Studio: Shōchiku Dōga Kenkyūsho (for the Japanese Navy Ministry)
Distributor: Shochiku
Short Synopsis
After finishing their naval training, a bear cub, a monkey, a pheasant and a puppy go home to say goodbye to their families in the countryside. The monkey's little brother, Santa, chases his brother's cap into a river and is swept towards a waterfall; the dog and monkey rescue him. Afterwards the monkey watches dandelion seeds drifting down over the fields, and the film dissolves from the seeds to paratroopers descending from the sky. Time has passed. On a Pacific island, Japanese forces clear the jungle and build an airbase, helped by the island's animals, who sing as they work. Momotaro arrives by plane as their commander, with the bear, monkey, dog and pheasant now officers. The officers teach the local animals the Japanese syllabary in a song, "AIUEO". A narration in shadow-puppet style tells how the Dutch East India Company took the island of Celebes. Then the paratroopers drop on a British fort, rout its unprepared defenders, and Momotaro forces the stammering British officers to surrender. In an epilogue, Santa and other children play at paratroopers, jumping onto a chalk outline of North America.
Why It Matters
- The animation is remarkably accomplished for a country at war and short of materials: the pastoral opening, the dandelion seeds turning into parachutes and the multiplane-style jungle scenes show a director trying to match Disney, whose Fantasia the Navy had shown Seo. The beauty sits uneasily with the film's purpose.
- It is the first Japanese feature-length animated film, commissioned by the Imperial Navy as propaganda to justify the war in Asia. Most prints were thought destroyed after the war; a negative was rediscovered in 1983. Osamu Tezuka, who saw it as a teenager, said it inspired him to become an animator.
Notes and Trivia
- It is a sequel to Seo's 37-minute Momotarō no Umiwashi (1943).
- Its depiction of the island's inhabitants as primitive and of the Japanese as their teachers mirrors the rhetoric of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
- See also: Education for Death (1943), The Dull Sword (1917).