Winter Days

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Winter Days

Film Poster
Directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto
Written by Matsuo Bashō
Release date(s) 2003 (Japan)
Running time 105 min. (40 min. animation)
Country Japan
Language Japanese
IMDb profile

Winter Days (冬の日 Fuyu no Hi?) is a 2003 animated film, directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based on one of the renku (collaborative linked poems) in the collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō.

The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material – the visuals for each of the 36 stanzas were independently created by 35 different animators. As well as many Japanese animators, Kawamoto assembled leading names of animation from across the world. Each animator was asked to contribute at least 30 seconds to illustrate their stanza, and most of the sequences are under a minute (Yuriy Norshteyn's, though, is nearly two minutes long).

The released film consists of the 40-minute animation, followed by an hour-long 'Making of' documentary, including interviews with the animators. Winter Days won the Grand Prize of the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2003.


Contents

[edit] The Poem[1]

# Verse Poet
Sheet 1 Side 1 - jo (introduction)
1 Crazy ku:
in this tree-withering wind
it’s Chikusai
that I resemble!		 Bashō
2 who is that, his rain hat sprayed
with sasanqua petals?		 Yasui
3 getting the Master
of the Crack of Dawn
to build a brewery		 Kakei
4 a chestnut pack-horse
shakes dew from off its mane		 Jūgo
5 the narrow grass
of Korea,
its colourlessness		 Tokoku
6 harvesting rice in the fields
beneath diffracted sunlight		 Shōhei
Sheet 1 Side 2 - ha (intensification)
7 my thatched hut
that’s where I let
the heron stay		 Yasui
8 I can only hide while waiting
for my hair to grow again		 Bashō
9 “the agony of illusion”
she says, wringing out
her breasts		 Jūgo
10 at the fresh grave-marker
weeping dejectedly		 Kakei
11 in the cold of daybreak
a silhouette
kindling a fire		 Bashō
12 the master has vanished in poverty
from the empty house		 Tokoku
13 in the rice fields
it’s time for the harlot willow
to drop her leaves		 Kakei
14 a man pulling a boat
through the mist, is he lame?		 Yasui
15 at twilight
gazing asquint
at the narrow moon		 Tokoku
16 she retires from court to a street
full of gossiping neighbours		 Jūgo
17 asking the second nun
about the blossoms at their peak
in the palace grounds		 Yasui
18 she wipes her nose, saying only
“butterflies in the burweed…”		 Bashō
Sheet 2 Side 1 - ha (intensification)
19 someone appears
but faintly behind the screen
of a palanquin		 Jūgo
20 “Now!” he cries, letting shoot
a spiteful arrow		 Kakei
21 a monument
to a highwayman, this pine
sundered by the wind		 Bashō
22 for a while anyway
the spring was called after Sōgi		 Tokoku
23 overdoing it
he even takes off his hat
to drench in northern drizzle!		 Kakei
24 parting the winter grasses
a lone endive		 Yasui
25 broken white fragments…
are they human bones
or what?		 Tokoku
26 cuttlefish to tell one's fortune
in the land of savages		 Jūgo
27 unable to resolve
the mystery of grief
a cuckoo		 Yasui
28 an urnful of autumn water
exhausted in the night		 Bashō
29 moon viewing
at the temple dwelling
of Japan’s Li Po		 Jūgo
30 the lute player sticks
some Rose of Sharon in his hood		 Kakei
Sheet 2 Side 2 - kyū (rapid finale)
31 in the grass at dusk
obeisance to the carcass
of a cow		 Bashō
32 baskets of shad
carried on the head		 Tokoku
33 my prayer
to the morning star
that I might fall pregnant		 Kakei
34 going to the little sister’s
eyebrow ceremony today		 Yasui
35 with silken tissue
filtering out blossoms of Shiga
from the bath		 Tokoku
36 the corridor under the shade
of wisteria		 Jūgo

Translation by Yumegusa

[edit] The Animated segments

The sequences and animators are listed in order of appearance.

# Animator Length
(sec)		 Type Country Notes
1 Yuriy Norshteyn 110 cut-out Russia Norshteyn animated the opening stanza (hokku) as the special guest (kyaku). Chikusai is running around listening to trees, and meets Bashō. He's awed, but is amused to see that Bashō is picking bugs out of a cloak that is as torn as his own. He gives Bashō his own hat in exchange for Bashō's (which has a gaping hole at the top) and goes away. Suddenly, the wind picks up and blows the torn hat away. Chikusai chases after it and manages to catch it, but then with a shrug lets it go and allows it to fly off wherever the wind will take it. Meanwhile, Bashō is moving slowly and laboriously against the wind, with a hand on his new hat to keep it from flying away.
2 Kihachirō Kawamoto 52 puppet Japan Kawamoto animated the second (waki) and final (ageku) stanzas as the organiser (shōshō).
3 Fumio Oi 44 CGI
4 Tatsutoshi Nomura 48 cel
5 Shinichi Suzuki 51 cel
6 Haru Fukushima 47 vector animation
7 Tatsuya Ishida
8 Raoul Servais Belgium
9 Noriko Morita
10 Tatsuo Shimamura
11 Yōichi Kotabe & Reiko Okuyama Japan
12 Aleksandr Petrov paint-on-glass Russia
13 Maya Yonesho
14 Yoji Kuri
15 Uruma Delvi
16 Seiichi Hayashi Japan
17 Azuru Isshiki
18 Břetislav Pojar Canada,
Czech Republic
19 Katsushi Boda
20 Masahiro Katayama
21 Mark Baker UK
22 Yuichi Ito
23 Keita Kurosaka
24 Reiko Yokosuka
25 Yuko Asano
26 I.K.I.F.
27 Bairong Wang
28 Isao Takahata Japan
29 Nori Hikone
30 Masaaki Mori
31 Taku Furukawa
32 Co Hoedeman Canada,
Netherlands
33 Jacques Drouin pinscreen Canada
34 Fusako Yusaki
35 Kōji Yamamura 40 Japan
36 Kihachirō Kawamoto puppet

[edit] DVD releases

The film is currently available on three DVD versions, none of which have English dubbing or subtitles.

  • Regular Japanese release, November 22, 2003 (R2, NTSC). Contains original film (40+65 min), no subtitles.
  • "Complete Box" Japanese release, November 22, 2003 (R2, NTSC). Contains film + eight additional DVDs with making-of featurettes (total: 945 mins). No subtitles.
  • Korean "RABA Animation" release, February 7, 2006 (R3, NTSC). Contains Korean subtitles; otherwise, identical to "regular" Japanese release in all but the the region encoding and price.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Original poem text (Japanese)

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Works of Yuriy Norshteyn
Director/Co-director
25th October, the First Day (1968) • The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971) • The Fox and the Hare (1973) • The Heron and the Crane (1974) • Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) • Tale of Tales (1979) • Winter Days (2003, segment) • The Overcoat (????)
Animator (selected films)
Lefty (1964) • Go There, Don't Know Where (1966) • Times of the Year (1969) • Cheburashka (1972) • Shapoklyak (1974) • 38 Parrots (1976) • Autumn (1982) • The Book of the Dead (2005)
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