Hokusai to Hara: Ukiyo-e to Anime

Looking back…

Anton: I came to study woodblock prints and thought I’d do my research in a museum. But one contact led to another and I ended up doing line drawing work at a manga publisher. Suddenly all those hours studying contours and negative space became unexpectedly useful. 
Arisa: Are ukiyo-e and manga different completely art forms? 
Anton: Different tools, same family resemblance. Ukiyo-e artists had to communicate movement, emotion, weather, personality, all with line. Manga inherited that confidence in line. Selecting which lines matter and leaving the rest out. 
Arisa: So manga is a descendant of ukiyo-e? 
Anton: I’d say so. There’s sequential storytelling, expressive faces, stylised motion, dramatic composition. Even the economy of line. Manga modernised it.
Arisa: So where does anime fit? If ukiyo-e becomes manga… does manga become anime? 
Anton: Often, yes. Anime takes manga’s drawn language and adds movement, sound, rhythm, timing. But there’s another interesting loop: sometimes anime reaches back into older Japanese art traditions. 

Hara Keiichi: Miss Hokusai

Arisa: Any recommendations? 
Anton: Well, the anime film Miss Hokusai. It takes the world and artwork of ukiyo-e artist Hokusai Katsushika telling the story through anime. Set in Tokyo’s Edo era. Feels modern and historical at the same time. Director was Hara Keiichi.
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Voice-over
Manga and anime are not for everyone. There have always been fans and detractors. But there’s something about the economy of lines in a woodblock print, a manga page, or animation frames, when lines express the essence of the story.

Japanese film: Miss Hokusai

After Miss Hokusai…

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Laurent: I know some artists and they are…

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Ursula: Different?

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Laurent: Hmm, they often don’t say much, liking to appear mist-wreathed. Talk too much, the aura fades.

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Ursula: I know, the lustre rusts.

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Laurent: They can be enigmatic and speak in epithets. If they gesture, it’s quick and dismissive.

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Ursula: Artists simplify, and ukiyoe was an ultimate simplicity.

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O-Ei itinerant

Laurent: So it was with O-Ei apparently, as Hara had it her appear that is.

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Ursula: Then after her father died, it’s said she became itinerant. Seeking a simple life. “With two brushes and our chopsticks, we can live anywhere.”

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Laurent: The father dies, and the child grows stronger? But in this case, it seems she rather vanished.

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Voice-over

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Sometimes not being there precipitates something serendipitous. Keiichi Hara himself vanished for some months in production, worried about doing justice to Sugiura's Sarusuberi, and causing some creative dilemmas, ultimately well-solved by disciples.

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