Momotarō: Umi no Shimpei

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Movie
Original title Momotarō: Umi no Shimpei
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1945
length 74 minutes
Rod
Director Mitsuyo Seo
script Mitsuyo Seo
production Tadahito Mochinaga
music Yūji Koseki

Momotarō: Umi no Shimpei ( Japanese 桃 太郎 海 の 神兵 , German " Momotarō : Divine Warrior of the Sea") is an anime - propaganda film from 1945. It was the first Japanese full-length animated film. The target group of the film were children, just as the protagonists are children or young animals.

action

In the Japanese countryside, a bear cub, a monkey, a puppy and a pheasant in naval uniform are out and about. The animals have completed their military training and want to say goodbye before disembarking. The little monkey is playing with his brother's beret cap , which is blown away and falls into a river. The little monkey is in danger of being washed down a waterfall while trying to get it back. He is saved by a joint action by all animals. The monkey watches dandelion seeds flying in the wind, reminding him of his upcoming mission.

Marines, represented in the form of hares, are building an airfield on a Pacific island. All kinds of "native" animals, such as elephants, rhinos, deer, kangaroos and squirrels, are used for this purpose. Immediately after completion of the runway and the hangar, transport planes arrive under the leadership of the commander Momotarō. Among the troops are the four animals from the beginning. The animals embodied by the Japanese are bright, intelligent and good-looking beings, while the islanders are friendly, but somewhat limited and simple-minded. Therefore, the fulfillment of the “cultural mission” follows in that a uniformed dog tries to teach Japanese to the “uncivilized” animals. The whole thing is drowned out in grunting, neighing and chattering until the bear takes out his harmonica and the monkey starts the kindergarten song AIUEO . A new instrument is added with each verse, until finally the whole island echoes with the song. This is followed by a presentation of camp life with a washing day, cooking meals, receiving mail from home, as well as athletic-military exercises.

Finally, a reconnaissance plane arrives at the camp and brings aerial photographs of a British base. An attack is now being prepared; the monkey, the bear cub and the puppy will join the paratroopers, while the pheasant will fly one of the squadron's escorts. The following is an explanation of the need for the “liberation” of the Dutch East Indies . Devious Europeans, who are in truth pirates, flatter themselves with the East Indian ruler and force his country under their rule by force of arms. An old stone tablet in the jungle prophesies: “On a moonlit night, our savior will come astride a white horse from the north. Wielding divine weapons, he surely comes to set our race free ” .

At dawn, the planes are made ready for take-off and take off to attack. After surviving a typhoon with heavy rain, the enemy military base comes into view. The paratroopers jump off and after a short, fierce battle, the British fortress is taken and Momotarō's troops conquer a huge arsenal. In the subsequent negotiations, the British officers, who are marked as demons ( oni ) with horns on their heads, try to avoid signing the surrender until Momotarō forces them to unconditionally acknowledge their defeat in an authoritative tone. The film ends with the arrival of the victory report at home. Now the animal children playfully train for future military operations, and the monkey's little brother dares to jump from a tree like a parachutist. He lands on a map of America and stamps his foot, sure of victory.

Production and publication

Scene from the movie

The success of Mitsuyo Seo's animated film Momotarō no Umiwashi ( 桃 太郎 の 海 鷲 ), which premiered on March 25, 1943, prompted the Imperial Navy of Japan to commission another double-length animated film to cover the airborne operations in the wake of the invasion of the Dutch East Indies should have on the subject. The airborne operations suffered significant losses, but were hailed as great military successes by war propaganda. Like the previous film, the production was  motivated by the full-length Chinese cartoon Tieshan Gongzhu ( Chinese  鐵扇公主  /  铁扇公主 - “Imperial Princess Iron Fan”) from 1941. The Japanese propaganda should show that Japan is also capable of producing a full-length film. While Momotarō no Umiwashi was said to be so, but not really successful, Umi no Shimpei exceeded the length of the Chinese model by just one minute.

The film company Shōchiku Dōga Kenkyūsho began production of the film under the direction of Mitsuyo Seo with 50 people and received a budget of 270,000 yen. Thanks to the provision of considerable financial and human resources, Seo was able to afford to experiment with the latest technology. He was the first Japanese film director to use the multiplan camera developed by Ub Iwerks (1901–1971) in 1933 and used in a refined form from 1937 by Walt Disney (1901–1966). Tadahito Mochinaga had already constructed the first Japanese multi-level camera with four levels for Seo's film "Ant Boy" (Ari-chan) in 1941 and was already involved in Momotarō no Umiwashi . The picture backgrounds were painted on glass plates and staggered in depth. The impression of spatiality could be achieved by shifting the images in different times over different levels. As a composer Yuji Koseki (1909-1989) was hired, who worked for Nippon Columbia Records in Tōkyō since 1931. Some of the employees working on the film accompanied the Japanese Navy on some missions in order to be able to realistically depict the processes on the ship and in action. War real films of the time were also used as models and, in the case of the film Sora no Shimpei (1942), were also the inspiration for the film title.

It took a year and two months to work on the film, the staff divided into three groups, one of which was responsible for the opening part of the film, another for the island scenes and one for the final part of the film. By the time the film was completed in March 1945, however, the number of employees had been halved, as the men had been assigned to the army and the women to ammunition production. Immediately thereafter, Shōchiku had to close due to a lack of raw materials, and the studio burned down completely in an air raid in May 1945. In addition to the usual cel animation, the film also contains a scene that was animated with paper cutouts. In the end, the film had a running time of 74 minutes on nine film rolls.

The premiere in Japan was on April 12, 1945. Because of the advanced war, which also destroyed many cinemas and drove the population to the country, the film was only seen by relatively few cinema-goers. The copies of the film were destroyed along with other war films on the director's instructions. In this way, Momotarō Umi no Shimpei became a "ghost film" that hardly anyone had seen after its premiere on April 12, 1945. It was not until 1983 that a negative copy was discovered, which Shōchiku brought to market as a video cassette the following year.

Analysis and evaluation

According to Günther Oestmann, the film has certain artistic qualities despite the propaganda, and Seo continued to develop the genre of Japanese anime. With the multiplance camera, a particularly realistic and effective display of landscapes and flight scenes in banks of clouds was achieved. Seo attached great importance to the exact reproduction of technical details, and the type of aircraft used for the landing operation ( Mitsubishi G3M Chukō Type 96) can be clearly identified. A high-quality film music adapted to the plot was also provided, which is still a feature of sophisticated anime films today. Composer Koseki achieved international fame after the war; he wrote the music for the monster film " Mosura " (1961) and the march for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tōkyō .

According to Daniel Kothenschulte, the film served primarily to promote the war effort. Stylistically, the film falls into two parts, the plot in the country and the preparation and implementation of the attack on the British base. The film does not come close to comparable Disney films from this period or the Chinese model Tieshan Gongzhu . The animations, partly naturalistic, partly anatomically incorrect, did not match. Nevertheless, the film shows a successful increase in pace towards the end for the requirements of the propaganda film.

According to Jonathan Clements, a central scene in the film is the singing of the kindergarten song AIUEO , which was staged for the young audience to sing along. It is thus the culmination of a development in Japanese animated films of that time, in which such sing-along scenes were used more and more frequently and in a more sophisticated way. He also calls Umi no Shimpei the significantly better film than its predecessor in terms of animation, script and entertainment value. So there are clear advances in Japanese animated films of this time, which, however, hardly found their audience after the war. Despite its low success, the film remained the greatest achievement of Japanese animation until the premiere of Tale of a White Snake in 1958.

Effects

According to Osamu Tezuka , the film was one of the main inspirations that led him to become a mangaka and later to produce cartoons.

literature

  • Günther Oestmann: The peach boy and the war: The beginnings of the Japanese anime film. In: Kultur und Technik , 33, 2009, no. 3, pp. 48–52.
  • Fred Patten: "Momotaro's Gods-Blessed Sea Warriors: Japan's Unknown Wartime Feature". In: Ders., Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 years of Essays and Reviews , Berkeley 2004, pp. 325–328
  • Katsunori Yamaguchi and Yasushi Watanabe: The History of Japanese Animation: Nihon Animēshon Eigashi , Ōsaka 1977.
  • John W. Dower: War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War , New York 1986, pp. 251-257.
  • Yukio Fukushima and Abé Mark Nornes (Eds.). The Japan / America Film Wars: World War II Propaganda and its Cultural Contexts (= Studies in Film and Video, Vol. 1). Chur u. a. 1991.

Web links

Commons : Momotarō: Umi no Shimpei  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Helen McCarthy, Jonathan Clements: The Anime Encyclopedia. Revised & Expanded Edition. Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2006, ISBN 978-1-933330-10-5 , pp. 424-425.
  2. ↑ a b c Daniel Kothenschulte: Opulence and Limitation - Styles of Early Anime in ga-netchû! The Manga Anime Syndrom , p. 60. Henschel Verlag, 2008.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Fred Patten: Watching Anime, Reading Manga - 25 Years of Essays and Reviews . Stone Bridge Press, 2004.
  4. ↑ Yukio Fukushima and Abé Mark Nornes (eds.), The Japan / America Film Wars: World War II Propaganda and its Cultural Contexts (= Studies in Film and Video, Vol. 1), Chur u. a. 1991, pp. 191-195.
  5. ↑ a b c d 桃 太郎 海 の 神兵 (VHS ビ デ オ テ ー プ) . In: 松竹 DVD 倶 楽 部 (Shochiku DVD Club). Shōchiku, accessed July 22, 2009 (Japanese).
  6. ↑ a b c Katsunori Yamaguchi and Yasushi Watanabe: The History of Japanese Animation. Nihon Animēshon Eigashi , Ōsaka 1977, pp. 229-233
  7. ↑ a b c d e Jonathan Clements : Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan 2013. pp. 53, 64, 67, 74. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 .
  8. ^ A b Günther Oestmann: The Peach Boy and the War: The Beginnings of the Japanese Anime Film . In: Kultur und Technik , 33, 2009, no. 3, p. 52.
  9. ↑ Jonathan Clements : Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan 2013. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 .