Masks Full of Feeling
On an older form of stop-motion animation.
Welcome! We’re here with a new issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, and this one is about the art of the mask.
Kihachiro Kawamoto was one of Japan’s animation geniuses, and his best films are still breathtaking. Pieces like The Demon, Dojoji Temple and House of Flame transport the viewer to a wholly different world. He drew from traditional arts, among them Noh and bunraku puppet theater, to tell stories he couldn’t otherwise tell.
We explored that topic a few months ago. Kawamoto was a modern person who worked in Japanese pop culture — until something shifted in him. You could see it even in his characters’ faces.1
Kawamoto’s early TV ads (like the ones for Asahi Beer) star puppets animated in the expected way. Their faces change with their emotions; their mouths freely open and close. Animators like George Pal had done similar things for decades.
Yet you find a different approach in Kawamoto’s mature work. Take the scene from House of Flame in which a man on horseback is haunted by his feelings for a woman. Besides the slight movement of his eyes, his face is frozen — his downturned mouth stuck open. Even so, when he smells a sakura branch and breaks it off as a gift, he shows at least three different expressions.
It happens primarily through changes in angle. He looks left with a kind of thoughtful curiosity, one half of his face lit up. Then he looks down, falling into shadow — and the tilt of his head reveals a deep, pained longing in the geometry of his face. Finally, he glances right, again in shadow. And his expression becomes urgent, desperate.
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