31 January 2014

“Fires and quarrels are the flowers of Edo,
yet the greater essence is the fireman”

The ancient
city of Edo was known as the City of Fires because of the frequency and
ferocity of its fires. This was due to a
combination of factors from the high flammability of the densely built wooden nagaya (長屋/row
houses) to arson. Between 1601 and 1867
alone, the city suffered nearly 1800 fires – 49 of them considered “great fires”
that killed hundreds, if not thousands of people.

The record
of these fires appears in paintings, wood cuts, and scrolls – many of which can
be viewed on the Institute
for Fire Safety and Disaster Preparedness website – and the popular legends
surrounding many of the fires have inspired everything from kabuki plays about the arsonist Yaoya Oshichi of the Great Fire of
Tenna to Laura Joh Rowland’s mystery
novel The Fire Kimono, which is set
during the Great Fire of Meireki. Popular
manga-ka and animator Katsuhiro Ōtomo
and his design team at Sunrise used
woodblock print artists the inspiration for his unique
animated short Combustible (火要鎮/Hinoyōjin, 2012).

Set in the
18th century, the story begins with the unfurling of a cloth-bound emakimono (scroll painting). The camera tracks slowly left, in the direction
that one reads a scroll, over a highly detailed depiction of 18th
century Edo from the busy river, over the working class Shitamachi (low city)
to the more affluent Yamanote (“foot hills” – or “high city” as in Edward Seidensticker’s 1984
book). A male chorus sings a kiyari – a ritual song which was sung by
hikeshi (Edo firefighters). Traditional kiyari would list the tools needed by the firefights but with the
words all drawn out like a chant.

During the
slow tracking shot, a hinomi-yagura (fire
lookout tower) appears in the foreground to foreshadow the events to come. The camera pauses in a large garden of the
affluent home of a young girl called Owaka-chan (Saori Hayama). Bored on her
own in the garden, her spirits are lifted by the appearance of the boy next
door, Matsuyoshi (Masakazu Morita),
on the tiled garden wall. A lyrical
sequence ensues showing their varied play together, their agile figures dissolving
in and out to show the passage of time as the garden subtly changes seasons.

The children’s
cheerful voices become a memory of the past as the camera dissolves to a red
room with a hanging scroll painting of the garden on the wall. Owaka is now a young lady in a formal kimono
sitting with her mother. The women’s
response is interrupted by the sound of hanshō
(alarm bells) in the distance. Owaka’s
mother sends a boy up onto the roof to the lookout to discover the location of
the fire. All across the black sky of
Edo, men have climbed onto their roofs to observe the fire – all except
Matsuyoshi. He surprises the women by
climbing the wall, running through their garden to escape from his family.

The next
scene shows Owaka as the dutiful daughter, serving her family’s guests under
their watchful eyes. As soon as she is
in the privacy of her room, she weeps.
Owaka is much more adept at hiding her displeasure from her family than
Matsuyoshi whose father has become violent with rage. Matsuyoshi kneels on the floor in front of
his father, his shirt sleeve torn off to reveal a tattooed arm. The hikeshi
firefighters – who normally came from the lower classes – were as heavily
tattooed as today’s yakuza with water
symbols such as dragons to give them courage and bring them good luck on the
job. It seems that Matsuyoshi has run
away from home to become a heroic firefighter.

We hear
Owaka and Matsuyoshi talking about the contrast between their childhood and
their present situation against still scenes from Owaka’s empty house and
garden. Owaka is then seen reclining in
apparent misery next to her koto –
the stringed instrument she has doubtless had to learn to play in part of her
training to be a nobleman’s wife. Night
falls and Owaka sits in her room with a beautiful wedding kimono and her elaborate trousseau.
A voice-over of her father’s bragging tells
us that they are just waiting on the final touch: the obi for her wedding kimono.
Owaka sighs in misery and throws a fan across the room. She doesn’t notice until it is too late that
the fan has landed in her lantern. Before
long, the lantern bursts into giant flames.
Owaka’s first instinct is to run for help but then she reconsiders. Perhaps this fire can alter the inevitability
of her fate? The drums and hanshō thrum loudly as the hikeshi firefighters gather to fight the
fire as it rages through the Yamanote district.
Matsuyoshi is one of the brave men who nimbly ascend tall ladders onto
the rooftops to assess the situation.
Will he be able to rescue Owaka or will her foolishness lead only to
tragedy and devastation?

Watching Ōtomo’s
short but masterful film, I was reminded of Isao Takahata’s fascinating illustrated book 12th Century Animation (十二世紀のアニメーション,
1999) which examines how the composition of Heian picture scrolls prefigure the
techniques used in modern animation. It
even includes examples from picture scrolls that dramatically depict Heian era
fire – a scroll that Ōtomo may be referring to in an
interview with Asian Beat last summer.
Using a complex mixture of traditional and CGI animation techniques, Ōtomo
and his team have created a film combines the quiet beauty of 18th
century emakimono (picture scrolls)
with the dynamism of CGI movement. I particularly love the added touch of the letterboxing using traditional Japanese cloth instead of black bars.

This duality
is expressed in the dramatic structure of the film. As Ōtomo explains in Asia
Beat, the first half of the film represents “stillness” and the second half
“movement” with its “intense fire and action sequences”. The slow tracking camera using mostly long
and extreme long shots used in the first half contrasts with the fast cutting
action shot from a variety of angles in the second half. Similarly, the quiet sounds of garden birds
of the early scenes are replaced by the drums and bells of the traditional
dance music employed during the fire sequence as the film rages towards its
abrupt end. My two favourite shots in Combustible employ very different
techniques: the glorious slow tracking opening establishing shot of Edo and the
exciting CGI sequence of Matsuyoshi and his fellow firefighters flying up onto
the rooftops by ladder. As our POV
ascends the tall building like a weightless crane shot, I believe I even said “wow”
out loud at the sight of the rows of houses up in flames. Fire and water are notoriously challenging
for animators to get right and this film is a tour de force in the animation of
fire.

Katsuyoshi Ōtomo
won the Noburō
Ōfuji Award for Combustible at
the Mainichi Concours last year. The
film was also shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Animated Short and was
nominated for the prestigious Annecy Cristal.
Although it started making the festival rounds in 2012, Combustible was theatrically released as
part of the omnibus Short Peace
alongside Shuhei Morita’s
Oscar-nominated animated short Possessions
(九十九/Tsukumo, 2013) as well as shorts directed by Hiroaki Ando and Hajime Katoki. Short Peace was released on
DVD and BD
in Japan this month. No word yet on any
English DVD/BD/download release dates.
For fans of animation, the special
limited edition BD is well worth the investment if you don’t mind the lack
of English.

30 January 2014

Shuhei Morita’s Oscar-nominated animated
short Possessions (九十九/Tsukumo, 2013) follows in the ancient
tradition of yōkai (supernatural)
stories. Traditional Japanese culture is
animistic. They believe that all things
have spirits or souls. The spirits
depicted in Morita’s original tale are tsukumogami
(付喪神– the Japanese title 九十九 is a
homonym for tsukumo), which folklore expert Noriko Tsunoda Reider translates as “tool
specters” (see: “Animating
Objects”). In other words, they are animate
everyday household objects. In the prototypical tsukumogami story, the tools
or objects have become abandoned by their owners and the spirits have become
embittered or vengeful.

In Possessions, a tall strong man voiced by
legendary seiyūKōichi Yamadera (Cowboy Bebop,
Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Anpanman, etc.), becomes caught in a
storm while travelling through a dense forest.
Set in the 18th century, the man is dressed in typical
peasant clothes including a straw hat (kasa)
and a straw raincoast (mino) (see: muza-chan). On his back, he carries a himitsu-bako tool box on a stick. The wind blows off his conical straw hat and
leads him to an abandoned shrine built into a rocky hillside. As he enters the shrine, the man politely
remembers to ask the spirits residing in the shrine to forgive his intrusion
and allow him to stay the night. The shrine
is full of what appears to be abandoned junk – one pile presciently
resembling a face.

The spirits dwelling
in this shrine are not so easily appeased.
As the man closes his eyes and breathes deeply to recover from his difficult
journey, the interior transforms into a clean and bare floor of 8 tatami with bull’s
eye parasol shapes on the fusama
(sliding doors). The man looks around
him in shock like a bull trapped in a pen and pinches his face to see if he is
dreaming. Suddenly the room is filled with ancient dancing parasols led by a small Parasol Frog (Jyanome Kaeru, voiced by Takeshi
Kusao, who has lots of
experience voicing frogs). To
appease the spirits the man opens his himitsu-bako
tool box (see: About Japanese
Puzzle Boxes) and sets about repairing all the paper parasols.

This seems
to work until the man slides open one of the fusama
and finds himself in trapped another 8 tatami room with an elaborate tanmono (kimono fabric) design painted
on its fusama. The man tries to escape and is forced back
into the room by tanmonotsukumogami (kimono fabric specters). A beautiful kimono-clad woman (voiced by Aoi Yūki of Puella Magi Madoka Magica) depicted on the fusama asks him if he finds her beautiful like everyone else does, and he
finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of tanmono
fabric. He again turns to his tool box but is comically less skilled as sewing
than he was at repairing parasols. Can
he appease this taunting spirit, or is there more in store for him? This haunted shrine has more secrets up its
sleeves before the twist at the end.

In making
this animated short for Sunrise’s Short Peace (ショート・ピース, 2013) anthology, Morita
worked with a small core animation team including character designer Daisuke Sajiki (Coicent,
Five Numbers), CGI animator Ryūsuke Sakamoto (Coicent,
Five Numbers), art director Hideki Nakamura and animation veteran Hiroyuki Horiuchi doing key animation.

It takes a
lot to get me excited about CGI animation.
I much prefer the warmer textures of a traditional stop motion animation
to the cold plasticity of mainstream 3D CGI animation. Possessions; however, has won me over. It has none of the coldness I associate with CGI.
It is a warmly textured piece that at times almost looks like characters
and sets cut directly out of chiyogami
paper. According to Morita’s recent
interview with Dan Sarto for AWN, he was inspired one
day by the chiyogami paper his child
was playing with at home. Thus the
central protagonist looks as though he has been constructed of traditionally
patterned chiyogami and plain washi paper (paper made from traditional fibres). The uses of other traditional
colours and textures from the Hakone yosegi-zaiku
(mixed wood) pattern of the tool box to the temari
(embroidered balls) eyes of the final yōkai
monster, are all cleverly executed. This animation delights at every turn with its nods to traditional art
and storytelling wrapped up in the modern package of three dimensional computer
animation. Shuhei Morita is really
coming into his own as a director and well deserving of his Oscar nomination
nod.

An extended
version of the above quote appears in historian Brett
L. Walker’s The Lost Wolves of
Japan, which explores how wolves went from being revered creatures in
ancient and medieval Japan to being hunted to extinction during the
modernization period of the Meiji Restoration.
Mamoru Hosoda’s 2012 anime
feature film Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪/ Ōkami
Kodomo no Ame to Yuki, 2012) suggests that the wolves did not become
extinct; but instead survived into the modern age becoming half human.

The story is
narrated by one of the wolf children, Yuki (Haru Kuroki), who recollects how her parents met. Her mother Hana (Aoi Miyazaki) was a university student (the buildings are recognisably based on Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo) when she found herself drawn to
a mysterious fellow student (Takao Ōsawa). The man, known only as “Kare” (he/him/boyfriend),
is a reluctant suitor but Hana’s kindness and patience wins him over. Finally he reveals to Hana that he is
actually an Ōkami-otoko (wolf man) and she accepts him for who he is. Unlike
the European werewolves of legend, who transformed under the light of a full
moon and attacked humans, the wolf men of this tale are merely the result of
interbreeding for survival. The Ōkami-otoko
in this film has shape shifting-abilities similar to the tanuki of Studio Ghibli’s
anime Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994), who take on the guise of humans when their
natural habitat in the Tama Hills is destroyed by urban sprawl. The wolf-human hybrids in Hosuda’s original
tale take on the shape-shifting abilities associated with foxes and tanuki of Japanese folk legend.

Hana and Kare move in together and have two children Yuki and Ame (Snow and Rain) without
the assistance of medical care, for fear that the doctors will discover the
family’s secret. They live in domestic
bliss until one fateful day when Kare does not return home. Hana takes the children out in the heavy rain
to find him and discovers that he has had an accident and died in the
river. Hana struggles on her own as a
single mother, unable to seek help because the children are prone to transforming into wolves whenever emotions run high - which is often with children. The neighbours complain about the noise the children make
when they play like wild animals in the apartment and howl. Soon, the local authorities are becoming suspicious about the fact that the
children have no public records.

Fearing that
their secret will be revealed, Hana moves with the children to the
countryside. After a time, they are
accepted by the community but as the children get older they each have to come
to terms with their dual identities. Can
they control their wolf instincts in order to integrate into human society or
will the call of the wild be too great?
Each child takes their own path with unexpected results.

Wolf Children has a gentle pace that
will seem slow to anime fans used to action-packed weekly drama. It is a film that invites us to reflect on
our role as humans in the environment and how communities can function to either
include or exclude people who are different or eccentric in some way. Some parallels could be drawn between the
struggles of the wolf children in the community and the struggles of people who
are biracial to fit into society. Can
one be both identities or does one have to choose?

Above all, Wolf Children is a truly beautiful
animation. The wolf children are super-cute with and fun to watch at play – thanks mainly to the work of prolific character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, etc.). The film’s depiction of idealised rural Japanese landscapes are reminiscent of another Studio Ghibli animation:My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao
Miyazaki, 1988). The film is the
first that Mamoru Hosoda under the auspices of his own animation studio, Studio Chizu, which he founded in 2011
with the aim of making feature film animation (Source). Wolf
Children was successful at the box office in Japan, beating
out Pixar’s Brave in its first week, and went on to win Animation of the
Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and Best Animation Film at the Mainichi Film
Concours. This suggests we can look
forward to more auteur fare from
Hosoda in the near future.

Shinsuke Shimada and Ryūsuke
Matsumoto introduce some historical context (see more below) for this episode
and wish their puppet counterparts, Shin-Shin and Ron-Ron luck.

Our three
heroes, Liu Bei (Gentoku), Guan Yu (Kan-u), and Zhang Fei (Chōhi), approach the gates of the encampment of the Shōgun, Liu
Bei’s former sensei Lu Zhi (Roshoku).They have come to offer their help in
quelling the Yellow Turban Rebellion (黄巾の乱/Kōkin no Ran).

The
guards do not recognize them and do not want to let them in.Here the constrasting characters of the three
heroes are demonstrated: hot-headed Zhang Fei reacts with anger and indignation, Guan Yu is a
moderator who tries to apply logic to the situation, and Liu Bei takes the kid
glove approach to diplomacy, apologizing to the guards for the inconvenience
and trying to win them over with polite words.

It turns
out that the Shōgun is away and the guards have never heard of Liu Bei.They eventually allow the men to enter the soldier encampment, but only if they surrender their arms and wait in isolation in a
guarded tent.Zhang Fei is insulted, but
Liu Bei thinks that this a positive demonstration that the troops are well
trained and well organised – they would be fools to let in people who may be
Yellow Turbans (Kōkintō) in disguise.Zhang Fei is unhappy about being unarmed and
Guan Yu tries to reason with him.Outside the tent, the head guard tells his troops to be wary that the
three may be the enemy in disguise.

Dusk at
the camp: Zhang Fei is still restless in the tent. He declares that if her were
the Shōgun the Yellow Turbans would have already been defeated by now.Liu Bei points out that if the Yellow Turbans
were defeated then their services would not be necessary.Guan Yu is clearly tired of Zhang Fei’s
complaints and suggests that they get some rest.Guan Yu and Zhang Fei offer Liu Bei their
only blanket as they feel he is superior in status to them (they refer to him
as Aniki, or "older
brother”).Liu Bei insists that they are
each other’s equals and should share.Just as they are settling down back to back around the central pole of
the tent the sound of drums and horse hooves interrupt the evening quiet.

Zhang Fei
thinks it must be the Yellow Turbans advancing on the camp, but Liu Bei
preaches calm suggesting that it could be the Shōgun returning.Zhang Fei thinks that it would be an ideal
way to show their support and bursts from the tent into the arms of the guards
who push him back into the tent.

Zhang Fei
is still irritated and Liu Bei tries to explain to him that the guards are only
following orders and they need to as well if their want to impress the Shōgun.An army needs rules of engagement in order to
distinguish themselves from a band of marauders like the Yellow Turbans.The key terms that he uses are gunritsu(軍律/martial law) and kiritsu (規律/discipline).Zhang Fei asks, “Isn’t
it enough just to win?” and Liu Bei and Guan Yu disagree.They point out that the Yellow Turbans are
destroying and pillaging the villages of innocent people and for them that is
not the work of an army.Zhang Fei’s
response it to vent his frustration by banging his head on the tent pole.

Meanwhile,
at Zhang Fei’s home, a group of Yellow Turbans raid the property and terrorize
Zhang Fei’s wife Mei Fan and their
guest Sūrin

Mei Fan
puts up a fight and begs them not to hurt them.The Yellow Turbans are not moved by her pleas and tell her that they
will take them to their leader Zhang Jue
(Chōkaku).Sūrin shocks Mei Fan by declaring to the men
that she thinks Zhang Jue will help them.As they are taken away, a fiery arrow is shot into the thatched roof of
the building, setting it alight.

Cutaway
to Zhang Jue howling like an evil spirit: “Everything must BURN!”

Back at
the Shōgun’s encampment the next morning, the three heroes have been given
chores.Zhang Fei is, of course,
offended by this but Liu Bei says that it is a necessary task.The guards are surprised and impressed by how
hardworking the three seem to be, but they remain suspicious.A comic scene ensues that begins with Zhang
Fei “accidentally” throwing horse manure at the guards.Then Guan Yu chops wood and a piece flies
“accidentally” at the guards.The three
heroes seem to be having a little fun at the guards’ expense.

Another
comic scene in which the three heroes fight about who gets to cook.Zhang Fei gets a little over-enthusiastic and
taste-tests all the soups until there is nothing left! In the next scene, the
three heroes have their heads bent in apology, but “Shin-Shin” and “Ron-Ron”,
the puppet counterparts of the series hosts Shinsuke Shimada and Ryūsuke Matsumoto, arrive with a large cart
filled with manjū (sweet bean buns)
to save the day.Zhang Fei is, of
course, the first one to have a manjū
in his hand, but he gets told off by the soldiers for eating everything else.

Meanwhile, Sūrin is in the cave
to meet the leader of the Yellow Turbans, Zhang Jue.When he finally appears, she introduces
herself and praises him as having saved her grandfather and offers her support
for his cause.Zhang Jue says that he
must leave on an errand and that they can talk upon his return.Sūrin pulls out a knife and tries to strike
him.With the use of special effects
that look like they were done with mirrors to make Zhang Jue look like a spirit
flying away, Zhang Jue easily escapes her attack.It turns out that Sūrin’s kind words were a
ruse.She shouts that she will avenge
her family.The scene ends with her
crying out “Ken-Ken! Ojiisan!” for her murdered little brother and grandfather.The final title card of Part I informs us
that Sūrin’s “thinking heart” (恒心/kōshin) was unable to reach the
heavens.

Part II

We return
to Sūrin and Mei Fan who are now
imprisoned in the dungeon.Ron-Ron and
Shin-Shin are standing guard wearing Yellow Turbans.They comment on the fact that standing guard
is a much easier task than transporting manjū.Mei Fan begins to moan as if she is ill.Ron-Ron and Shin-Shin enter the prison cell
to see if they can help. Sūrin screams that there is a mouse, and as Ron-Ron
and Shin-Shin look for the non-existence creature, the women make their escape
and lock the two fools in the cell.

Meanwhile,
the Yellow Turban rebels are gathered on horseback.Zhang Jue is preparing his troops for attack
with a speech declaring that they have nearly defeated the Chinese army with
their great strategy.Only a handful of
soldiers remain.He declares that they
will come at them from two sides and crush them.He cries: “The Blue Era comes to an end and
the Yellow will take over!”

Back at
the Shōgun’s camp, the guards have fallen asleep on duty.The Yellow Turbans stab them easily.Inside their tent, our three heroes become
aware that something is going on.Unarmed, they take on the rebels.Guan Yu takes down two rebels and commandeers a weapon to attack another
on horseback.To a modern jazzy score,
Liu Bei and Zhang Fei join Guan Yu in defense of the camp.One of the rebels goes to warn the others
that there are warriors defending the camp.Our three heroes discover that all of the guard are asleep with have
eaten manjū in their hands.It seems that Ron-Ron and Shin-Shin had
delivered manjū spiked with sleeping
medication.Zhang Fei is relieved that
he was prevented from eating them.

The next
morning, the cry of a rooster wakes the camp.Zhang Fei complains that he didn’t get a wink of sleep.The guard tells them that the Shōgun has
arrived.The head of the soldiers is in
the Shōgun’s tent taking credit for warding off the rebels.Zhang Fei overhears and is incensed, but Guan
Yu restrains him.The Shōgun exits the
tent to welcome his former student, Liu Bei.Guan Yu and Zhang Fei introduce themselves.Liu Bei refers to the Shōgun as sensei.The head soldier stands behind the Shōgun
with his mouth agape as he realizes that the Shōgun really does know Liu Bei
and is pleased to see them.Liu Bei has
come to return a favour to his former sensei.The Shōgun is glad of their support – Zhang Fei is delighted to finally
have something useful to do.The Shōgun
says that Chōkaku’s magic is making things difficult for the regular army.Zhang Fei is certain that they can beat the
rebels.

Our three
heroes tour the battlefields and express their sorrow at the death and
devastation caused by the Yellow Turbans.They fear they have come too late.

A crow
caws from the top of a haystack.Shin-Shin and Ron-Ron are on the trail of the escaped women.Sūrin and Mei Fan continue to outsmart
them.

Our three
heroes see a prison cart being drawn by a horse.They are shocked to discover that Lu Zhi
Sensei has been taken prisoner by his own men.A general from the imperial court came to see how things were going on
the battlefront.Lu Zhi asked for more
time but because he had no money to bribe the general with, a report of his
failings was taken back to the emperor (Mikado).Lu Zhi has been displaced as Shōgun and is
being taken back to the capital in a cage.It seems the corrupt official told the emperor that Lu Zhi had been
hiding rather than fighting the enemy and the emperor promoted someone else to
take over as Shōgun.Lu Zhi will be
taken to the capital and humiliated...and even faces the threat of execution.Zhang Fei wants to free Lu Zhi.Lu Zhi feels that he has enough supporters in
the capital and will try via political means to redeem himself.The regretfully allow the party to pass.

Zhang Fei
throws himself on the ground in frustration.He thinks he should have just stayed at home and drank sake.Liu Bei thinks they should consider joining
forces with the new Shōgun.Guan Yu has
heard that the man appointed Shōgun is a real wind bag.If that is the case, then Zhang Fei threatens
to fight him, but Guan Yu points out that this would hurt Liu Bei’s cause.Zhang Fei gets fed up and leaves in a
huff.

Left on
their own, Guan Yu wonders aloud if he should go after Zhang Fei but Liu Bei says
that he’ll come back once he’s calmed himself down.The men laugh.Cut to Zhang Fei who is grumbling to himself
as he rides.He worries that the others
will be mad at him and wonders what he can say to apologize to his comrades
when he goes back.He suddenly catches
the scent of sake in the wind.

In the
next scene, Zhang Fei is drunk and shouting about sake.Flags that read sake (酒) indicate that Mei Fan and Sūrin have set up the business again.Shin-Shin and Ron-Ron, still in their Yellow
Turbans, are spying on them from behind some rocks.Sūrin asks Zhang Fei how Liu Bei is
doing.Zhang Fei drunkenly claims to
have nothing more to do with Lui Bei.Sūrin jumps to Liu Bei’s defense.Zhang Fei compliments Sūrin and she tells him to get lost.

In the
next scene, night has fallen and Zhang Fei is passed out outside on his back
and snoring heavily.Mei Fan and Sūrin
huddle near the open fire – they can’t sleep with all that racket.Suddly they hear hooting sounds and see that
Zhang Fei is being dragged off by his feet.“Scary!” shouts Sūrin before both women are knocked unconscious by
unseen arms.

Liu Bei
and Guan Yu come to the remains of the fire and wonder what’s happened.Guan Yu spots Zhang Fei’s shoe. They realize
that something has happened to Zhang Fei and go off in search of him.

At the
camp of the Yellow Turban rebels, Shin-Shin and Ron-Ron are tying up Zhang Fei
and congratulating themselves.They hear
a dog barking and fall into the same trap they played on the ladies – it’s Guan
Yu to the rescue!Guan Yu beats up
Shin-Shin and Ron-Ron without the other rebels noticing and unties Zhang
Fei.Together they take on the rebels,
giving Liu Bei an opportunity to sneak in and rescue the ladies.

Back at
the sake tent, everyone is reunited.Zhang Fei begs “aniki” (兄貴honorable brother) Guan Yu for
forgiveness.They aren’t given much time
to enjoy their reunion however as arrows begin to fly into their camp,
startling their horses.They duck behind
barrels and look to their hills.They
are surrounding by the Yellow Turban Rebels.The music here is reminiscent of a Sergio
Leone spaghetti western.

Our hosts
hilariously comment of what a terrible disaster this is.“They are in a big pinch!”(大ピンチ！Dai-Pinchi!)

Historical Context:

Part I

The comic
hosts, Shinsuke Shimada and Ryūsuke
Matsumoto, introduce this episode using historical artifacts in the form of
figurines called Kojinyō (胡人俑/こじんよう) of men and horses. Kojinyō are terracotta Han Dynasty figurines. The most famous terracotta figures in China
are the Terracotta Army of the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang (260-201BC) which were
discovered in 1974, but he was not the only historical figure to be buried with
such funerary statues. The practice continued
into the Han Dynasty – one of the most significant burial sites discovered is
the Tomb of the Chu KingLiu
Wu (????-154BC) which was discovered in 1984.

What has
always struck me as truly remarkable about the terracotta figures of ancient
China is the attention to detail given to figures which were made to be
buried. For us today, these figurines
are not only a physical historical record of these ancient peoples who lived
more than two thousand years ago, but they are also a demonstration of how
deeply the people of that time believed in the afterlife. The horses depicted in this episode of Sangokushi are wonderfully expressive –
and as this episode features horses extensively it is particularly
fitting.

They also
introduce a pair of figurines that they call Manzai Figurines (漫才俑/まんざいよう).
I presume this is in reference to the Manzai comedy tradition. I
don’t know how far this tradition goes back in Japan, but my understanding of Manzai comedy is that it is similar to
what we would call a comedy double act in English. Like Abbott
and Costello or George Burns and Gracie Allen, the Manzai comedy team (manzaishi) consists of a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke) who talk at great speed and engage
in a variety of word play. The Manzai
tradition is particularly associated with Kansai-ben (the dialect of the Osaka
region) and in this adaptation of Sangokushi,
the hosts Shinsuke Shimada and Ryūsuke
Matsumoto are just such a pair. Even my
fluent husband struggles with their Kansai-ben banter as he learned Japanese in
Tokyo and Hokkaido, so often the jokes in these historical interludes go right
over our heads.

We also
became aware in this episode of the expression “Han blue”. Through a bit of investigation I discovered
that “Han purple” and “Han blue” are dyes that were developed in ancient China
and were used from the Western Zhou period (1045–771 BC) until the end of the
Han dynasty (c. 220 AD). Made from
barium copper silicate pigments, there apparently are no extant records of how
they experimented with the raw materials (barium mineral, quartz, copper
mineral, and lead salt) to make the dye.
Han purple and Han blue were used in paints on terracotta statues from
the Han period. In this episode, the
soldiers of Lu Zhi’s army wear blue uniforms with red vests and red cloth
draped from their helmets. This is in
contrast to the rebels with their yellow turbans and yellow vests.

Part II

The
second half of this episode introduces another type of historical record from
ancient times: the iryō mokukan (医療木簡/いりょうもくかん). Iryō
refers to medical care and mokukan
are long, narrow, thin pieces of wood which were strung together and written
upon in ancient times. The ancient
Egyptians, the narrators explain, had used papyrus since at least 3,000
BC. As papyrus plants are indigenous to
Africa, I presume this was not an option in ancient China unless it was
imported.

Paper made
from pulp had only been developed in China in the century before the Three
Kingdoms period by a court eunuch by the name of Cai Lun (c. 50-121AD) and had revolutionized trade and
communication. Before the availability
of paper, practitioners of medicine in China recorded their recipes for treating
ailments on strips of wood – as in the recent discovery
of 950 bamboo strips attributed to the physician Bian
Que (c.401-310BC).

Discussion:

I was
really impressed by the use of the horse puppets in this episode and would love
to find some behind the scenes footage of how they did it. I wonder how many puppeteers were needed to
execute the scenes in which the horses are galloping in a long shot. It would have been much easier to use a
medium shot of the men sitting upon the horses, but actually having the legs in
frame required much greater planning and careful execution. I was also amused by the frequency of shots
with horse rear ends in the background and to the side of the screen – a
constant reminder that this was a time when horses were essential to humans on
the move.

In terms
of cinematography, there are so many things that are impressive about this
series from the depth of frame to the lighting of the night / cave scenes. When Sūrin confronts Zang Jue they seem to
have used mirrors and superimposition in order to make him look like a ghostly shape-shifting creature – an
inventive but cost-effective way to do the special effects.

When our
three heroes walk through the devastation of the battle scene, it actually occurred
to me why puppets work so well for this adaptation of The Three Kingdoms. The
puppet designer, Kihachirō Kawamoto,
in speaking about his independent puppet animation films, has said that puppets
are ideal for the depiction of historical and mythical figures because they
inhabit their own puppet world (a concept he learned from many puppet masters he
himself admired – particularly the Czech puppet animation legend Jiří Trnka). In the
case of The Three Kingdoms, because
the death and destruction are in the puppet world and not the real human world,
it gives us an objectivity that the emotive depiction of real corpses would
not. I would imagine that this series
would be a useful tool for teaching young children Chinese history / literature
because the brutality of the war scenes is only suggested rather than
graphically depicted. A live action portrayal
of the violence of the Three Kingdoms period would limit the audience to over
18. Add to this, the addition of humour
to the proceedings, and I imagine it would be very successful with children
indeed.

17 January 2014

The year is
2710 and the city of Nara is celebrating the 2000th anniversary of
the relocation of the capital city of Japan to Nara. A larger-than-life hologram of the legendary
Queen Himiko (170-248AD) of Wa (ancient Japan) welcomes visitors in the style
of a modern day tourist group leader.
Teenager Shinichi (Kensho Ono)
and his buddy are enraptured by Himiko’s beauty and hope that they will meet
girls as beautiful as her during their stay in Nara. Before he can get very far, a strange white shika deer (Kappei Yamaguchi) steals his bag and Shinichi gives chase.

In a
parallel story we learn that Himiko has been brought back to life by Madame
President (Masako Isobe) using a
mysterious robotic technology for a purpose that is equally mysterious. But as in many a sci-fi story (Chobits, Yokohama Todaishi Kikō, Time of Eve), this
android-human hybrid develops her own feelings and desires. Himiko tries to escape
her creator and her two henchmen sons (Aniki is voice by Testsu Inada and Otōto by Takehito
Koyasu) who resemble clowns seem more powerful because they are riding on
red and blue oni (demons). Our heroine climbs out of the giant President’s
building and through the bumbling of one of the henchmen brothers gets knocked falls from the tower onto the back of the white shika deer where she is inadvertently “rescued” by
Shinichi. Himiko disguises her identity
by transforming herself into a teenage girl called "Toto" and Shinichi is awestruck. They tour Nara together and begin to fall in
love. Will this teenage romance have a
happy ending or will Himiko be recaptured by her creator Madame President? It’s a wild and unpredictable, but thoroughly
entertaining journey easily enjoyed at just 26 minutes. Be sure to watch the
end credits or else you will miss out on the dancing shika!!

When Sunrise animation studio announced Coicent (コイ☆セント/Koi☆sento, 2011) back in 2010, they
dubbed it a “super science-fiction romantic comedy” (ANN),
and it certainly does have a smattering of each of those genres. It’s a fantastic blend of old Japan, new
Japan, and future Japan, with skyscrapers, shrines and Buddha statues cropping
up close together like the layers on a pop-up storybook. Viewers unfamiliar with the historical and
mythological figures and symbols might be scratching their head at the goings
on, but die-hard anime-fans are used to head-scratching. The central character, Shinichi, scratches
his own head quite a bit as he is thrown from one surprising scenario into the
next and we as the audience go through a similar range of emotions from
bemusement to surprise and delight. The character designs and backgrounds are all spectacular.

Shinichi's inadvertent rescue of Toto aka Himiko

The only
drawback to Coicent for me is its
unfortunate official “English” title. I
would have much preferred Koisento or Koi☆sentoto
this nonsense pseudo-English. The title
is a bit ambiguous in katakana,
but I would presume that the “koi” is meant to be “love”. “Sento” could be a number of things, but my educated
guess from the context of the film is that it refers to the moving of the
capital (遷都). The capital
city of Japan has moved many times throughout history – its location was
traditionally dependent upon where the emperor was living. Tokyo has been the capital since 1868 (the
beginning of the Meiji era). Before that
it was in Kyoto for nearly 7 centuries.
Nara was the capital during the reign of many emperors, the last being
during the Nara Period up until the death of Emperor Kammu in 794.

Cast dance sequence from the closing credits

Director Shūhei Morita (森田修平, b.
1978) was nominated this week for the Oscar for Best Animated Short for Possessions (九十九/Tsukumo), his contribution to the Short Peace (2013) omnibus. Morita grew up in Nara – which would explain
the wealth of imagery from both the historical and mythological past of the
region – and graduated from Kyoto University of Art and Design in 2001. He has done animation work for MTV Japan, the
NHK, and Studio 4°C. Since forming his
own studio Yamato-Works in 2003 he was
been developing his own independent animation vision in collaboration with other production companies.

Coicent can be found on Hulu in the US. In the US it also shares a Blu-ray with the short anime Five Numbers! (ノラゲキ！, Hiroki
Ando, 2011): Coicent / Five Numbers [Blu-ray]. The film has its own
stand-alone DVD and Blu-ray in Japan: