Ghibli trend: How anime has repeatedly overcome challenges that defined the times

This is far from the first hurdle the Japanese animation industry has faced. What is now popularly referred to as ‘anime’ is, in many ways, a product of its challenges. It overcame the mundane pressures of limited budgets and a lack of technical prowess in its early days, and endured natural disasters. The genre even played an important role in Imperial Japan’s propaganda machine.

Here is a look at the conflicts that defined the origins of anime as we know it today.

Early legacies that outlived the actual work

Seitaro Kitayama, Jun’ichi Kōuchi and Oten Shimowaka are widely considered the “fathers of anime”, even though a handful of animated works that have been unearthed predate them. The trio drew inspiration from Western cartoons. Kōuchi’s Namakura Gatana (“The Dull Sword”), Shimokawa’s Imokawa Mukuzō Genkanban no Maki (“The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa”), and Kitoyama’s Sarukani Gassen (“A Battle of a Monkey and a Crab”), all released in the first half of 1917, ushering in an appetite for animation in Japan.

The mammoth “The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917” by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy sheds some light on the innovative lengths these early pioneers went to make these early works. Shimokawa used the “chalkboard” method, “pointing a camera directly at a blackboard and then erasing and re-drawing one frame at a time in order to create animation,” according to the encyclopedia.

For a time, however, the reputations of these artists outlived their work. Copies of Kōuchi’s and Shimokawa’s works were thought to be extinct until they were unearthed in 2008. As of today, no surviving copies of Sarukani Gassen have been found. According to Clements and McCarthy, very few prints of these animations were made in the first place. They noted, “The main culprit, however, is the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the subsequent fires that destroyed much of Tokyo, including almost all early anime materials”.

Furthering the imperial regime’s propaganda effort

Despite the devastation, anime continued to grow in the following decades. The scope of anime expanded as creators ventured into different genres. The first ‘talkie’ anime was produced in 1930 (Noburo Ofuji’s 90-second-long Kuro Nyugo). The first sports anime was made during this same period, and has since grown to become one of the most popular sub-genres today.

However, the 1930s would see the animation industry co-opted by the Japanese imperial government of the time. While this resulted in a wide distribution of films, their narratives and themes reflected imperial interests. The Sino-Japanese war with China and the League of Nations’ condemnation of Japan’s expansionist efforts were reflected in films like Takao Nakano’s Kuroneko Banzai (Black Cat Banzai) in 1933. According to Clements and McCarthy, the film depicts “a peaceful parade of toys is disrupted by a fleet of flying bat-bombers, each ridden by a clone of Mickey Mouse”. Similarly, Ofuji’s Sora no Arawashi (Aerial Ace), “featured another pilot fighting giant clouds in the shape of popeye and Stalin — foreign influences were no longer welcome”.

World War II saw the Japanese government double down on propaganda efforts in several movies. These included Momotaro’s Sea Eagles in 1943, which told a tale “of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in fairy tale form”. Its sequel, Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, was the first feature-length animated film produced in Japan and aired mere months before the United States forced Japan’s surrender after dropping the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Post WWII: Japan’s first animation studio

After the war ended, the shackles on the Japanese animation industry changed owners from the imperial government’s propaganda machine to the Allied forces. In an essay for Nippon.com, veteran anime director Yamaguchi Yasuo wrote, “…the General Headquarters of the Allied occupation (GHQ) brought together 100 anime artists in the bombed-out ruins of Tokyo to form the Shin Nihon Dōgasha, or New Japan Animation Company. The aim was to make it easier to spread occupation policies by having the artists produce anime in praise of democracy”.

Though western animation techniques and influences would help Japanese animation grow in a post-war environment, it was decidedly on the terms of Japanese animators. They did not take kindly to having narratives and messages dictated to them by a new authority with deeper motives. Yasuo wrote, “…many of the artists were fiercely independent and territorial, and the company was riven by disagreements from the outset. The project strayed off course, and eventually disbanded. Even GHQ threw in the towel”.

One such artist was filmmaker and president of the Tōei film company, Ōkawa Hiroshi. He was inspired by Disney’s Snow White (1937) and founded the Tōei Dōga, today Tōei Animation, in 1956. The studio has continued to be an industry leader to this day.

Ōkawa invited several Western animators. The studio soon mastered Disney’s “assembly line production” method of animation, where several specialised teams were created to handle different aspects of the animation process, such as character design and background art.

While Tōei broke fresh ground in animation, it was not immune to the problems plaguing a still recovering nation, specifically labour disputes. Labour policy expert Prof. Hiroyuki Fujimura wrote for the Japan Labour Review in 2012, “The period from the latter half of the 1940s through to the 1950s was one of complete conflict between labor and management.” Thus, a strong labour union movement took shape.

Takahata Isao and Hayao Miyazaki, who began their careers at the Tōei Dōga, were actively involved with the labour movement, with “Takahata serving as vice-chairman and Miyazaki as secretary-general”, of the labour union, according to Yasuo. However, a different malcontent would come to define the future of animation in Japan.

Astro Boy and the beginning of “Japanimation”

Manga artist Osamu Tezuka (not to be confused with the late CEO of Tōei) had already achieved national acclaim for the comic series Tetsuwan Atom, also known as Astro Boy. In the late 1950s, Tezuka was brought on by Tōei to direct the film Saiyuki, though the relationship between them quickly soured. Tōei flagged Tezuka’s delays in providing the storyboard for the film, while the latter blamed Tōei for creative constraints. Though Tezuka is credited as the director of the movie, he reportedly later said the only time he was in the studio for production was to pose for publicity photos.

However, Tezuka realised the potential of animation and founded Mushi Studios in 1961 and produced Japan’s first TV animated series, Astro Boy, which began airing in 1963. Astro Boy told the story of a robot in the form of a young boy, powered by a nuclear reactor and granted destructive capabilities. However, the young “Atom” also possessed the ability to express human emotion. In what is perhaps a full-circle moment for Japanese animation after the conflict-driven films produced during the war, the first episode of Astro Boy was titled “Astro Boy Plays the Role of Ambassador”.

Throughout the show’s run, Atom’s main desire is to foster peace between robots, humans, and eventually aliens. The resounding success and popularity of the series also resulted in real-life bridges being built, with Astro Boy becoming the first Japanese animation to be dubbed in English and aired for Western audiences in the same year it began airing.