Tag: Mitsuyo Seo

May 6, 2021 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. In one of the most widely discussed scenes in Mitsuyo Seo’s 1945 animated feature Momotaro, Sacred Sailors, the frenzied activity of building a South-Sea military base grinds to a halt for the animal soldiers to teach Japanese to the natives. An unruly outdoor classroom of apes, tigers and even a somewhat out-of-place […]

March 9, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. Momotaro, Sacred Sailors, a bizarre piece of wartime propaganda targeted at children, coming to UK Blu-ray over 70 years since its original theatrical release in April 1945. Sacred Sailors is a monumental work in the evolution of Japanese animation, and a testament to the dark days of modern history, funded by the […]

April 9, 2017 · 1 comment

By Jasper Sharp. At the end of February, the National Film Center of Tokyo opened its ‘Japanese Animated Film Classics’ online archive to celebrate this year’s centenary of Japanese animation. The site, which features 64 films from the pre-war and wartime period, features many films with English subtitles. It is a wonderful initiative from the […]

September 19, 2016 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Japan’s first animated feature was a masterpiece of propaganda film-making, uncompromising in the bile it directed at the enemy, romantic in its evocation of home and hearth and of imperial Japan’s Pan-Asian aspirations, and still unsettling today in its depiction of the mindset of the Japanese military. Its survival to reach modern […]