ABSTRACT
Kawamoto Kihachirō (1925–2010) is internationally recognized as a representative puppet stop-motion animator. He steadfastly worked in the puppet play format; in the context of immediate post-war Japan, this was a multimedia art form adopted across various media: theater, television, and cinema. Focusing on Hanaori (The Breaking of the Branches is Forbidden, 1968), Kawamoto’s directorial debut and his first stop-motion film, this chapter traces the political genealogy underpinning the history of twentieth century puppet stop-motion animation in Japan. As a mobile and inexpensive medium, puppet plays and performances offered vanguard intellectuals the ideal means to build solidarity with the general public, especially in the immediate post-war period in Japan. Kawamoto was markedly inspired by religious and spiritual impulses, but I argue that his impulses were also deeply entrenched in his own social and political views as well as those of his time period.
