Japanese Anime

Main Topics
Historical influences toward Japanese
art
Contemporary Japan & popular culture
Japanese cinema
Origins of anime
Aesthetic characteristics of anime
Re-ocurring themes of anime
Anime & global identity

Japanese Historical & Cultural

Context
Genroku period (Mid 17th to early 18th
Century)
Kasei period (Late 18th to early 19th Century)
Meiji period (1868 1912)
Taisho period (1912 1926)
Showa period (1926-1989)

IKI IN UKIYO-E PRINTS

Eishi

Eizan

Geisha at the
Matsumoto Teahouse
ban, c. early 1790s

Hanging Picture
in Horinouchi.
ban, 1807

KabukiTheatre

Kabuki Theater

Creator Name:Torii Kiyotada

Bunraku Theater
A round bunraku (puppet) theater, in Sewa village, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan. Photographer: Michael S.Yamashita
Date: April, 1993

BunrakuPuppetTheatre

Japanese Bunraku Puppet Theater Several puppeteers manipulate Bunraku a traditional form of puppetry in
Japan. Photographer: Jack Fields 1981

Kibyoshi

Nishikawa Sukenobu
The Heart of the Pond /Ehon ike no kokoro/
1739
a book, sumizurie, an illustration

Author unknown
Love, the Pavilion of Water
Chrysanthemums /Enshoku Suikotei/
c.1840-1850
a book, nishikie, 123x155mm

Ukiyoe - Woodblock Prints

Author YOSHIDA, Hiroshi(1876-1950) Title "Glittering Sea ("Hikaru Umi")

Date 1926

Predominant Forms of Popular Culture

Literature
Manga - emerging from a synthesis between post WWII Western
influences and traditional Japanese aesthetics.
Film & T.V;

Japanese Hollywood=Shochiku Studios;

Yakuza movies
Tora-san series.
Kurosawa Akira
Kitano Takeshi
Avant Garde

Music;

J-Pop
Enka
Karaoke

Art;

Manga
Anime - Ghibli Studios, Gainax
Avant Garde

Historical Development of
Japanese Cinema
Considered to be a new means of
expression, but what it expressed was old.
Heavily influenced by the traditional
pictorial and narrative arts.
Strong tradition of storytelling and
performance.

Influence
Theatre

of

Cinema was regarded as

extension of
the stage, a new kind of drama.

the

an

The early cinema performances,

displayed a disregard for any claims
of realism, which in the west was
considered to be essential both in

photographic
and moving images.

Narrative Structure in Japanese Cinema

Aesthetic elements communicate much more than

he narrative.

an aesthetically patterned narrative is sometimes

preferred to one that is more logical.

ot constrained by Western insistence for narrative

ogression based on cause and effect & resolution

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Origins of anime
e-makimono
(picture-scroll
narratives)
Kabuki theatre
The Noh tradition (theatrical
masks)
Bunraku (puppet theatre)
Ukiyo Zoshi (the novel)
Manga (graphic novel)

Other Influences

German expressionism
Early French animation (Emile Cohl)
Russian animation (Yuri Norstein)
American comics
Disney animation
Cinema genres
- film-noir, the gangster, the western
Contemporary social & cultural issues

Manga
flowing pictures
frivolous pictures
comics
graphic novels.

Manga

Manga Genres

Sport
Gangster
Romance
Gourmet
Historical
Erotic
Satirical

Cyberpunk
Mecha

Frame Syntax
Meaning emerging from the
syntactical arrangement of the
frame
The composition of visual elements
within the frame
The relation of one frame to another
across a sequence of frames

Live Action Manga

Tetsuo: The Ironman, (1989, Dir. Shinya Tsukam

Aesthetic Characteristics of Anime

composition of the image.

The relation between background and foreground

Formalist aesthetic dominates, but there is

sometimes a sophisticated aesthetic interplay
between realism and formalism.

Eg: Texhnolyze, Tetsuo

Texhnolyze (2004, Dir. Yoshitoshi Abe

http://www.cjas.org/~leng/texhnolyze.htm

Space

space is not used for illusionistic effect, nor is

any effort made to achieve depth.

While Western film directors view the screen as a

window into a 3 dimensional space, many Japanese
directors treat this screen as a flat 2 dimensiona
surface, much like a picture or painting.

Character Aesthetics
Round faces and simplicity of features
Stylistic features developed by manga artist
Osamu Tezuka
The origins of these features can also be
found in the Noh (mask) tradition of
Kabuki theatre.

Mask and Persona

The construct of the mask is one
of the most profoundly developed
aspects of the traditional
performing arts in Japan with Noh
theatre providing the most obvious
example.

The motif of the mask can be

discussed on several levels.
The first is the use of masks (or
masking) in the literal form as
is illustrated in a pronounced
fashion in several Miyazaki
productions.

Re-occuring Themes of Anime

Dystopian futures
Cyborgs
The relation between humans and technology
The animated body
The body takes on animal attributes; it merges with
plant life and melds with metal. The body is asexual
and homosexual, heterosexual and hermaphrodite
Eg: Tetsuo, Texhnolyze, Ghost in the Shell

GhostintheShell(1995,Dir.MamoruOshii)

Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis (in animation) legitimizes the
process
of connecting apparently unrelated images,
forging
original relationships between lines, objects
etc, and
disrupting established notions of classical
storytelling
(by collapsing) the illusion of physical space,
metamorphosis destabilizes the image,

conflating

Apocalypse
The vision of worldwide
destruction, expressed as
material, spiritual or
pathological catastrophe.
Eg: Akira

Akira(1988,Dir.Katsuhiro Otomo)

Spirited Away
Director
Hayao Miyazaki (2002)
a phantasmagoric fairy-tale

PrincessMononoke(1997,Dir.HayaoMiyazaki)

SpiritedAway(2001,Dir.HayaoMiyazaki)

Anime, Global Identity and Hybrid

Unlike the inherently more
representational space of
conventional live-action film
animated space has the
potential to be context free, drawn
wholly out of the animators or
artists mind. It is therefore a
particularly
apt medium for participation in a
transnational, stateless
culture

Anime may function as

a
site
of
subversion
or
resistance to
the authority of the state. Here,
Anime
can be seen as opening up a new
cultural space, one in which
identity
is not defined or constrained by
an