Hisaaki Ezu interview: About "MIDORI"
-MIDORI is mostly a still picture picture storytelling, but what exactly is your role?
H: (In the article, he is listed as Hisaaki Ezu throughout)
The script for MIDORI starts with the idea that "somewhere in Japan, the audience receives information about Kiryukan."
How do the audience think for themselves within their preconceived notions and make it to the theater?
My role is to manipulate the information and imprint my message on the audience.
The information society is giving birth to many cynical people, and the establishment is doing more and more subliminal projections to citizens every year.
I think this method (MIDORI's direction this time) is the only way to legally or semi-legally destroy such distorted daily life.
Nowadays, it is difficult for civic groups to spread their movements using traditional organizing and past methodologies alone.
For example, we need to think about how to get young people who hang out in Shibuya to vote.
But in this day and age, if you just make a statement with words, it will be rejected by young people.
So, my way of doing things is to symbolize the embodiment of emotions in entertainment-oriented anime and indirectly appeal to them.
That's why I make unhealthy, deviant people appear in my anime.
The European Renaissance and the origins of Japanese commercial theater and film were very experimental and adventurous, but now everyone just copies the person next to them and does the same thing.
So no matter what happens in the Diet, most people are indifferent, and remain content in the pseudo-space and collective illusion of everyday life.
The field of creativity, which is the most flexible, is what we need to teach children as the cutting edge.
Currently the media only emphasizes beauty of appearance and looks.Anime also only features good-looking characters. I think that's why it's no good.
In the past, freak shows that toured the local area served children well, making up for what schools didn't teach them.
Anti-social, unusual, heretical...only when these things are accepted can a person's sense of self and choice be established.
But now, the experimentation has been lost from culture, and we are only repeating safe and harmonious practices. If that continues, there will be no place for children.
-So that's why you made it into a cel animation for children?
H :
Actually, Edo Utsushi-e (江戸写し絵 *1) was my ideal. (*1 A manual animation using a magic lantern that appeared in Edo in the 1800s.)
But I had doubts about the closed commercial animation industry today, and I wanted to try to revitalize the industry in a free way, so I used the same cel animation as the animation industry.
It's the same cel animation, but the content is the polar opposite of commercial animation. It was also an antithesis to the closed nature of commercial movies, commercial theater, and commercial music.
I also sympathized with the political ideology in Doji Morita(森田童子)'s songs. (Douji Morita wrote songs about the student movement of the 1970s).
So it's also a homage to Yoshiharu Tsuge(つげ義春)'s Gentou gekiga(幻燈劇画/magic lantern comics), which were shown at Doji Morita's concerts.
I went to Daisan Sozosha (第3創造社 / Doji Morita's manager and the creator of Yoshiharu Tsuge's magic lantern comics) (before I made MIDORI) to ask for advice on the methodology of underground animation.
At that time, Doji Morita's manager told me, "I want to have a live element, like drawing the animation at the same time as screening it at the screening venue." (After Doji Morita's death, it was discovered that that manager, Maeda-san, was her common-law husband.)
Also, Nagisa Oshima's film gekiga(フィルム劇画) "Ninja Bugei Cho" and Eiichi Yamamoto's "Belladonna of Sadness" were good too.
I think what's important is solid technique and thought, rather than budget.
I don't like repeating the same old methods or safe, predictable methods.
I like the sudden troubles and tension of old live TV broadcasts and breaking news.
I think that ticket quotas (*1) that rely on people involved are ruining independent films and theater.
(*1 In Japan, it is common for independent film, theater, and music performances to impose ticket sales quotas on actors and staff in order to avoid going into the red or to attract customers. Kiryukan has never imposed ticket quotas on staff or performers.)
We need to devise ways to make the audience want to watch of their own accord, rather than being solicited by people involved.
At "MIDORI," I want the audience to encounter one unexpected happening after another on the day of the show.
I want to stage this in a planned way from the pre-show promotion stage.
"MIDORI" starts from that part.
Once, at the outdoor theater of a small theater company called Zigeuner Koubou, I saw the auditorium suddenly shake violently during a play, split in two, and a real giant sailing ship rise into the sky. This information was not disclosed to the audience beforehand, so the impact of suddenly encountering it was strong.
- "At the first performance of Akanekoza at Kiryukan (May 1992), the audience was not given any specific information about what they would be doing in the promotion stage.
The audience, who obtained information independently, gathered at the shrine at a time of their choosing and encountered a number of different scenes and performances with a completely blank slate. It was a simultaneous performance that made use of the scenery and environmental noise of the shrine.
The Akanekoza was located in a corner of the shrine, and "MIDORI" was just one of the performances. A live-action video of maggots was also shown on a three-sided multi-screen.
H:
I like minimalist and secretive underground theaters.
Also, for example, at the Hida Takayama Festival (a festival using Japanese Karakuri puppets), when the Karakuri puppets are moving, the window on the second floor of the festival office behind them suddenly opens, and a person in white robes shows his face for a moment.
I think it's interesting that you don't know whether they're doing it intentionally or just by chance.
On the day of the Akanekoza performance, a member of the audience (not a staff member) suddenly started singing and playing the accordion.
It was interesting that the boundary between who was a performer and who was an audience member was not clear. Akanekoza truly became a one-night dreamlike festival.
-It uses a lot of fabric.
H:
I come from the Karyukai. *2 (*2 花柳界。The world of geisha and alcohol).
I liked the stage design of the play "Koku-ikkoku" that was performed at the Haiyuza Theatre.
The original Akanekoza theatre for "MIDORI" is (according to the historical researcher) closer to a playhouse than a freak show.
The puppets and living dolls we installed inside Akanekoza are based on the Octopus Woman from the freak show I saw as a child, the Hygiene Expo, and the Panorama Pavilion.
Then, I looked at books on Edo and Meiji era freak shows and selected things that I thought would be nice to have in real life.
It's the world of Musei Asakura's book "Freak Show Research."
Maruo's fans may have wanted to see a more radical and fashionable ero-guro.
-Is the next one the Itabashi Basement Performance?
H:
To be precise, the next version was decided to be at the Ueno Suijo Music Hall, and the script was completed, but the music hall did not allow the remodeling of the Audience seats, so it was canceled.
-In the basement version (November 1992), there was already an audience member in the Audience seats, and when the audience approached, the face of the audience member (the doll) would split in two, right? It was different from the Japanese-style Akanekoza, and it was like an underground religious ceremony, with a pipe organ mass playing.
H:
I don't like to just sit in the audience from the beginning.
If there was an amazing set, wouldn't you want to wander around inside it? *3
(*3...At that time, Harada went to see a Tokyo performance by a famous experimental theater company in Kansai. A huge set was built around the outdoor Audience seats, but unfortunately, the audience was guided to the audience seats as soon as they passed through the entrance. Harada thought that the audience should have passed through the huge maze-like building once before arriving at the audience seats.)
-What is the appeal of mazes?
The theme song for "MIDORI" features the phrase "Yawata no yabushirazu". *4 (*4 八幡不知藪. *The name of a real forest in Japan that has no exit. There is also a haunted house-like freak show modeled after it).
H:
I think somewhere in our hearts we all have a common original experience.
For example, even school buildings become haunted corridors at night.
When you go on to higher education and visit a new school building, you get excited by the unknown structure, don't you?
Large Japanese inns and gigantic temples and shrines have been expanded over and over, with corridors and other structures that make them complex, like mazes. Children are happy when there are connecting corridor.
When you become an adult, you understand the hidden mechanisms, both physically and psychologically, and you can't get lost even if you want to.
On the other hand, when you become an adult, you are in a position where you have to bring lost children home.
Getting lost, forgetting time and place and hiding in safety is now something that only happens in plays, dramas and games.
But the audience shouldn't just leave it to the actors; they should want to experience it as the protagonists themselves.
Modern Japan is a country where, above all else, "darkness" has been taken away by the state, so in Kiryukan I want to bring out the charm of darkness in abundance.
From the "End of the Century Club CD-ROM" published by Core Magazine in 2000. This book was banned soon after its publication because it was full of extreme photographs.
