animation-appreciation-education:
桃太郎 海の神兵 (Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors)
22 in x of animated feature film history
Release: Apr. 12, 1945
Country: Japan
Director: Mitsuyo Seo“Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors is the first Japanese feature-length animated film. It was directed by Mitsuyo Seo, who was ordered to make a propaganda film for World War II by the Japanese Naval Ministry.
What plot exists is very loose and falls into three parts that are related only through shared characters. In the first part, Momotaro and his sailor friends are on leave and visiting their families. In the second part, Japanese naval forces take over a tropical island where they are welcomed by the natives, who are represented by exotic species of animals; the sailors build an airbase and take time to teach the locals their language and culture. In the third part of the film, the Japanese invade islands in Southeast Asia from the air, and Momotaro forces the British overlords there to relinquish control.
The name ‘Momotaro,’ which translates to ‘peach boy,’ is a popular hero from Japanese folklore. According to the present form of the tale (dating to the Edo period), Momotarō came to Earth inside a giant peach, which was found floating down a river by an old, childless woman who was washing clothes there. The child explained that he had been sent by Heaven to be the couple’s son. Years later, Momotarō left his parents to fight a band of marauding oni (demons or ogres) on a distant island. En route, Momotarō met and befriended a talking dog, monkey, and pheasant, who agreed to help him in his quest. At the island, Momotarō and his animal friends penetrated the demons’ fort and beat the band of demons into surrendering. Momotarō and his new friends returned home with the demons’ plundered treasure and the demon chief as a captive. Momotarō and his family lived comfortably from then on.
In this film, Momotaro is depicted as a Japanese general, and his soldiers include a monkey, dog, and pheasant.
The Naval Ministry had previously showed Mitsuyo Seo Fantasia, a 1940 Disney film. Inspired by this, Seo tried to give dreams to children, as well as to instill the hope for peace, just as he did in the 37-minute prequel movie, Momotaro’s Sea Eagles. This film was a dramatized version of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
The film plays hard and fast with the history and geography of Southeast Asia and its colonization by Europeans. Most likely the islands ‘freed’ by Japan in the third part of the film aren’t a specific reference to Singapore but representative for eastern Asia and the western Pacific region. At the end of the film various small animals practice parachute-jumping onto a map of North America; the implied message is that Japanese domination of the entire Pacific region and beyond is the next step. Given that when the film was released, Japan had already been retreating from US-led forces for two years––and the country was in dire economic as well as military straits––the message is ‘desperate and shrill.’
Osamu Tezuka, the father of Japanese manga and a later anime artist himself (Kimba the White Lion), said he was so impressed with the film as a teenager that he wanted to become an animator for a time.
For a long time, the film was presumed to have been confiscated and burnt by the American occupation. However, a negative copy of the film was found in Shochiku’s Ofuna warehouse in 1983 and was re-released in 1984. A reproduced movie was later screened and the VHS package is now available in Japan.”
Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors is available on YouTube with English subtitles.