In The '70s, Japanese director and puppet artist Kihachirō Kawamoto (1925-2010) created several Stop Motion short films. They are mostly based on Japanese Mythology and also take inspiration from the country's traditional forms of theatre — Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku puppet theatre.
2003's Winter Days, also directed by Kawamoto, includes some stop motion segments.
open/close all folders
In General
- Kabuki Sounds: The use of shinobue and nohkan flutes on the soundtracks are highly reminiscent of Kabuki Theatre.
- Stop Motion: The form of animation that was used to make these shorts, using puppets.
- Tragedy: Both Dōjō-ji Temple and House of Flames are about events with tragic consequences triggered by love/attraction.
Oni / The Demon
In this 1972 short, two brothers go hunting with their bows, leaving their old mother at home. While hunting, one of them, who climbed in a tree, is attacked by a humanoid demon.
Tropes in this short:
- An Arm and a Leg: One of the brothers cuts off the hand of the oni to stop it from grabbing the other brother by the hair, using a Trick Arrow. As it turns out, it's their own mother's hand he cut off, as she can turn into a oni.
- Evil Old Folks: The old mother can turn into a oni to torment the brothers.
- Oni: The Japanese folklore demon who attacks one of the brothers. It turns out their own mother is one.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: While stalking the brothers, the oni is only seen as a dark shadow with red eyes.
- The Reveal: When the brothers rush back home with the cut off hand, they open the house's door and find their mother writhing with a missing hand and blood around her, then she turns her now-changed face in their direction — it turns out she is the demon.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: The short's chord instrument soundtrack takes a more alarming tone when the demon grabs one of the brothers' hair.
- Trick Arrow: The brother who's not attacked shoots an arrow with a sharp tip in "V" with enough force to cut the oni's hand off.
Dōjō-ji Temple
Dōjō-ji Temple (1976) depicts the legend of Kiyohime
, a woman who falls madly in love with a young Buddhist monk named Anchin, who was on his way to the Dōjō-ji temple for a pilgrimage and refuses her advances when she houses him and an older monk. It ends rather tragically.
Tropes in this short:
- Breath Weapon: In dragon form, Kiyohime can breathe fire.
- Cooked to Death: At Dōjō-ji Temple, Anchin is hidden under the bell of the temple's courtyard. Then, when Kiyohime (in dragon form) crashes in, she smells his presence, envelops the bell with her dragon body and starts breathing fire all over, then leaves to kill herself. Once the temple's monks lift the bell, they find out Anchin has been reduced to a skeleton, which then crumbles into dust with the wind.
- Downer Ending: Anchin ends up cooked alive in the bell, and Kiyohime commits suicide.
- Hulking Out: Kiyohime's anger at being rejected turns her into a dragon.
- If I Can't Have You…: Kiyohime (in dragon form) ends up killing Anchin out of the mad unrequited love she has for him. Then she kills herself.
- Imagine Spot: After waking Anchin up, Kiyohime has visions of him and her loving each other under Cherry Blossoms.
- Implacable Woman: Nothing can stop Kiyohime once she's after Anchin.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Kiyohime's crush on Anchin makes her crazy, to the point of Hulking Out as a dragon and killing him.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: After catching up with Anchin, Kiyohime looks at a reflection of herself in a river, and sees a oni instead of herself.
- Not Good with Rejection: Kiyohime, to say the least. She doesn't take Anchin's rejection well, keeps running after him, turns into a dragon, and eventually kills him.
- Reduced to Dust: When the temple's monks lift the bell after dragon Kiyohime's passage, they find out Anchin has been reduced to a skeleton, which then crumbles into dust with the wind.
- Sexy Priest: Anchin is handsome, which ends up causing his doom with Kiyohime's attraction to him.
- Stalker with a Crush: Kiyohime, towards Anchin. She even watches him sleep.
- Weredragon: Kiyohime turns into a dragon.
- Yandere: Kiyohime is dangerously obsessive about Anchin.
House of Flames
In this 1979 short, a solitary monk recounts the story of Unai-Otome, a beautiful and pure Buddhist maid who lived 500 years ago and had two suitors, a poet and a warrior.
Tropes in this short:
- Cock Fight: Both the poet and the warrior want the hand of Unai-Otome, and try to solve the matter with an archery contest, shooting at two mandarin ducks (which are traditionally considered as "birds of love" in Japan) on the Ikuta river. Both shoot an arrow at the same duck, killing it.
- Divine Punishment: Unai-Otome's soul ended up shut in a house surrounded by purgatory flames with iron ducks with searing bills tearing at her brain for 500 years. The narrator wonders what kind of sin she committed to end up like that.
- Driven to Suicide: Unai-Otome lets herself die in the river after the poet and the warrior kill a bird of love.
- Grave-Marking Scene: The poet and the warrior seem to reconcile at the burial mound of Unai-Otome... only to stab each other to death.
- Love Triangle: Both the poet and the warrior are in love with Unai-Otome, who can't bring herself to choose between them.
- Mutual Kill: The poet and the warrior stab each other to death with daggers following Unai-Otome's death.
- Nice Girl: Unai-Otome doesn't have the heart to choose a suitor between the two, because it will inevitably cause pain to the rejected one.
- No Escape but Down: In order to escape eternal torture in the House of Flames, Unai-Otome's soul's jumps in the nearby sea.
- Title Drop: The narrator mentions that Unai-Otome's soul ended up shut in a house of flames".
