was the first Japanese animated movie with sound, using humour and a slight sexual bias, where an office worker falls in love with his secretary (how original!) to the chagrin of what Roger Waters would later term his “fat and psychopathic wife”. Nice. Unfortunately, and disappointingly, given its huge significance to the history of anime, no trace of it can I find. Masaoko became known as “the Japanese Disney” for his work on later titles such as
Chagama ondo (A Dance Song with a Kettle), 1934 and
Mori no yosei (A Fairy in the Forest, 1935), while his use of music in
Benkei tai Ushikawa (Benkei the Soldier Priest and Little Samurai Ushikawa, 1939) was highly commended.
Masaoka was one of the first Japanese animators to make the move from drawing on paper to celluloid, which, though it looked better and made better films, was very expensive and so avoided by most others for as long as they could. Japanese animators had always used cut-out paper in a nod back to shadow puppet theatre and kabuki, but the quality of the animation using such methods was vastly inferior, and of course celluloid was seen eventually as the way to go. His greatest achievement, 1943’s
Kumo to churippu (The Spider and the Tulip, earned him the wrath of the military censor, as it could not be seen as a propaganda movie. He may also have been the first to embrace the western idea of anthopomorphising animals, in his
Suteneko Torachan (Tora-chan, an Orphan Kitty, 1947, in which a family of cats adopt an orphan kitten.
Then there's others like
Seo Mitsuyo (1911-2010)
The man who produced the first ever full-length Japanese animation,
Momotaro, umi no shinpei (Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors) in 1944,
Seo worked on propaganda and military recruitment movies for the government during World War II, having also had contributed to Masoka Kenzo’s
The World of Power and Women. In reference to his own movie, I realise I have seen this before, and remember now I mentioned it in a brief look at animation around the wold at this period, though here we’re obviously going into that a lot deeper. I do recall though that I had some thoughts on the movie, so I’ll refrain from adding more here. The movie you can watch below.
I will just add though that the Momotaro spoken of in the title is a figure from Japanese mythology, a hero god who was used extensively by the Japanese military during their propaganda for the war. I will also mention, again, that given this is now 1944, the disparity between the quality of, let’s say American animation at this period and what the Japanese studios were doing was still a very large gap. For instance, here we are, seven years after the release of
Snow White and the Japanese have either not yet figured out or can’t afford to create in colour. They’re being left far behind, though of course they will have the last laugh, becoming the standard in time. Right now though, while you can praise certain aspects of their animation - the usage of music, the synchronisation of objects to that music (though not the synch of voices to mouths - most times, when someone speaks it’s either a long shot so you can’t see the mouths move or a shot from behind) and the embracing of anthropomorphisation, something that would almost completely take over cartoons in the coming decades - you can see how far behind the curve they are.
Seo’s last project was an animated musical,
Osama no shippo (The King’s Tail), which he tried to get shown in 1949 but failing to do so, gave up animation soon after, to pursue the trade of draughtsman.