is a 1940

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese animated short. It was directed by Wagorō Arai, a dentist who created nearly a dozen short films between 1939 and 1947 in the style of

silhouette animation Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist. It is partially inspired by, but for a nu ...

. It is based on parts of the opera

Madama Butterfly ''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story " Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Lu ...

Giacomo Puccini Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for List of compositions by Giacomo Puccini#Operas, his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he ...

Plot

A Japanese woman reflects on her ill-fated marriage to an American naval officer. She ultimately concludes that "it is better to die with honor than live in shame."

Production

Outside of his work as a dentist, Arai collaborated with a small group of friends (particularly Tobiishi Nakaya) to create roughly one short animated film each year between 1939 and 1947. All of these films are in the style of silhouette animation and many, including ''Madame Butterfly's Illusion'' (1940), ''Jakku to mame no ki'' (''Jack and the Beanstalk'', 1941), and ''Kaguyahime'' (''Princess Kaguya'', 1942), are based on popular tales. It is believed that Arai - despite his talents as an animator - stopped creating films soon after World War II because of Tobiishi's untimely death. The film's Puccini-esque score was composed and performed by renowned Japanese opera singer

Tamaki Miura , was a Japanese opera singer who performed as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's ''Madama Butterfly''. Early life Miura was born the first daughter of Shibata Mōho and Shibata Towa () on February 22, 1884, in Tokyo, Japan. Shibata, a music lover had h ...

Legacy

Arai is the focus of Minami Masatoki's short documentary Arai Wagorō: Kage-e Animēshon no Sekai (Wagorō Arai: His World of Silhouette Animation, 2013), which screened at the

Hiroshima International Animation Festival The International Animation Festival Hiroshima, founded as International Animation Festival for the World Peace in 1985, was a biennial film festival for animated films held in Hiroshima, Japan. Its last edition was held in 2020. History The fe ...

in 2016. A 35mm print of the film is held in the

National Film Archive of Japan The is an independent administrative institution and one of Japan's seven national museums of art which specializes in preserving and exhibiting the film heritage of Japan. In its previous incarnation, it was the National Film Center, which was pa ...

and was screened by NFAJ in 2017 alongside animated films by Ōfuji Noburō and Murata Yasuji.

References

Japanese short films Films based on Madama Butterfly 1940 films Japanese animated short films Japanese black-and-white films 1940 animated short films {{1940s-short-animation-film-stub