Studio: Jiyū Eiga Kenkyūjo (Free Film Research Institute), Noburō Ōfuji
Short Synopsis
Son Gokū is the Japanese name of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of the Chinese novel Journey to the West, a trickster born from a stone who acquires magical powers, a staff that changes size and a cloud to ride on, and who, after rebelling against Heaven, is made to escort the monk Tripitaka on his pilgrimage to India. Ōfuji's short tells an episode of the Monkey King's adventures in his cut-paper manner, with the monkey, his companions and his demon enemies made of patterned chiyogami and moved against painted scenery, so that the fights and transformations of the legend become a dance of coloured paper. The film is held in Japanese archives and is seldom screened; detailed descriptions of which episode it covers are not in the sources used here, so the account is kept to the subject and the technique.
Why It Matters
- The Monkey King is the ideal subject for a paper animator: he changes shape, multiplies himself and flies, and the chiyogami figures, with their flat printed robes, suit a story that is already stylised. Ōfuji's film is the first Japanese animated treatment of a character who would return in Japanese animation again and again, from the wartime Princess Iron Fan dub to Dragon Ball.
- The film comes from Ōfuji's first productive year, 1926, when he released several cut-paper films in quick succession and established the method that made his name. It also belongs to the long Japanese appetite for Chinese classics, which animation shared with kabuki and the picture book.
Notes and Trivia
- The Monkey King had been a popular subject in Japanese illustration since the Edo period.
- Ōfuji later made a sound version of the Monkey King story in the 1930s.
- See also: Burglars of Baghdad Castle (1926), Monkey and the Crabs (1927).