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to Mechademia
Japanese
Cartoon Films
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
Renowned as the author of the world’s first book of animation theory, Manga
eigaron (A theory of cartoon films), first published in 1941, revised and pub-
lished again in 1948 and 1965, and recently republished in 2005, Imamura
Taihei merits special attention for his combination of practical analysis, philo-
sophical inquiry, and Marxist paradigms, which enabled him to develop highly
influential theories both of animation and of documentary film.1
When Imamura embarked into film theory in earnest in 1934, contribut-
ing to the reader’s column of Kinema junpō and founding and contributing to a
film magazine Eiga shūdan, a series of mass arrests of communists and others
deemed politically suspect (including Marxists) was leading to the collapse of
the Japanese Communist Party and to “conversions” (tenkō) of intellectuals
and artists from Marxism to nationalism, among them Imamura. It is thus
difficult to gauge the impact of Marxism on Imamura. Irie Yoshirō calls atten-
tion to the Marxist currents of Imamura’s film theory, “Imamura’s investiga-
tions into the essence of cinema began alongside his emerging consciousness
of Marxism.”2 In volume 8 of Mechademia, Ōtsuka Eiji stresses Imamura’s
107
I recently went into a theater for short films, and there was but one cartoon.
To my surprise, it was a Japanese cartoon, Kaeru no kenpō (1933, Frog sword
art).4 Accustomed to seeing cartoons like Mickey Mouse and Popeye the
Sailor, I found Japanese cartoons quite wanting.
10 8 ima mura ta ih e i
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 10 9
Figure 1. An image from The Country Cousin (1936), directed by Wilfred Jackson
to become temporal art. As such, insofar as the arts of drawing and paint-
ing in cartoons are grounded in photographic techniques and combined with
photography, cartoons come into being as a temporal art, wherein lies their
specificity.
Without the use of photography to parse actions instant by instant, it
would be impossible to express the liveliness of the mouse, duck, and dog.
The use of film photography to parse the entire chain of a living movement
brought movement-time to images for the first time.16 While the realism of
Disney’s cartoons lies in their reliance on parsing movement with photogra-
phy, Japanese cartoons today are almost always based on print cartoons in
newspapers and magazines. People on the whole seem oblivious of the fact
that the reality of movement in Disney cartoons is based on techniques of
photographic parsing. This is why Japanese cartoonists are not able to create
realistic movement: because they are not combining images with techniques
of photographic parsing.
Like images on one of those revolving magic lanterns, movement in
Japanese cartoons do not impart any sense of inner motivation because the
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 11 1
and mechanical techniques are the most highly advanced. Due to the lack of
constraining traditions, drawings are most confidently combined with pho-
tography. In other words, their art is based on use of the camera for a temporal
partitioning of the movement of objects. It was surely Impressionism that
first attempted a serious treatment of time within art. We may think of the
Impressionist artist who tried to capture the essence of a haystack as it cease-
lessly transformed with the changing light as one who investigated time with
images.22 An artist like Degas, who tried to grasp the ballerina’s pose in the
instant, was another investigator of movement-time within art. Nevertheless,
in the fact that not a single creator of cartoon films has appeared in France,
we must see the considerable and heavy constraints of that artistic tradition.
Such concerns become especially salient in the case of Japan, insofar as
the tradition of Oriental arts is very long. In its deep resistance to photog-
raphy, Japanese art is quite unlike French art. Such resistance may well be
explained in terms of the difference between ink painting and oil painting.
The historical development of oil painting techniques has been realistic and
materialistic to the point where it shows a tendency toward embossing or re-
lief carving, especially when it comes to modern art.23 As such, oil painting is
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 1 1 3
Figure 4. An image from Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937), directed by Dave Fleischer
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 1 1 5
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 1 1 7
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 1 1 9
Notes
1. The most recent collection of Imamura’s writings reprints the original 1941 text
of Manga eigaron: Imamura Taihei, Imamura Taihei eizō hyōron 5: Manga eigaron (Tokyo:
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 1 2 1
j a pa n e s e ca rto o n f i l m s 1 2 3