Director: Kihachiro Kawamoto
Based on a novel by Shinobu Origuchi
Voice Cast: Kyôko Kishida as the Narrator; Tetsuko Kuroyanagi as the Story Teller; Rie Miyazawa as Iratsume of Fujiwara
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
A new fangled wall would bring curses upon your sons!
A film I had always wanted to see, this is a curveball in that this is a stop motion puppet work, stepping outside the confines of hand drawn animation, and focusing on a figure of high regard in puppet and stop motion filmmaking. Kihachirō Kawamoto is sadly a figure not as widely known, and for me only in passing knowledge, among the string of widely acclaimed international animation directors who sadly seem cut off from wider accessibility. This is prominent in that Yuri Norstein, a legendary Russian animation director behind the likes of Tale of Tales (1979), worked on this project as a guest collaborator.
The Book of the Dead itself would defy categorisation, something which would tragically go against being able to sell it to many. It is not a horror tale, yet it is explicitly about the supernatural. It is also religious as it tells the legend of Chūjō-hime (called "Iratsume" here), the daughter of an imperial minister whose obsession with copying Buddhist mandalas, in a time period when Buddhism was first introduced to Japan historically, will eventually lead to her creating the Taima Mandala. The Mandala, reproduced in this tale, is a real artefact in Japan, part of their own version of Buddhism. In spite of being a sacred object depiction the "pure land" of Buddha, this Mandala in this tale is ironically crafted out of love for another.
This is where The Book of the Dead takes an interesting side, a beautiful film to look at in terms of a well crafted tale told entirely by puppets, even to the point of full locations which, lovingly, have panoramic camera shots overlooking the setting. The film could be considered "dry", if only in the sense that, be you anime fan or film fan expecting a fast pace supernatural story, you are instead watching a sombre and matter-of-fact folktale which, even over just an hour or so, is restrained. It is entirely about a point in Japanese culture where it was first being influenced by Buddhism, and its simple tale has a lot of cultural details specific to the time to adapt to, such as the fact that, when she first sees the visage of a sacred figure who capture her heart, Iratsume transgresses the rule that women are not allowed in the temple ground where that figure looms. What is fascinating is that, for a narrative told of how a real piece of art of such sacredness came to be, this film is as much about the emotions of its creator. A woven cultural object that (even if having sadly degraded over the eras) has still been preserved in real life, and is of great importance in Japan, this film tells the tale of it being the craft of a young woman, a young maiden, smitten by a godlike figure and makes that fact as profound. Specifically a nobleman, as told to her by an old woman, killed and whose ghost still haunts the land.
For me personally, this tale as told here is captivating. The lack of any "thrills", that his haunting is not to possess her, but are explicitly about wishing to have a child he never had alive, is as rewarding, especially as the course of the narrative instead has her create a clock to wrap his giant beautiful naked form, a cloth that turns into a Mandala of great artistic and spiritual worth, her act of love subversive in itself. A playfulness spans the calm mood of the film, of the dangers of angering spirits of old houses if you include new wall refurbishments, something to learn from in the modern day, or that we encounter a group of gods by a haunted tree briefly, fifty years later returning to the land and feeling old now. A lot in this film, for a story which is as much a tribute to Buddhist ideals, is also fascinating to see as a very human tale of love, including Iratsume's own reaction to her masterwork in the finale, more so as this is told with puppets rather than live action actors. That the ghostly figure she comes to adore is a fictionalised version of a real figure, a poet and a son to an Emperor Tenmu called Prince Ōtsu, continues this film being as much looking to real Japanese history and artistic culture and bringing it alive again.
It would be a disservice, at the moment of writing those words, to not mention this is an adaptation of a novel Shisha no sho by Shinobu Orikuchi, a figure whose reputation in study and writings in countless fields, from Japanese folklore to performing arts to the Japanese language itself, is in itself a nod to what the intention of writing such a work was meant at, his own career and life devoted to looking at his own culture and bringing it in full vibrancy. Likewise, The Book of the Dead itself as an animation does feel like production meant to bring culture alive onscreen, with Orikuchi as much as Kihachirō Kawamoto himself figures in their homeland who have contributed so much for a lasting legacy in looking at their heritage. In terms of the film itself, there are many moments where, beyond itself simple tale, Kawamoto's adapted material has its own idiosyncratic touches which you could easily miss. It is a very deceptively unconventional narrative, a romantic narrative by a living young woman and a figure that wakes up in his tomb dead which blurs the living and the dead, and is entirely a passive romance. That this leads to a creation of a masterpiece, in her love for him which involves painstaking work of her own, is befittingly being adapted too by an animation director, bringing his characters alive with puppets alongside a team of animators.
