The Art of Kunio Kato

Returning to the "miniature garden."

A Kunio Kato drawing for his film Scenes (2012), courtesy of the book Kunio Kato Exhibition

Welcome! We’re here with a slightly different issue of Animation Obsessive: a look into the artwork of Kunio Kato, the Oscar-winning animator from Japan.

He’s a favorite of ours, and we’ve written about him before. Longtime readers may remember our pieces last year on The Diary of Tortov Roddle (2003) and The House of Small Cubes (2008) — the first animated short from Japan to win an Oscar.

Today, we’re exploring Kato’s career in animation from the beginning, and we’re doing it especially through his drawings. That’s become possible thanks to the hard-to-find book Kunio Kato Exhibition (加藤久仁生展), which is full of his artwork and insights. It’s helped us piece together a portrait of an artist’s development across time.

Now, here we go!