Introduction: Frictive Pictures 1 Cartoon Internationale
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Notes Introduction: Frictive Pictures 1. There may be even earlier social groups united by an interest in pre-cinematic visual technologies or animation-like performances such as shadow-plays. But before animation came into being as a cinematic genre between 1898 and 1906 (Crafton 1993, 6–9, 21), these groups could not be properly termed “anima- tion fan communities,” and should be called something else, such as “zoetrope hobbyists” or “utsushi-e [Japanese magic lantern] audiences.” For that reason, I have chosen to begin with film animation in the early twentieth century, starting specifically in 1906–7 with the earliest verifiable hand-drawn ani- mated films in the West and somewhat less-verifiable experiments in Japan. Readers interested in the international influences of earlier visual media such as painting and printmaking on animation should consult Susan J. Napier’s fascinating history of fine arts influences between Japan and Europe, From Impressionism to Anime (2007). 1 Cartoon Internationale 1. For more on the technical specs of the Matsumoto Fragment, see Frederick S. Litten’s “Japanese color animation from ca. 1907 to 1945” available at http:// litten.de/fulltext/color.pdf. 2. Since the mid-2000s, there has been a small but heartening swell of inter- est in recovering and preserving early anime among film conservators and distributors. Some major DVD collections of pre-1945 animation include: Japanese Anime Classic Collection. Tokyo: Digital Meme, 2009 (4 discs, English, Korean, and Chinese subtitles); The Roots of Japanese Anime Until the End of WWII [United States]: Zakka Films, 2008 (English subtitles); Ōfuji Noburō Collected Works. Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 2004; Wartime Collection. Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 2004; and various volumes of the multivolume set World Animation Film History. Tokyo: Columbia Music Entertainment/Kinokuniya: 2007. The Internet is a further source for otherwise hard-to-get films, includ- ing the 1945 film Momotarō’s Divine Ocean Warriors, which as of 2014 was available unsubtitled on YouTube. 210 NOTES 3. This pivotal event took place on September 18, 1931, when a group of Imperial Japanese Army officers conspired to place explosives on a railway track out- side the Manchurian city of Mukden and then blamed the detonation on Chinese dissidents. The explosion, though a minor one, provided the excuse the Japanese army needed to occupy first Mukden, then all of Manchuria, resulting in the creation of the puppet state Manchukuo by March of 1932. Furthermore, according to Ian Gordon, “Many historians, especially those in Japan, regard the Manchurian Incident of 1931–32 as the start of what they call the Fifteen-Year War—essentially the start of World War II in Asia. Indeed, a strong case can be made that this act of aggression made further conflict inev- itable” (2003, 189). Ōfuji’s short films were likely produced before the incident itself, but were inflected by the geopolitical tensions that led up to it. 4. For more on Hays Code censorship and Betty Boop, particularly in relation to feminist concerns, see Heather Hendershot’s article “Secretary, Homemaker, and ‘White’ Woman: Industrial Censorship and Betty Boop’s Shifting Design” (1995) and Ōgi Fusami’s “An Essay on Betty Boop: The Bold Challenge of the Flapper” (2002). 5. It should be noted that sound was a bit slow to catch on in Japan, in part because of the lingering popularity of benshi narrators, so sound film in 1930 only made up 5.7 percent of the total market. As Japanese-made talkies grew in popularity following the success of Gosho Heinosuke’s Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine) in 1931, American shares declined. By 1934, sound film made up 40.3 percent of the market, but only 18.6 percent of those were American imports (Thompson 1985, 143). The important exception to these statistics may be in the area of animation, as I will show. 6. I have translated the company name given in this ad literally as “Paramount Cartoon Studios,” but in English, the distributor for Fleischer Studios was called “Paramount Pictures.” The studio called “Paramount Cartoon Studios” in English was not founded until 1956. 7. Tsutsui does not devote any further attention to this short or analyse the ad at all. In fact, he claims in one sentence on p. 200 that “A Language All My Own” did not play in Japan, and he does not give a Japanese title for it in his filmography. The fact that the ad refers directly to the short’s plot and images, however, confirms beyond a doubt that “Japan Visit” is the Japanese version of “A Language All My Own.” It seems that Tsutsui did not make the connec- tion between the different Japanese and English titles, or did not recognize the image well enough to identify it, hence the omission. 8. This is the title given by the noted manga translator Matt Thorn in his YouTube post of the short. It can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2kbhxv9ZMzQ. 9. That is not to say that no Japanese animation ever played outside of East Asia in the early twentieth century. For instance, Ōfuji’s experimental 1928 sil- houette film “Kujira” (“The Whale”) was screened in the Soviet Union along with Kinugasa Teinosuke’s equally avant-garde feature Jūjiro (1928), where both garnered good reviews (Yamaguchi and Watanabe 19). But this was the NOTES 211 exception rather than the rule. Certainly, Japanese animation did not play for entertainment to popular film audiences in America at this time the way Betty Boop films were shown commercially in Japan. 2 World War Cute 1. While “minzoku” can also be translated as “ethnic,” in the sociocultural rather than biologically racial sense, Dower here makes the point that “Having drawn fine distinctions between Rasse and Volk, or jinshu and minzoku, the [World War II-era Japanese] Ministry of Health and Welfare researchers nonethe- less went on to emphasize that blood mattered. Biology was not destiny, but a common genetic heritage could contribute immensely to forging the bonds of spiritual consciousness that were so crucial to the survival of the collectiv- ity.” In this way, “blood mattered psychologically,” as did biological concepts of race, as means of both connecting “Asians” and distinguishing “Japanese” (268) within the community of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. 2. The only short that does not feature an established Disney character or any real Latin American cultural content is the second film in the feature, titled “Pedro,” about a little mail plane named Pedro making a dangerous jour- ney through the Andes to pick up what turns out to be a single tourist’s postcard. The lack of Latin American content may stem from the fact that the story was reworked from an idea the animators had well before the tour about a plane named “Petey O’Toole” traversing the Rockies. According to character designer Joe Grant, the earlier idea “just fit” the new situation “because from the Rockies to the Andes was a short jump as far as we were concerned” (Kaufman 1997, 266). Is this exchangeability of foreign places to the North and South of the United States an index of a newly mobile internationalism, a deterritorialization, or simply a reterritorialization of the United States as geographic and ideological center of the continent? 4 Channel Surfers: Cowboy Bebop’s Postnational Fans 1. It should be noted that the preponderance of women in my Japanese-language survey results may be accounted for by the fact that Japanese women generally were much more likely to speak to me, as a female researcher, than Japanese men, who were often reserved in my presence. This was a serious factor in recruiting respondents because my Japanese results came almost entirely from in-person contacts made at conventions such as Comic Market rather than online contacts made through “cold emails.” For this reason, the number of Japanese-speaking respondents to my survey was also markedly lower than English-speakers. These results confirm ethnographer Ian Condry’s recent assertion that participant-observation fieldwork, especially in the anime industry, “can be a somewhat haphazard, unpredictable process,” and “As result, it is often difficult to achieve a perfectly balanced mix of examples and 212 NOTES insights” (2013, 5). It also suggests some of the remaining tensions and imbal- ances of access that remain in our transcultural world, contrary to the dreams of borderless global culture promoted by postnationalist discourse. 2. Woolery’s list of children’s animated TV programs in America between 1947–81 turns up 11 shows from Japan, 10 of which were released between 1963–7 (1983, 326). After that, no anime were released by major networks until Battle of the Planets in 1978. It should be noted, however, that Asian, Latin American, and European nations saw different releases throughout the decades. See Helen McCarthy, “The Development of the Japanese Animation Audience in the United Kingdom and France” (73–84) and John Lent, “Anime and Manga in Parts of Asia and Latin America,” (85–7) both in Lent’s 2001 book Animation in Asia and the Pacific. 3. The archived columns may be found at http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ edit-list/ starting September 25, 2011. 5 “Love at First Site” 1. See for instance Lisa Nakamura’s “ ‘Where do you want to go today?’ Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet, and Transnationality” (2002). 2. At least, this is the explanation given most often by IT specialists and tech bloggers online. See for instance the post made by Korean-based Google employee Chang Won Kim at Web 2.0 Asia on August 1, 2007 at: http://www. web20asia.com/333. 3. Japanese Online Idioms. November 23, 2004–August 30, 2010.