Kuroi kikori to shiroi kikori

I had never heard of this short Japanese animated film before seeing it at a surprise screening at the Suginami Animation Museum in Tokyo. The title translates as "The Black Woodcutter and the White Woodcutter" and the film is approximately 15 minutes long. It offers fluid cell animation, in color, and its lush visuals and detailed backgrounds look forward to some of the early color animated features produced by Japan's pioneering animation studio, Toei Animation, five of which were directed by this film's director, Taiji Yabushita, including HAKUJADEN (PANDA AND THE MAGIC SERPENT), SHONEN SARUTOBI SASUKE (MAGIC BOY), SAIYUKI (ALAKAZAM THE GREAT), and ANJU TO ZUSHIOMARU (THE LITTLEST WARRIOR). The film is centered around an anthropomorphized animal trio, consisting of a bear, a fox and a squirrel, and their attempts to find warm shelter and food at remote cabins during a raging snowstorm in a thick forest. The simple story illustrates their encounters with the devious "black" woodcutter, who brandishes a gun, and the kindly "white" woodcutter, who welcomes them into his humble cabin. The different reactions of the woodcutters affect what happens to each of them later when a "snow queen"-type character courses through the forest seeking to freeze everything and everybody.

It's presumably based on an old folk tale, although I couldn't tell you whether its origin is European, Russian, Japanese or that of another culture. There's no dialogue, so it needed no translation. The animal characters walk on two feet and move like human beings. Their animated motions lead me to believe they were rotoscoped (animation traced from live-action footage, in which actors or models are filmed performing the actions that will be animated). I was reminded of various Russian animated color shorts from the early 1950s, including "The Fisherman and the Goldfish" (1950) and "The Golden Antelope" (1954), the latter directed by Lev Atamanov, who went on to direct the influential animated feature, THE SNOW QUEEN (1957). "Kuroi Kikori to Shiroi Kikori" is quite a beautiful piece and I daresay it proved to be excellent training for the features Yabushita would undertake just two years later. I'm so glad I got the rare opportunity to see it. If you're ever in Tokyo, visit the Suginami Animation Museum. It's a treasure trove for anime buffs.