Studio: Chiyogami Eigasha (Noburō Ōfuji)
Short Synopsis
An osekisho was a checkpoint on the highways of Edo-period Japan, where travellers had to show their papers and women in particular were closely examined. Ōfuji's short, made in his cut-paper manner, is a comedy of the barrier: travellers arrive at the checkpoint, the officials inspect them, and the usual tricks of the period comedy follow, with disguises, smuggled goods and a farcical examination, the figures in printed chiyogami kimonos moving against painted roads and gates. It is one of a group of films Ōfuji made in 1930 and 1931, with The Village Festival, Kokka Kimigayo and Spring Song, several of them set to recorded songs or music, as the Japanese cartoon moved toward sound. The film survives in the National Film Archive of Japan's collection; detailed scene descriptions are not in the sources used here.
Why It Matters
- The period setting is natural for Ōfuji's patterned-paper figures, whose kimonos are real printed textiles, and the checkpoint comedy, with its officious guards and resourceful travellers, is a stock of kabuki and the picture book turned into cartoon. The film shows his method at its most refined before his move to silhouettes.
- It belongs to the moment when Japanese animation adopted recorded sound, a year or two behind America; Ōfuji's films of 1930-31 used phonograph records synchronised to the picture, with Kokka Kimigayo, a setting of the national anthem, the best known. These films kept his small company alive through the depression years and led to his first talkie, Kuro Nyago, in 1931.
Notes and Trivia
- Ōfuji made at least three films in 1930; the National Film Archive of Japan lists Osekisho among the survivors.
- The checkpoint at Hakone was the most famous in Japan and the subject of many jokes about women travellers.
- See also: Burglars of Baghdad Castle (1926), The Story of the Monkey King (1926).