11 October 2012

Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン, 1983)



The popular mediums of the comics and animation sometimes get dismissed as mere amusements for children, but they can also be powerful tools for expression and education.  For the mangaka Keiji Nakazawa, his manga serial Barefoot Gen (はだしのゲン/Hadashi no Gen, 1973-74) was his method of coming to terms with his experiences of the atom bomb and his continuing bitterness as a hibakusha with postwar politics in Japan (Learn more in Asai Motofumi’s interview with Nakazawa in Japan Forum).

Nakazawa’s manga has not only educated generations of post-war Japanese about the bombing of Hiroshima from a child’s perspective, but it has also inspired other artists to follow in his footsteps and harness the power of the comics format to give voice to the unspeakable.  Most notably, Art Spiegelman has cited Barefoot Gen as having had a significant impact on him during the making of Maus (1991).

Madhouse’s 1983 adaptation of Barefoot Gen under the direction of Masaki Mori remains true to the message of its source material in its unflinching portrayal of the devastation wrought by the atom bomb on the people of Hiroshima.  Like other classics of the anti-war genre – Renzō and Sayoko Kinoshita’s Pica-don (ピカドン, 1978) and Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓/Hotaru no Haka, 1988) – the story is powerful because it portrays the inhumanity of war from the perspective of its most innocent victims: children. 

The iconic Genbaku Dome during the blast

Gen is a grade school boy who lives with his father, heavily pregnant mother, older sister, and bratty younger brother in the summer of 1945.  His father is a wheat farmer but despite good crops, they have fallen on hard times because no one can afford to pay them for their produce.  This is a great story for teaching students because it smashes a lot of widely held myths about the Japanese blindly following the will of their leaders during the war.  As was true of Nakazawa’s own father, Gen’s father holds dangerous left-wing views that could get him into trouble with authorities:  he is against the war and Japan’s policies and boldly prophecises to his sons that Japan will lose this war. 

Suspense is built in the lead up to the dropping of the bomb through repeated false warning trips to the air raid shelter, and the father’s growing suspicion that the fact that other major cities are being bombed more often than Hiroshima is a bad sign.  The anime intersperses the emotional personal drama of Gen, his family, and neighbours with sequences with an impersonal documentary narration that tell us the facts about the war and what the armed forces are doing.  Thus, we know that the Enola Gay is coming before the characters do themselves.  The bomb is even shown from the perspective of the Enola Gay as it falls silently onto the city.

The “pica” of the flash is depicted in black and white – as was in the Kinoshitas’ depiction of the same moment.  The “don” of the explosion is horrific in its detail, drawing on both photographic evidence of the destruction and the colours and style of the grotesque in Japanese traditional and modern art.  The  immediate devastation and its aftermath are depicted in gruesome detail: people stripped of their skins, dead and dying infants, people driven to insanity by what they have witnessed, maggots and flies feeding on both the living and the dead.  Man’s inhumanity to man is laid bare in all its horror and agony. 

Hiroshima Castle being destroyed by the blast

Gen and his mother desperately try to save their trapped family from the fire engulfing their home without success.  The two are left to struggle on their own with Gen aiding his mother as she gives birth in the ruins of their once beautiful city.  Despite suffering from malnutrition themselves, Gen and his mother never lose their own humanity.  They try – often in vain – to help others who are suffering and even adopt a young orphaned boy called Ryuta whose cheeky ways reminds them of Gen’s  lost litrle brother Shinji. 

One of the reasons that the story of Barefoot Gen is such a successful narrative is that it refuses to fall into the easy traps of anti-Americanism or over-sentimentality.  As equally as powerful as the anti-nuclear bomb message, the film also raises criticisms of the Japanese themselves which were core messages of the original manga.  The inadequate aid that was sent to Hiroshima following the attack, the suppression of survivors stories for years after the war, and the widespread discrimination against the hibakusha (被爆者/atomic bomb survivors).

Gen and Ryuta reflected in Seiji's tear

This last theme is personalized through the story of Seiji, a survivor who comes from a well-to-do family.  Gen and Ryuta take to the streets in search of work in order to get enough money for milk for the baby and they are hired by Seiji’s brother to look after him.  Seiji is covered in maggots and flies because no one in his family will touch him themselves and the family has been unable to find anyone with the stomach to handle the job of picking the maggots off of his skin.  Gen and Ryuta are desperate for money and put up not only with the stench but with the abuse of Shinji who calls them “vultures” and resents his situation.  In a remarkable scene, Gen and Ryuta are able to connect with Seiji on a human level and we learn that Seiji’s pain at being shunned by his family like a leper outweighs the physical pain of his bomb injuries.  His gratitude at these two young boys for teaching him that he can still feel real human affection is depicted movingly with an image of Gen and Ryuta reflected in a large tear falling from Seiji’s eye.

Gen recalls his father

The original Barefoot Gen manga is quite a long series – the current American English edition at Last Gasp has 10 volumes, so a feature film cannot possibly encapsulate Nakazawa’s exploration of the long term effects of the bombing of Hiroshima on its victims.  There is more tragedy before the film ends but it still manages to leave the door open to optimism for the future.  In spite of many people claiming that it will take 70 years for grass to grow again in Hiroshima, the boys discover that wheat has begun to sprout again.  Gen recalls his father once advising him and Shinji to learn from the example of the wheat (mugi):

Its life begins in the coldest season of the year.
The rain pounds it, 
the wind blows it. . .
it’s crushed beneath people’s feet
but still, the wheat spreads its roots and grows.
It survives.
Learn from it boys.
Grow big and strong and let nothing beat you down.

Hadashi no Gen / Animation
Hadashi no Gen DVD (JP only)

Barefoot Gen won Masaki Mori the coveted Noburo Ofuji Award for innovation in animation in 1983.  The success of the film led to a sequel a few years later, Barefoot Gen 2 (Toshio Hirata/Akio Sakai, 1986) which picks up Gen’s story three years after the war and examines the long-term consequences of the bomb.  Both films were rereleased on DVD with subs by Geneon in the US but are currently only available second hand.  The French box set is also out of print, but it is available here in Germany: Barfuß durch Hiroshima - Film 1 & 2 (OmU) [2 DVDs] [Deluxe Edition].  This edition has  German, French, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Danish and Finnish subs.  The Japanese release also has no English subs.

Last year a documentary was made about Nakazawa's life called Hiroshima Through the Eyes of Barefoot Gen.  Here's an excerpt:


©cmmhotes 2012



10 October 2012

Obāchan’s Garden (おばあちゃんのガーデン, 2001)



When sansei Canadian filmmaker Linda Ohama set out to make a film that would celebrate her grandmother’s life on the eve of her 100th birthday, she had no idea just how far her journey would take her.  On the surface, there was more than enough material to make a feature-length documentary for her obāchan (grandma) had lived an extraordinary life in Canada.  Yet during the filming of Obāchan’s Garden (2001), the Murakami family discovers that the matriarch of the family has been keeping a painful secret about her early life in Japan for over 70 years.

Asayo Murakami (1898-2002) was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima Perfecture in 1898.  Her parents had named her Asayo because she was born in early in the morning (asa).  For her Canadian family, Asayo’s story began in 1924 when she came to Canada as a “picture bride”.  A man named Murakami had selected Asayo’s photograph as a potential future wife and paid for her journey to British Columbia.  Unfortunately, upon meeting Mr. Murakami, Asayo immediately rejected the possibility of marrying this short statured man.  She worked for three years in a fish cannery and picking strawberries to pay the man back the $250 dollars he had spent on her. 

Not long after this a matchmaker introduced her to the fishing boat craftsman Otokichi Murakami (of no relation to the man she had turned down) – a tall widower with two young children.  Asayo agreed to this marriage and the couple settled in the village of Steveston, which today belongs to the city of Richmond, British Columbia.  They went on to have 8 children of their own and Asayo was known locally for her wide social circle and her beautiful flower garden.  While most women filled their gardens with more practical crops of fruit and vegetables, Asayo preferred flowers – a sentimental preference which was connected to her private sorrows.

Like the other Japanese families living in coastal British Columbia, the Murakamis were forced to leave their home during World War II and were relocated to a sugar-beet farm in Manitoba.  After the war restrictions were lifted, the couple joined their eldest daughter and her family on their potato farm in Rainier, Alberta.  These were difficult times for the family  – the grandfather missed making boats and Asayo missed her garden  –  but they were resilient folk and persevered in the face of hardship.

Linda Ohama pieces together the life of her obāchan like a quilt.  Fragments of recollections by obāchan herself, Ohama’s mother and siblings, Ohama’s daughter, and other friends and relatives are woven together with a collection of family photos, archival footage from Japan and Canada, and dramatic reenactments of the past with the filmmaker’s cousin Natsuko Ohama playing obāchan in her younger years.  Docudrama elements in documentaries are a common, and sometimes controversial, feature in Canadian documentaries and may not be to everyone’s taste – but as the Murakami family had to leave everything behind when they left Steveston, the reenacted sequences bring colour and life to the home that obāchan loved best outside of Onomichi.



The film keeps coming back to one of obāchan’s prized possessions: a beautiful photograph of two smartly dressed little girls.  The secret that obāchan has kept for all these years is that before she came to Canada she was married to a man from a prominent family called Ishibashi.  For reasons that are unclear, around the time of the Great Kantō earthquake, Asayo was divorced from her husband and he took their daughters to live on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.  Asayo has been unable to trace her children, but has always believed that they were safe because they lived near the emperor and his family.   

The discovery of obāchan’s secret changes the course from a mere celebration of Asayo’s life to a quest to find out what happened to these two long-lost daughters.  At this point, according to the director's online diary, Ohama brought the National Film Board of Canada on board to help with funding and she set off to Japan with her mother and daughter – the first time the three women have been to visit obāchan’s family there.  It is a complicated journey, with many unexpected twists and turns, but it certainly makes riveting viewing.

Also interwoven with the story of obāchan is the story of her former home in Steveson.  The Murakami home and boat works, where they lived from 1929-1942 were the only buildings belonging to the Japanese to survive into the 1990s.  As they prepare for obāchan’s birthday, the family are involved in the restoration of the property which is now a part of the Britannia Heritage Shipyard Site in Richmond.  The film also documents the family’s restoration of the garden, which they plant according to obāchan’s instructions in preparation for the opening of the Murakami Visitor Centre in May 1998.

Is Linda Ohama able to track down obāchan’s daughters and is it possible for frail obāchan to travel to British Columbia from her nursing home in Alberta to see her garden in its restored glory?  You can enjoy the emotional ending of the film yourself on the NFB website:



Since making this documentary Linda Ohama (リンダ・オオハマ/official profile) has developed strong ties between Canada and Japan.  She is currently in Japan on a lecture tour and is active in Tohoku region recovery efforts through her Canada-Tohoku-Japan Cloth Letters project.

To learn more about obāchan read:
Asayo Murakami: The Last Picture Bride and The Story of Ms. Asayo Murakami by family friend Kojiro “John” Iuchi

08 October 2012

The Water Seed (水のたね, 1975)



The Water Seed (水のたね/Mizu no tane, 1975) is a unique animation by Tadanari OkamotoHe designed it for the Okinawa Kaiyouhaku no Kayoubunkan: the Oceanic Culture Museum at Expo ’75 in Okinawa.  The theme of the exhibition was: “The sea we would like to see” (海-その望ましい未来/Umi - sono nozomashii mirai). 

The film was projected onto the dome of the planetarium in the Ocean Culture Museum.  At the original screening, the animation was projected using two 35mm projectors, a 16mm projector, 1 large slide projector and 2 small slide projectors which were computer controlled.  The work was later adapted so that it could be projected in a standard 35mm format.  This is the version that appears on Volume 2 of the Tadanari Okamoto Box Set (Geneon Universal, 2008).  During the transfer process they tried to maintain look of the cinemascope technique using letterboxing.  Thus the 4:3 format sections of the film are also letterboxed with black matte so that they appear smaller than the wider cinemascope sequences.  




The story is based on the retelling of a traditional Okinawan folk tale by Miyoko Matsutani, a Tokyo native who is famous for her retellings of folk tales from all over Japan.  She has written more than 300 stories and founded the Miyoko Matsutani Folklore Research Center.   The story is narrated by the renowned actress Kyoko Kishida, who in addition to famous cinematic roles (Woman of the Dunes, An Autumn Afternoon, Manji, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter), did the narration for some of the top Japanese puppet animation of the past half century: (Towards the Rainbow, The Book of the Dead, etc.).


In keeping with the Okinawan origins of the story, Okamoto and his animation team made the backgrounds for the film using bingata – the resist dyed cloth method that the Ryūkyū Islands are famous for.  The puppets and the background images were painted on kiwata cloth which is similar to what in English would be called muslin.

The story is that of a young rice farmer whose fields are suffering a drought.  He prays fervently at his small rural shrine and is blessed with a heavy rain shower that fills his 48 ponds and he rushes to plant his rice seedlings.  One day, while on an errand, he encounters a group of children torturing a snake.  He offers to buy the snake and they refuse.  He then offers more money, throwing it on the ground.  While the children scurry for the money, he rescues the snake and releases it into the water. 


Night falls, a fog descends upon him, and a mysterious woman appears out of the mist.  She tells him that she is a princess by night, but by day she takes the form of a snake.  It was she whom he rescued from the children.  To reward him for his good deed, she invites him to visit her undersea realm.  They travel out to sea on her royal vessel and the screen shifts to widescreen.  The princess shows him her wondrous underwater kingdom.  They spin on starfish, ride shrimp like they were horses, hunt dolphins (!), play blind man’s bluff, and play ball.  Then the farmer is treated to a sumptuous feast on a revolving table.  When served a bowl of rice he suddenly remembers that he is neglecting his rice terraces.  The farmer insists that he must return to his farm and the princess takes him to her treasure chambers to allow him to choose a souvenir to take with him.  He is not enchanted by her jewels or gold, rather his eyes are drawn to some seeds that remind him of home.  These are water seeds (mizu no tane), she tells him, and he takes one with him.


They start their journey home on the backs of dragons but then the scene shifts into a dream-like sequence of a starry sky.  At the end of this sequence – which must have looked spectacular on the dome of the planetarium at the original screening – the man wakes up in his futon on the floor of his humble home.  Did he really meet a princess and go to her magical undersea realm?  Has she really given him a gift that will bring him water for his fields?  Or was it all just a dream? 



The Water Seed also screened at the 4th Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet-Anime Show in October 1975 and it won Okamoto his fourth Noburo Ofuji Award in 1975. 
© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012
Credits

Director/Screenplay
Tadanari Okamoto

Narration
Kyoko Kishida

Cinematography
Minoru Tamura

Editor
Naoko Aizawa

Art Department (Figures/Puppets)
Sumiko Hosaka
Hiromi Wakasa
Sumie Ishii

Art Department
Takashi Komae
Masami Tokuyama
Eiji Sashida
Chizuko Hosokawa
Yuko Onaka

Animation
Ryo Ozaki
Hiroshi Taisenji
Satoru Yoshida
Hirokazu Minegishi

Music
Akio Omori
Ryohei Hirose (composer)

Assistance
Emiko Okada




Praise Be to Small Ills (南無一病息災, 1973)




With Praise Be to Small Ills (南無一病息災/Nanmu Ichibyo Sokusai, 1973), Tadanari Okamoto wanted to retell a traditional tale in a way that brings together traditional and contemporary storytelling styles.  Based on the short story by Ryusuke Sato, Okamoto collaborated with the folk singer Kōhei Oikawa to come up with a narration that mixes song and spoken word with a guitar accompaniment.  The sequences vary in style. One narrated sequence is chanted with percussion, while a melancholy sequence depicting a funeral is accompanied by a flute.

The central motif of the film is ema (絵馬):  votive pictures painted or drawn onto small wooden tablets that are hung in Shinto shrines in prayer.  Common prayers today include for success when writing exams, for a safe childbirth, for the recovery of someone who is ill, or for luck in love.  “Ema” literally translates as “horse picture” because of the ancient tradition of giving the gift of a horse to a temple when asking for help from the gods.  Over time, this tradition evolved into the giving of a picture of a horse.  Today, the pictures or writing on the ema vary (see title card at top).
 

The film begins with a montage of traditionally painted ema.  Kōhei Oikawa then begins to sing in the role of a father telling a bedtime story to his daughter Hiroko.  Hiroko is curled up in her futon bed looking at a picture book featuring drawings of a skinny blue oni (demon) and a powerful-looking red oni.  The father cautions his daughter not to be scared by the tale.

In the story, the blue demon takes up residence in the belly of a humble farmer.  His presence in the man is troublesome.  It causes the man to cough from time to time and brings him bad luck in both farming and hunting.  The man; however learns to live with the oni and in spite of the ill luck the oni brings him, the farmer enjoys a moderate success in life.  He marries well and has many children and he teaches his children to be grateful for the small rewards that come from hard work by giving a prayer of thanks every morning.


In contrast, the red oni takes up residence on the property of a big, strong farmer.  Initially, the red oni brings the man good luck.  His crops are plentiful and he has much success in hunting.  Rather than give thanks to the gods, the man overindulges by eating loads of rice and sake.  He too marries and has a child but his overindulgence leads to the rather brutal demise of the man and his family.

Praise Be to Small Ills is a morality tale aimed at teaching children the benefits of working hard and being grateful for what they have.  In conclusion, the narrator father sings to his daughter Hiroko that that one should put up with small irritations – represented by the blue oni – in order to enjoy a long and fruitful life.  Overindulgence in the sudden success a red oni can bring will only lead to tragedy.


Tadanari Okamoto is famous for using different materials in each of his films.  For this film, the cutouts are made using the wood of the what the Japanese call sugi (cryptomeria japonica) – a tree native to Japan.  The cryptomeria is sometimes called the Japanese cedar in English although it does not belong to the cedar family.  Sugi is the national tree of Japan and is commonly seen in temples and shrines.  The wood of the cryptomeria was chosen for Praise Be to Small Ills because it is traditionally the wood of choice for making ema.  It gives the characters a sort of roughly hewn look unique to this film. 

As with all Okamoto animated shorts, the film has been flawlessly put together.  I would personally hesitate to show the film to the young children for whom the moral message was intended because of the violent death of overindulgent man.  However, it is quite a useful film for teaching older children about Japanese folk tales and religion.

This film won the Noburo Ofuji Award for 1973: Okamoto’s third of seven wins of this prestigious award.  Kōhei Oikawa  also features in another of Okamoto’s Ofuji award-winning films: Towards the Rainbow (虹に斑って, 1977).  The film appears on Volume 1 of the Okamoto Box Set (JP only).

 © Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Director, Producer, Screenplay, Song Lyrics:
Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成

Original Story:
 Ryusuke Saito  斎藤隆介

Cinematography:  
Minoru Tamura 田村実  
Ken Yoshioka 吉岡謙

Editing:  
Naoko Aizawa 相沢尚子
Masako Sakama 坂間 雅子

Art Department (figures/puppets):
Sumiko Hosaka 保坂純子
Hiromi Wakasa 若佐ひろみ
Masami Sudo       数藤雅三 

Art Department:
Takashi Komae 小前隆
Masami Tokuyama徳山正美

Animators:
Seishiro Fujimori 藤森誠代
Seiichi Araki 荒木靖一
Hiroshi Taisenji 泰泉寺博

Narration, Music (composition, lyrics, performance):
Kōhei Oikawa 及川恒平 

Musicians:
Akio Omori 大森昭男
Masazo Nakagawa 中川昌三
Ritsu Murakami 村上律
Osamu Nakajima中島御 

Sound:

04 October 2012

The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店, 1991)




Very early in his career as an independent animator, Tadanari Okamoto decided to try out new modes of expression and technique for each of his short films.  From coloured yarn together with paint on glass in Are wa dare? (1976) to painted cedar cutouts in Praise be to Small Ills (1973), Okamoto went to great lengths to match the aesthetic of the animation to the story that he wanted to tell.

Okamoto’s final film, The Restaurant of Many Orders (注文の多い料理店/Chūmon no Ooi Ryōriten, 1991) looks nothing like the 30+ films that preceded it at Echo Productions.  The film is an adaptation of a famous short story by the early Shōwa writer and poet Kenji Miyazawa.  Miyazawa’s writing has been a fruitful source of inspiration to animators, as the fantastic and surreal elements of his writing are well suited to the medium of animation.   

Two hunters dressed in British-style hunting gear – one man tall and slender, the other short and stout –  drive furiously into the forest to go deer hunting.  They set off into the woods, dragged along by their hunting dogs.  The dogs chase off after some deer but do not immediately return.  As the men stop for a break, they hear one of the dogs squeal as if in pain.  They run off in search of their dogs and find that they have strangely dropped dead.  

A chilly wind blows eerily and foggy weather sets upon the men.  Without their dogs and unable to find their vehicle again, the men grow hungry and weary.  One has the impression that these two could not survive in the wild for long on their own.  Out of the fog, they suddenly glimpse the lit windows of the Wild Cat Restaurant.  They are greeted, not by a host but by a sign which welcomes them in.  It is all very odd, but the men are terribly hungry so they enter.

They ring the bell in the lobby, but again no one appears.  They look around the lobby and discover a shooting game.  After many attempts, the tall and slender man finally “kills” one of the deer in the game.  After much waiting they spot another sign which bids them to enter further into the building.  They encounter a room with a sink where a sign asks them to use the products provided to clean themselves up.  The men are a bit taken aback by this request but imagine it must be a pretty fancy establishment with beautiful women so they do as they are told.    


They then enter a church-like space with giant stained glass windows depicting scenes from nature.  A giant spider startles the men and they shoot the glass.  In a brilliantly animated sequence the shards transform into butterflies which overwhelm the men before flying away.  After several more adventures in this labyrinthine building, they do eventually find a table set for dinner in a cavernous room.  But are they really the guests in this establishment or is there a more sinister plot underfoot?

This is my favourite kind of film: one which does not rely upon narration or written text but instead tells a story using visuals only.  The original Miyazawa story did have dialogue, so this is an aesthetic decision made by Okamoto.  The lack of voice-over narration increases the impact of the short notes that the two hunters encounter in the unusual restaurant of many orders.  In addition to the stained glass/butterfly sequence the dancing sequence in which wraith-like women transform into wild cats is also quite remarkable.  The depth of field and the attention to detail in each frame is truly stunning.

For the look of the film, Okamoto wanted to make a 2D film that nevertheless had texture and came up with the idea of having the film resemble a moving copper plate engraving.  In order to achieve this look he asked Reiko Okuyama to join his animation team.  Okuyama had recently retired from Toei Dōga after nearly 3 decades as an animator and had taken up the art of copper plate engraving.  If one compares The Restaurant of Many Orders to the animated short that Okuyama, with the assistance of her husband Yōichi Kotabe, contributed to the collaborative film project Winter Days (Kihachirō Kawamoto, 2003), one can see that Okuyama contributed a great deal to the look of Okamoto's last great work.


According to Anipages, The Restaurant of Many Orders was intended as a warm up for Okamoto’s first feature-length film which he intended to call Hotarumomi.  Unfortunately, this prolific animator’s future plans were cut short by liver cancer and The Restaurant of Many Orders was left in limbo upon Okamoto’s passing on Febrary 16, 1990.  Fortunately, fellow puppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto took up the task of seeing his close friend and Puppet Anime-Show collaborator’s final film through to completion.

The Restaurant of Many Orders won high praise from both critics and fellow animators.  In fact, it won a many prizes including the prestigious Noburo Ofuji Award.  Okamoto continues to hold the record to this day for the most Noburo Ofuji Awards won.  Okamoto himself was even awarded a special prize posthumously by the Mainichi Film Concours for his outstanding contribution to animation in Japan.  The Restaurant of Many Orders ranked #115 on the Laputa 150 poll in 2003.


Order now


This film is available on the DVD The Collected Works of Tadanari Okawamoto, vol. 3 and in the Box Set (both JP only).  This review is part of my ongoing series dedicated to the Noburo Ofuji Award

©cmmhotes 2012

Related Posts:


Direction:
Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成
Kihachirō Kawamoto  川本喜八郎

Screenplay/Producer:
Tadanari Okamoto 岡本忠成

Original Story:
Kenji Miyazawa 宮沢賢治

Production Assistant:
Yoshihiro Shinohara 篠原義浩

Cinematography:
Akihiko Takahashi   高橋明彦
Mikio Nakaide 中出三記夫

Editing:
Fusako Shuzui 守随房子

Music:
Ryohei Hirose 広瀬量平

Sound:
Isamu Koufuji  甲藤勇 

Art Department:
Noriko Kawashita 川下倫子
Setsuko Onowzawa 小野沢節子
Masami Tokuyama 徳山正美

Animation:
Nobuko Abe 阿部信子
Reiko Okuyama 奥山玲子
Keizo Kira 吉良敬三
Satoru Yoshida 吉田悟
Takako Yokokawa 横川たか子
Eiko Miyabayashi 宮林英子
Mitsuko Ōya  大宅光子 
Tamaki Kōbe  神戸環 
Kazuo Tashiro 田代和男
Katsushi Boda 保田克史
Hiroshi Kagawa 香川浩
Shin'ichi Suzuki 鈴木伸一
Hiroshi Taisenji 泰泉寺博
Katsushi Wakui   和久井克史 
Mitsuhiro Kimura 木村光宏
Setsuko Kagawa 香川節子

Lighting: