Kihachiro Kawamoto's Puppet Anime
One of Japan’s Greatest Living 3D Animators is a Unique Artist
Kihachiro Kawamoto, born in 1925, was fascinated by dolls. His grandmother taught him traditional doll-making skills as a small child, and he became a renowned doll artist. He found his true calling as a puppeteer much later. "The first time I really understood what a puppet was, I was over 40 years old."
He's unknown to many animation fans, but greatly respected by animators worldwide. He succeeded Osamu Tezuka as President of the Japan Animation Association, and co-ordinated 2003's prestigious international animation showcase A Winter's Day (Fuyu no Hi.)
Kawamoto's Early Career
He originally intended to be an architect, with doll-making as a hobby, but the war interrupted his studies. His first job was in movies, as an assistant designer for Toho Studios, but his beautiful dolls of Hollywood stars like Audrey Hepburn sold well and attracted media attention.
In 1950 he went into business with publisher Tadasu Iizawa, making 'puppet storybooks' with photographs of dolls re-enacting fairy tales. He says "Dolls are playthings, puppets act. I call them puppets because they were actors in the stories."
Inspiration From Europe
Then he saw the work of Czech animator Jiri Trnka. Seeing how Trnka used puppets to tell powerful, poetic stories, Kawamoto was inspired. In 1953 he began training with Tadahito Mochinaga, Japan's first stop-motion animator. To begin with he made TV commercials, but dreamed of making films as creative as Trnka's.
In 1963 Kawamoto finally met the man who inspired him. He wrote to Trnka asking to become his student and was invited to spend a year in Prague. Speaking no Czech, he struggled through a freezing Soviet winter of power cuts and food shortages, encouraged by the kindness of his Czech colleagues and his passion for puppet animation.
Return To Japanese Traditions
As his puppets developed into stylish, individual creations, Trnka encouraged Kawamoto to draw on his own heritage. Returning to Japan, he used Buddhist thought and traditional theatre forms - bunraku, Noh and kabuki - to inform films including Demon (Oni, 1970) and House of Flame (Kataku, 1979.)
He also experimented with cut-out animation (kirigami) in surreal works like The Trip (Tabi) dedicated to his mentor Trnka, who died in 1969.
Kawamoto made his first animated feature in 1981. The following year Japan's national TV channel, NHK, offered him a huge project - Sangokushi, a puppet-animation TV series based on the Chinese classic Romance of Three Kingdoms.
International Independent Artist
Meanwhile he kept up his links with international animators, making co-productions with French and Chinese studios as well as a psychologically profound version of "Sleeping Beauty" with Trnka Studios in Prague.
Like most independent animators, Kawamoto struggled to finance his work. A second TV puppet series in 1993 brought in enough money to let him continue working on his own short films, but it wasn't until 2005 that he made his second feature film, The Book of the Dead (Shisha no Sho,) thanks to the Internet.
To raise funds for the film, he set up his first website, with an area for contributions. In a very short time his admirers around the world provided all he money he needed.
Now over 80, Kawamoto is still working. His films are available in the USA for the first time from Kino Video. These fresh, beautiful works remind us that anime has always had more than two dimensions.
Quotations from Jasper Sharp's 2005 intervew with Kawamoto in Midnight Eye magazine
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