Finding New Visions: Yamamura Koji / Animation Artist

Yamamura Koji is the creator of numerous internationally acclaimed animated shorts; each of his films is groundbreaking in its own way. We spoke with Yamamura about his sources of inspiration.

Transcript

00:03

"Direct Talk"

00:10

Our guest today is animation artist Yamamura Koji.

00:17

Yamamura's vibrant, exquisite, and visionary animation

00:21

invites the viewer into unknown worlds

00:24

and has won widespread acclaim.

00:30

In June 2022,

00:32

his latest film won a major prize

00:35

at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.

00:42

Yamamura strives to break new ground in animation.

00:45

He shares his creative process and his sources of inspiration.

00:52

I put a lot of feeling, my emotions or what moves me

00:56

into each line that I draw on the page.

01:00

And they move around in front of me.

01:03

A completely different time and space comes into being.

01:08

It's fascinating.

01:10

I would say that's why I'm so obsessed with animation.

01:14

(Dozens of Norths)

01:21

The film that won at Annecy in June 2022 is called

01:26

"Dozens of Norths."

01:30

This was Yamamura's first feature-length animation.

01:34

It was released in 2021 after almost a decade of work.

01:42

The story features a man and a woman.

01:49

They snatch a quill from a sleeping man, and head north.

01:58

Their long journey weaves through all sorts of strange "norths."

02:04

(One judgement ruined everything for him.)

02:11

Throughout the film, aphoristic statements appear over the images,

02:16

creating a fable about the fear and suffering inherent to the human condition.

02:24

The genesis of the film was a series of cover illustrations

02:28

drawn by Yamamura for a literary magazine.

02:33

The way this all started,

02:35

the way I ended up doing this cover art,

02:39

was that it was the year after the Great East Japan Earthquake.

02:43

It had already been more than a year,

02:46

and I was living all the way in Tokyo,

02:48

but I still felt this persistent sense of dread.

02:52

When a huge event such as that occurs,

02:55

it brings society to a standstill.

02:58

And actually, when I was making "Dozens of Norths,"

03:01

the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

03:04

And it felt like the whole world was brought to a halt all over again.

03:11

Normal life became impossible.

03:14

And when that happens, we feel anxiety, we feel pain.

03:18

I didn't want to represent that sort of event in a realistic way,

03:23

but rather, my initial motivation

03:26

was to create a film about those feelings, those sensations.

03:31

I wanted to see if I could do it.

03:35

I think this is always true of my work,

03:37

that it's really based on what's happening in my life at the time that I make it.

03:44

Whatever is making life difficult, the circumstances of your life,

03:49

different conflicts, different traumas,

03:52

when something like that happens to you, how do you keep on living your life?

03:58

That was one question

04:00

that I always had in mind as I was making this film.

04:04

At the Annecy film festival,

04:07

"Dozens of Norths" won the Contrechamp category

04:10

which recognizes unique works that challenge the audience.

04:15

In summer 2022, for the first time after the victory at Annecy,

04:20

"Dozens of Norths" was screened at an international animation festival in Japan.

04:27

Images of the film play around inside my mind.

04:31

It's a rare experience, and I enjoyed it very much.

04:38

It visualizes the deepest parts of your mind.

04:43

It was really interesting.

04:50

One of Yamamura's goals with this film was to find creative freedom

04:54

not bound by a linear story.

04:59

Generally, when you talk about "story," there's an initial conflict,

05:04

a sequence of events, and then a result.

05:08

To do that, you have to include scenes that you didn't necessarily want to include

05:14

such as scenes that explain what's going on.

05:18

But my idea was that if you only include the truly important moments,

05:23

they could actually come together to create the story.

05:26

That's how I see it.

05:29

So the film is a collection of images and scenes

05:32

that I wanted to draw for whatever reason.

05:35

What was most important was my drive.

05:38

I didn't have all the answers,

05:40

but I didn't want to kill that inspiration by trying to mold it into a story.

05:49

This is Yamamura's studio in Tokyo.

05:55

He draws almost all of his art by hand and on his own.

06:01

This is a scene from the middle of "Dozens of Norths."

06:09

Typically, he draws about 12 frames for one second of animation.

06:15

A five or ten-minute short can take him over a year to produce.

06:23

But he believes this laborious process pays off.

06:29

Working by hand leaves room for serendipity.

06:33

When I make art digitally,

06:35

it's simply putting the image in my mind onto the screen.

06:39

But on paper, I'm creating as I'm thinking.

06:42

Maybe the ink bleeds, or this paint and that technique

06:45

combine in some interesting way.

06:48

It's a dialogue with my materials.

06:50

I'm always rediscovering things,

06:52

and I think that's what makes an analog approach so interesting to me.

07:00

Yamamura grew up loving manga.

07:03

Then he became fascinated by how the characters moved in anime.

07:07

He started doing his own animation in junior high.

07:12

Honestly, it just blew my mind.

07:15

I had been drawing manga, and with manga,

07:18

the finished product is just a collection of images.

07:22

But the first time I saw those images moving, projected on a screen,

07:28

it was like I was seeing my inner self projected outside of me.

07:34

The experience was utterly horrifying.

07:37

It's a very vivid memory for me, that intense feeling of shock.

07:43

Then, in high school,

07:45

Yamamura encountered more artistic animated shorts.

07:49

He saw how deep animation could go.

07:53

When you hear "animation," you typically think of cartoons.

07:57

But these pieces I saw were actual photographs that went frame by frame,

08:02

and maybe the makeup on the faces would change,

08:05

maybe it looked like they were flying.

08:07

There was no story, just these shifting visuals,

08:10

and you got drawn deeper and deeper into the world.

08:13

That was really eye-opening for me

08:15

that something like that was also considered animation.

08:21

It was totally different from the anime we had on TV

08:24

or in Japanese cinemas.

08:27

It changed my concept of what animation was.

08:30

That was a big turning point in the path that led me to where I am today.

08:37

Yamamura went on to art school where he began creating animated shorts.

08:43

After graduation, he started his professional career as an animator.

08:49

In terms of video art,

08:51

I think animation offers a degree of freedom.

08:55

Of course, you do plan things out.

08:58

But often enough, you notice something in the moment,

09:01

and that's fascinating.

09:04

It's this limitless technology for understanding the world and yourself.

09:11

Fifteen years out of art school,

09:13

Yamamura released perhaps his most famous film.

09:18

"Mt. Head."

09:24

The 2002 animated short "Mt. Head."

09:29

The main character is a miserly man.

09:35

After he eats some cherries that have fallen on the roadside, pits and all,

09:39

a cherry tree sprouts on the top of his head.

09:45

Spring comes and the tree blooms.

09:52

Large crowds come to picnic under the cherry blossoms.

10:02

The man's patience wears thin, and he rips out the tree.

10:11

But the hole left behind becomes a pond.

10:16

Now completely at the end of his rope,

10:18

the man drowns himself in the pond on his head.

10:27

This surreal tale is based on a "rakugo" story.

10:30

Yamamura's retelling became the first Japanese film ever nominated

10:34

for Best Animated Short at the Academy Awards.

10:40

There's this line in the original story that's so cryptic.

10:44

"He leapt into his head and died."

10:47

Most of all, I wanted to visualize that.

10:50

You enter yourself, infinitely.

10:53

You find yourself in a place so deep you can't reach.

10:59

A picture doesn't have to be real,

11:01

and I think the image that those words conjure up in the mind

11:05

is a good match for the imagination you can use to draw it.

11:11

I have doubts about things that are supposed to be common sense

11:16

such as the world that we exist in.

11:18

Can we really believe in our own existence?

11:23

I think at the heart of my work

11:25

is a desire to answer those questions.

11:33

Yamamura is working on a new film.

11:39

It will be a short based on a Japanese short story.

11:49

Yamamura aims to visualize Japanese characters in a new way.

11:56

He's considering how to animate the sound of a dying man.

12:02

I'm actually thinking about putting a lot of writing into the pictures.

12:06

I want to blur the line between letters and pictures,

12:10

to create a world where it's not clear which is which.

12:16

Like if I draw the Japanese letter "あ", you read it, you hear the sound,

12:21

and various meanings, images and emotions come into your mind.

12:26

When you draw a picture of a character, you also imagine different forms and meanings.

12:31

It's all just shapes on a flat surface.

12:36

On this current project, I've realized that I want letters and images to fuse,

12:41

to become exactly the same thing.

12:47

In addition to his own projects,

12:49

Yamamura is also mentoring the next generation of animators.

12:56

Here he is teaching a graduate-level class at the Tokyo University of the Arts.

13:05

They're critiquing short films that the students have produced.

13:11

This class has broadened my perspective on animation.

13:15

You can do so many different things.

13:17

It's incredible.

13:21

I want to broaden the students' horizons,

13:24

help them think of things they never would have otherwise,

13:27

put interesting work out into the world.

13:30

Taking that approach, I try to be as involved as I can.

13:35

If there's just one more good animation out there in the world, I'm happy.

13:41

Something we haven't seen before,

13:43

something that expands the possibilities of animation.

13:47

That's how this field of art I'm involved in

13:50

will develop and become richer.

13:54

(Do you have any words to live by?)

14:07

I can't say I have a motto I live by, so...

14:13

I drew this.

14:16

There's not a single saying that expresses how I see the world.

14:20

That's why I create.

14:23

You could read this as "zero," as "nothing."

14:26

Animation starts as nothing, a blank page.

14:31

In Zen, we call this kind of circle an "enso."

14:36

As a circle, it represents the self.

14:39

A kind of complete self.

14:42

But the circle isn't closed, so an incomplete self.

14:46

I always start thinking from zero.

14:49

So I thought this shape seemed appropriate.