The Yomiuri Shimbun's job listings say they are looking for employees at Mushi Production.
Although it was a small recruitment ad, I was motivated to send my resume because I liked the company's name and thought I might be able to get a job close to the music academy I was attending.
. . . One day an express letter arrived, a notice for a job interview. The text read as follows.
"Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for applying for our opening.
Thank you very much.
We would like to conduct a job interview as follows:
- Date and Time: XX month XX day, 6:00 PM
- Location: Mushi Production Studio 1
- Items to bring: Indoor shoes
Please be punctual and show up on time.
Sincerely,
Mushi Production"
The actual job interview was held on the first floor of the second studio. The studio looked like a large apartment. When you walked in the door, there was a hallway straight ahead, reminiscent of an old hospital. There were benches, also like a hospital, and a lot of people inside.
We all had to write an essay, and then do an interview.
Sitting on the long bench in the hallway, I waited my turn. I had come without knowing much about what kind of company Mushi Pro was or what kind of manga Osamu Tezuka wrote.
I was told by someone else there that he was the one who wrote Astro Boy.
. . . Now that I think about it, I read a lot of Tezuka's manga.
. . . My turn for the interview came.
I think the people who interviewed me were Eiichi Yamamoto, Eiichi Kawabata, Atsushi Tomioka, and some others. I was told that I needed to be physically strong and that I might have to work a little overtime, but I told them I would be fine.
The appointment I received was as follows:
"Appointment
Position: Wonder 3 Team
Name: XX
Details: Hired as employee, but with a three-month probationary period
Work order effective immediately.
Basic salary of 17,000 yen."
I went to Studio 1 at nine in the morning.
It was a nice studio with an insect logo. Looking from outside, many people came to punch in their time cards. Some went straight into Studio 1, some went to Studio 2 where they had their interview, some walked further and turned left at the end of the road, and some came running when it got close to 9:30.
Six of us were called by name and told to follow a man named Keijiro Kurokawa, the AP. We passed Studio 2 and turned left at the end of the road, and were guided to an apartment on the left, which was Studio 3. We opened the entrance door and went up the stairs to the second floor, where there were many animation desks lined up in a fairly large room with no partitions between the rooms. This was the Wonder 3 studio, where we would be working from now on. Four people joined Wonder 3's animation department, two of them joined me [as producers], and all six of us became best friends for a long time.
During the time of Astro Boy, Managing Director Anami was an employee of the advertising agency Mannen-sha, but he was headhunted by Tezuka because of his skills on Astro Boy. Anami was also a big fan of Tezuka and would often say, "I'm completely smitten with Tezuka. There's no one with that kind of energy, and no one who can inspire people like that." Anami, who was a student drafted in the war, and survived as a kamikaze pilot, felt that he had found a new place to die. Saying, "If it's for Tezuka's sake."
Anami consulted with Tezuka-sensei on how to turn a color animation, which was clearly going to be in the red, into a profitable business move. He looked to profits from overseas, including merchandising (character revenue), and decided to create a work to match the overseas sales of color animation, "Kimba the White Lion". Tezuka gave full authority to Anami.
In 1964, the plan to broadcast "Kimba the White Lion" was decided. In early 1965, a meeting of producers was held to decide on staff recruitment between "Astro Boy" and "Kimba the White Lion". "Kimba the White Lion" took the necessary number of people, 150. The "Astro Boy" team chose the minimum number of people, 90. This left 25 people, and the meeting came to a standstill over what to do with them. As a solution to the 25 people, Osamu Tezuka decided on the broadcast plan for Wonder 3.
. . . With Astro Boy, Tezuka's proofreading caused delays to the schedule, resulting in a life of constant dedication, and some people even got ill or quit. Some people who initially joined the company because they wanted to help Tezuka ended up being forced to leave, and some even started to curse him. To make Mushi Production viable as a company, it was obvious that they needed to get rid of Tezuka's proofreading, and they tried to do that with "Kimba the White Lion".
Within the company, there were people who openly called themselves the Tezuka faction. Originally, all employees who joined the company because they admired Tezuka should have been Tezuka supporters, but the reality was different. Those who were thought to be in the Tezuka faction were excluded from the selection of staff. The Tezuka faction was ostracized.
Wonder 3 was originally a project known as Number 7. It was canceled due to circumstances, but it was decided to quickly broadcast "Wonder 3" in that time slot. It was serialized in a magazine, and Tezuka did everything he wanted, from the script down. "W3" first began serialization in the March 21, 1965 issue of "Shonen Magazine". At that point, it had been decided that it would be made into a TV series.
NOTE: It became quite popular, but it suddenly ended after the sixth episode without any warning, and for some reason the serialization continued in "Shonen Sunday" magazine.
Osamu Tezuka was in charge of directing the first episode, "3 from Space," and no one knew what the story was about. That was because it was in Tezuka's head, and he was thinking about whether to follow the same storyline as in the magazine, or to create a new story for TV. He had almost decided on a new story, but he was undecided because there were several shows that already did that. Plus, he was pressed for the magazine's deadline, and the broadcast start date in June was fast approaching. Finally, he was running out of schedule, so he asked the scriptwriter Ichiro Wakabayashi to come and verbally convey his ideas for the second and third episodes, and asked him to write the script for the first.
For those involved in animation, to go to the main house for a meeting with Tezuka-sensei was a life-threatening experience, because the magazine editors who had been waiting there for days would stare at you with murderous eyes. Even if they had made an appointment and went there at the right time, it was impossible to meet him, and they always had to wait for hours. . . . Editors from each company, known as "Tezuka's guards," were fierce warriors, all vying with each other to be first to get their manuscripts in, as long as there was a gap.
Even after informing the secretary I had come, the answer was always, "Please wait a little while." The hardest part was having to endure the murderous gazes of the editors. Even if I waited from morning, it always ended late at night. If I accidentally left my seat to eat, they would skip my turn, so I ended up not eating or drinking while I was waiting.
In that sense, it was a "life-threatening" situation.
When time finally came, we had a meeting with the scriptwriter, and one story after another just kept flowing out of their mouth. Sometimes they would talk about even the smallest details of the performance. Compared to the time spent waiting, the meeting was over in a flash. It was difficult to summarize a story in about 25 minutes, but once I got used to it, I was able to summarize it in that amount of time using the number of pages of manuscript paper.
Once the script was completed, it was time for Tezuka-sensei to proofread it, and this time I had to wait for hours again, days if it coincided with a magazine deadline. Even when I finally got a chance to get a proofread, there would be rewrites, and I would have to wait for another proofread, which took up my schedule.
When the storyboard was completed, the director would have a meeting for each part, but at Wonder 3, the meeting time had to be communicated to Mr. Tezuka. When Tezuka snuck out like a ninja and attended the meeting, he said, "I'll do it," and brought in animation for several shots, and the tragedy began.
There was no way they could complete them on schedule, and the director and staff were about to die. Still, seeing how happy Tezuka-sensei looked, no one could complain, and when the video finally came out, the animation team started fighting over it, demanding to see it, because Tezuka-sensei's animations were that wonderful.
A proposal was made to "ask a dedicated person from Mushi Production's film department to be a facilitator for Tezuka-sensei, and to facilitate smooth scheduling with magazine editors." However, it was obvious that the role would mean "crawling through the depths of hell." There was no one willing to take on such a role, and so the boss couldn't nominate anyone. Even if he could, there was no way that anyone would be so reckless as to simply say "yes".
With the situation being such a matter of urgency, the producers' meeting was a complete mess. Then one man boldly stepped forward, and that courageous man was none other than Atsushi Tomioka.
Some say that the truth is that Kappa-san (I know I'll get in trouble for saying this, but everyone called him that) was forced into the role, but in any case, Kappa-san was a thoughtful person, and there is no way that he would have accepted such a role, which could be called reckless, without any plan, and beyond the limits of his mind and body. The proof of this is that for about a year, he fulfilled his duties as Tezuka-sensei's facilitator with great splendor.
As I wrote before, there was a shortage of staff for W3, especially veteran animators, so Tezuka asked Anami to lend him Kazuko, who had become Anami's wife and took care of the family.
Managing Director Anami told Kazuko, "For now, forget about the household chores. Sensei is in trouble; please help him."
Kazuko Nakamura and Tezuka-sensei first met during the Toei film "Saiyuki" She was such a beautiful woman that even back then the security guards thought "an actress came to the studio by mistake."
She had been active as an animator since the founding of Mushi Production, but her and Mr. Anami got married and started a family. She was brought into the W3 team on a contract basis and was mainly in charge of the rabbit, Bokko.
The [Wonder 3] workplace was a battlefield, and there was almost no entertainment. The production manager thought that he had to do something about the mental health of the staff. If they worked too hard, they would get mentally exhausted, so they needed some laughter.
. . . As soon as he joined the academy, Masuo Maruyama was loved by everyone and was nicknamed "Marutan." One day, he slipped on the steep stairs of Studio 3 and scraped his face. He immediately went to Studio 1 to get treatment. It was a very painful experience, but he did not let it go unnoticed.
He came back with mercurochrome [a topical antiseptic that stains your skin red] all over his face, and danced around with a goofy expression. He made everyone laugh when we had been working hard.
NOTE: I still remember that time as if it were yesterday.
Just when I was feeling down and about to give up, Maru-chan made me laugh, and the atmosphere suddenly brightened up. But that's not what I remember. I looked into Marutan's eyes, and he wasn't smiling at all. There was something sparkling in them, and I had a kind of gut feeling that this guy wasn't ordinary.
Later, on the Ashita no Joe team, he shadowed producer Yasuo Oda, who was the production manager. And the person who created Madhouse with the Ashita no Joe team is the very same Masuo Maruyama.
One day, Managing Director Anami held a preview screening of the completed "Kimba the White Lion" at Fuji TV for the programming department and related parties.
The people at the station who came to see the show thought it was just an electric picture show with bad movement and that the response and feeling were not very good, but Mr. Anami felt that they had taken it too lightly.
But after they finished watching, there was a moment of silence, and then applause broke out. Everyone was on edge, watching, and everyone was moved. Anami was asked to shake hands, and his hard work had paid off... Tears began to flow.
On the second floor of Studio 2, all the staff of Mushi Production had just finished watching "Kimba the White Lion," and were drinking juice and chatting. They had all been ordered to stay behind.
Anami hurried to the venue.
A slightly elevated area was created near the entrance, different from where the TV set was placed. Mr. Anami began his speech by praising the hard work of the Kimba team and encouraging them to keep up the good work.
As was the case with both Atom and W3, sponsors would sometimes provide sweets or gum for the staff.
"Sanyo Electric donated transistor radios to the staff for the broadcast." Kamei had brought it with him. He must have been hoping to give it to the staff as a token of appreciation for their efforts.
"But," Anami continued, "Due to a mistake on our part, when asked how many staff we had, I answered that we had 120 staff members in the Kimba team. They brought over 200 transistor radios, but now Mushi Production has a staff of over 300 people. This does not include management and general affairs staff."
"Until now, gifts for both Atom and Wonder 3 have been shared among all staff, but this time I'm thinking about limiting it to the 'Kimba' staff only."
"Then why not just say that the number of people was wrong and get the missing amount?" Someone shouted from behind me, and laughter broke out.
"I'm sorry, but I can't say that."
Considering what happened today, asking for such a thing would seem insensitive and would raise doubts about the kind of people we are, and it would also tarnish the reputation of Tezuka-sensei.
He continued, "So I'm sorry, but we'd like to hold a raffle. Two out of three people will win, but the consolation prize is Lotte chewing gum." I, a member of the Wonder 3 team, had brought this with me from the Lotte factory in Takadanobaba. Then the raffle began, and cheers rang out all around. Of course, I won the lottery too, and was able to receive a transistor radio. It was a party without alcohol, but the laughter continued until late into the night.
The W3 team was hellish and we had to work hard to get through it, but as I got used to it, I was able to find time for myself even though I was busy.
. . . Mushi Production had a union called the Tuesday Club. It was more of a social club than a labor union. The membership fee was 300 yen and anyone could join. In the winter, they held skating tournaments and ski trips. In the summer, they rented a beach hut for a month you could stay at overnight by reservation.
As the Tuesday Club had a ski trip in January, I went to the beginner's class at the Sayama Ski Resort, which had opened on December 22, 1964, with my friend, "Sergeant". The class was from 7:00 to 9:00, so I took some time off work and went for a week.
. . . I made a lot of memories.
NOTE: Westerns (Laramie, Rawhide) and action movies (007 - when the movie was released, if you had 007 on your ID or license plate number, you could get half off the ticket for the movie) were popular, and model guns were also popular, so we would pretend to shoot each other like kids in the parking lot of Studio 2. Many of the male employees went to Ameyoko to buy model guns. Around this time, I bought a ten-gallon hat and started wearing it. When "Sergeant" imitated me, he went to Ameyoko to buy one too. The next day he was wearing a German iron helmet. Since combat helmets were popular at the time, Onushi gave him the nickname "Sergeant". He is still called that today.
It was the end of spring, and I was beginning to realize that the Wonder 3 Team would be gone that year, and felt the loneliness that comes with being a student before graduation beginning to weigh on my heart.
I worked as a production assistant and assistant director for Wonder 3. In May, I was in charge of the final episode. I was also present at the dubbing, and as a fun gesture, I got the voice actor's autograph on the back of their script as a souvenir. When Wonder 3 finished airing in June, I went to the preparation room for "Jungle Emperor Leo", which was to begin in October. But Producer Tomioka, who I thought of as an older brother, asked me if I would like to move to the president’s office [as an assistant], even though it would be a lot of work. By that time, I had come to revere Osamu Tezuka like a god, so needless to say I accepted without hesitation.
I received my letter and started working in Tezuka's office. As part of my job, I had to keep a log of his daily activities. I also wrote a diary of my own, so I wouldn’t forget my own actions.
NOTE: I have written about myself in the hope that it will be of some reference to those who study Osamu Tezuka, but I have posted the diary as it is without making any changes. I am not good at writing and there are many things that I don't understand myself, but if you have any questions, please feel free to email me or post on the message board.
Mushi Pro Trading is founded.
I spend my time watching TV.
Osamu Tezuka once spoke of his dream of making an animation based on classical music like that of the Disney film Fantasia.
"You see, there are three classical pieces of music that I've always wanted to turn into films. One is Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake." The next is Ikuma Dan's "Yūzuru". and this is Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." One evening after the magazine deadline, Tezuka-sensei told me, fidgeting happily. He played the record for me, but I had never heard the piano piece before. "It's been arranged for an orchestra, so please buy the record for me by tomorrow."
"Pictures at an Exhibition" dates back to May 1965, when Tezuka submitted a proposal to the Mushi Production Board of Directors as an "independent Mushi Pro production." The production cost was 10 million yen, took six months, and involved a total of 120 staff members.
This project was naturally rejected because Tezuka was fully occupied with the production of a television animation for children, and it was stated that "Considering the current state of Mushi Pro, such an extremely reckless plan is nothing more than an armchair project," and the proposal languished in a drawer.
In May, with the end of W3, the staff was reorganized. As a result, they had some free time, so Tezuka-sensei forcibly withdrew some members. There was still a vacant room in Studio 5. I don't know if it was luck, but he set up a preparation room for "Pictures at an Exhibition" there.
Staff restructuring also brought changes to the president's office. The room in the main building where the manga department used to be was filled by Mr. Shimikata.
. . . Using the back roads on the way to Fuji TV, we were able to get to Shinjuku in little time. After receiving the record, Tezuka immediately went up the spiral staircase to the second floor and played it. The record was a piano piece. He could hardly have said in a sulky voice, "I told you to buy the orchestral one," before I had taken the record, rushed out of the room, and run to exchange it.
When I got to the record store, I told them "I said the orchestral one," and I learned that "Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition" refers to the piano piece, and if you wanted the orchestral one, you should have said the Ravel arrangement. Because the needle had been put on it, it couldn't be exchanged, which was common knowledge at the time. However, I didn't give in. We ended up arguing for an hour.
I had no choice but to explain the situation, saying "It's for Osamu Tezuka to use in an upcoming anime, and he already owns the piano piece. We need the orchestral version, so we went out of our way to buy it." However, they didn't believe that Tezuka had ordered it, so as a last resort I said, "If you don't believe me, please lend me your phone," and called him.
The store clerk, who didn't trust me at all, was skeptical at first. But after Tezuka explained things, he finally believed me and exchanged the record, saying "We normally can't exchange it."
He was in a bad mood earlier, so I returned to the office prepared to be scolded for making an annoying phone call during work, but Tezuka-sensei just smiled and said, "Thank you for your hard work."
Needless to say, that night the record was played through large speakers built into the wall.
There was a general meeting of employees at 3:00. Tezuka made a big speech. I worked overtime on the magazine "Shonen Sunday" until 10:30, then drove home.
Tezuka asked Tashiro if it was possible to have a real orchestra play the final live-action orchestral part.
Easier said than done, but actually performing live, especially in the middle of the performance, was not so easy.
. . . When consulted, Akiyama could only reply, "It's absolutely impossible," but Tashiro persuaded him, saying, "Instead of not doing it, could you please think about it from the premise that you will do it?"
Nowadays, with the availability of small lights and tiny, high-performance transceivers, it's highly possible, but in the days before such things, conductor Akiyama wore headphones and repeatedly trained so that he could perform in sync with the video.
Tashiro also memorized not only the score but also all the scenes. On the day of the performance, Tashiro was to signal the conductor Akiyama when to start the performance from the wings of the stage.
However, no matter how many times we rehearsed, we just couldn't get it to go the way we wanted.
When the day of the performance arrived, the staff, knowing that things were not going well, looked on in anxiety.
. . . "Pictures at an Exhibition" was shown. The audience was pleased, as I expected, and the screening continued smoothly until it reached its climax. As the portraits of the Arc de Triomphe returned to support the gate and the relieved mother and child moved the audience to tears, the screen overlapped with the live action and the actual orchestra began to play at the exact same time the cymbals were tapped. The audience gasped in surprise, and the spotlight shifted to conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama and the performers.
And then the short ending felt very long, then the projection and performance ended.
The hall was enveloped in silence, and then light applause began, which suddenly grew into a loud roar like a cannon being fired.
Tezuka-sensei took both my hands and expressed his joy with all his heart. It was a great success, and his eyes were filled with tears.
. . . Although there were only a few people who witnessed that day, I believe it was an event that adorned a page in the history of Osamu Tezuka. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to witness it.
I wake up at 11:00 and doze off in the kotatsu from 2:00 to 4:00. I go to bed at 11:00.
Just like yesterday, it was windy and cold, and apparently the coldest day so far this winter. As it got a little late, Director Shimakata invited me to dinner, but I declined as it wasn't convenient and headed home at 8:00, meeting my father on the bus on the way back.
I dozed off in the car after 4:30 in the morning, and when I returned to the president's office at 7:00, Sensei and the editors were there, creating a strange atmosphere. Sensei then informed me that Managing Director Anami had passed away at 5:00am.
Unable to wake up in the morning, I took a day off and called to get permission to go directly to Anami's company funeral.
At 1:00 I went directly to the Copyright Department and got a ride in a Copyright Department member's car to the funeral. Even the road outside the funeral hall was packed with people, with many wreaths lined up.
At 2:00 the funeral began. I could hear the sound of sutras being chanted, and the line of funeral attendees slowly began to move. I finally stepped into the room, and in front of me was a photo of Director Anami surrounded by white chrysanthemums. Shimakata came into view, and one by one Osamu Tezuka and his wife, his parents, Mushi Production executives, and Director Anami's wife all bowed their heads and offered condolences.
Up until now, I couldn't believe that Anami had died, but as I watched it, it really hit me and tears spilled down my face. If I were to cry here, everyone in the company would laugh at me, so I clenched my eyelids. I tried not to cry, but the world told me to cry. I couldn't help but cry on such a dark day. Though I kept telling myself not to, I couldn't hold back a single tear.
With unsteady steps, I took one step forward. My heart welled up again. I took another step forward, finally holding myself together and looking at the ceiling, not knowing when the tears would come again. I thought I'd start over from there. I told myself I will never cry, and finish offering incense, holding back my tears and looking at the ceiling. The smoke stung my eyes and I couldn't help but tear up. A sob escaped my mouth, and I finally offered my condolences to Shimakata, Osamu Tezuka and his wife, the Mushi Production executives, and Managing Director Anami's wife. I quickly left and went to the back of the building, where I started crying.
I don't know why I cried so much. Maybe I'll understand when time passes, or when I grow up.
An executive meeting was held, so I was free until 3:00, just answering the phone. . . . I was worried that Tezuka would tell me "You're a crybaby" about what happened yesterday, but he didn't mention it at all. Shimakata also comforted me by saying "I cried when Anami's wife said goodbye, too," and we didn't mention it again. I was very grateful and thanked him for his kindness, and renewed my resolve to continue to do my best for the company.
An emergency board meeting was held.
After Mr. Anami's death, it was discovered that all film assets produced by Mushi Production were transferred to Fuji Television and that he had borrowed 133,880,000 yen from Fuji TV. Around the time Mushi Pro Trading was founded, and the company and executive seal were entrusted to Anami, so it was assumed that Anami had made such a contract on his own. The truth is a mystery, and dead men tell no tales. Personally, I don't think he would have done it without notice, and even if he borrowed it for immediate operating capital, I think he had some sort of plan to pay it back.
Either way, Tezuka and his executives were furious and struggled to come up with a solution.
Tezuka-sensei had to go to Osaka, but as usual, the manuscript was not ready and the editor was getting irritated. His secretary, Shimakata, head of the president's office, and the editor in charge of the magazine decided to go to Haneda Airport first and check in for Tezuka-sensei, in order to somehow extend the time he had to write the manuscript.
Finally, there were only 40 minutes left until the flight, so we got in the car, hoping to somehow make it to the plane. It was me who was driving, not Mr. Suzaki.
Previously, the son of a family living between Studio 2 and Studio 3 had gone to Funabashi Circuit to race a Honda S8. I had been listening to his stories about the race while he was preparing the S8 on the truck, and I was so influenced by it that I got a domestic A-class license.
We sped along the Kannana and got onto the Shuto Expressway from Hatsudai. To my surprise, Sensei was putting pen to paper on an unfinished manuscript in the car. Once on the highway, I kept my foot on the accelerator, and the tires screeched as the sensei's car, a Prince Gloria, sped towards Haneda, heading for the first big curve. The teacher kept his pen moving all the time, so I drove in such a way that the car would not shake as much as possible.
The car arrived at the Haneda lobby just in time for departure. Rushing to the entrance, Tezuka-sensei handed the manuscript to the editor who had been waiting for him. The manuscript was finished, with not a single flaw in the drawings. I was surprised. Having driven so fast in the car, there would naturally be traces of ink spilled inside, but there was not a single stain on it.
Once I calmed down, I managed to make it in time, but my reckless driving made me shudder to think about what would have happened if something had gone wrong, so I stopped driving recklessly with passengers in my car from then on.
One day, I went out with Kitakaze, Tezuka-sensei's father. He always praised my driving and I was often asked to drive when we went out. During our conversation, he said, "Good driving is when the person in the passenger seat feels safe and can fall asleep."
It was a casual comment, but since this reckless driving had gone public, the comment hit me right in the head. I vowed to take it to heart and to drive safely.
I accompanied Director Shimakata and Sensei to the 21st Japan Media Arts Festival Award Ceremony. It was a grand ceremony and a spectacular place, but before I could soak in the atmosphere, the deadline for the magazine had passed, so I went straight to the magazine's publisher, Kodansha, and was completely cut off from the outside world.
We received the Encouragement Award at the 21st Arts Festival for "Pictures at an Exhibition."
We received the Blue Ribbon Award for "Pictures at an Exhibition" and attended the award ceremony with Director Shimakata as a representative. As I sat in the seat I was assigned to, a woman was guided to sit next to me on the left. It was Misa Watanabe from Watanabe Productions. For me, who had once aspired to be a singer, she was someone far above me. She bowed to me and sat next to me. . . . As the ceremony progressed and it was Hana Hajime's turn, many photographers gathered around Misa Watanabe and took pictures. I was next to her. When I got home and told my family about it, they thought I would be in the picture next to her in the next day's newspaper. I couldn't wait for the morning to come, but I wasn't in any of the newspapers as they had masterfully cut me out.
NOTE: It was a great honor to attend this ceremony and it has become a treasured memory.
In the autumn of 1965, Mushi Production was given a boost in management by bringing in accounting manager Takahashi from outside the company and bringing in Michitoshi Shimakata from Meiji Seika as Osamu Tezuka's manager and head of the president's office. He was 55 years old. There were some who gossiped about both of them behind their backs, saying they were just appointees from the government.
. . . Thinking that we should allow more people to see this great film, Director Shimakata immediately began negotiating to screen "Pictures at an Exhibition" in movie theaters, and we managed to get the film to premiere on February 4th at Marunouchi Piccadilly, alongside "Un monde nouveau"
Together Shimakata and I made the rounds to greet people he had connections with during his time at Meiji. . . . I also prepared 16mm film reels so that they could be delivered immediately upon request.
. . . Through our relationship with Shochiku, Shimakata and I visited people like the Kanto branch manager of Nippon Herald Films, who viewed “Pictures at an Exhibition” immediately.
At 10:00, I took my brother to Warabi and headed to the company. Cherry blossoms were blooming along the road. At 11:00, I arrived at the company.
. . . I attended the wedding of Kozo Masanobu and Kaoru Masanobu at Diamond Hotel with my sensei It was a very happy atmosphere. At the party, I was surprised to learn that Kappa-san (Atsushi Tomioka), who I had known since I joined the company, was getting married to Shoji on the 20th. I was very happy and wanted to congratulate him.
At 6:00, I returned to the company, went to the second floor of Studio 2, and watched the broadcast of "Princess Knight" on the color TV from 6:30 with everyone, talked, and it was already 7:30, so I hurried home by car. I got home at 8:00, had a meal, and listened to records from 9:00. I went to bed at 11:00.
Even though it was raining, I waited for ages but the bus never came, so I managed to catch a taxi and took it to the station. I arrived at work after 9:00, and since Director Shimakata was on a trip, I didn't have anything to do, except pick up a radio from Yagi Motors.
At 12:30, I was asked by the accounting department to go to Daiichi Bank and Yamato Bank to collect the employees' pay. I felt like I was being followed more than before, so I placed a large stick I had bought next to the driver's seat and, being careful of my surroundings, went to collect my pay. I got my pay at 5:00. I left work at the usual time, got home at 7:30, watched TV, had a meal, took a bath at 9:00, and went to bed at 11:00.
Arrived at work on time and delivered theatrical copy of Atom (Nikkatsu) to the Educational Film Producers Association of Japan by myself at 11:00. Delivered document from Herald to Shimakata's manager Kono, and went to pick up film canister for "Pictures at an Exhibition". Picked up the 16mm film of "Pictures at an Exhibition" for the promotion of foreign films at Shochiku headquarters. Returned to the office at 2:00, had lunch with the Princess Knight team. Returned to the president's office and had a board meeting from 5:00 to 7:30. Took overtime as Suzaki drove the president's car to see Taku Sugiyama. After dinner, Osamu Tezuka went to the Manga Department and I waited in the president's office and saw Nagahara. Shimakata, the president's manager, returns from the executive meeting and hands the film to Nagahara. After 10:00, received a call from Tezuka and went with Sugiyama to the Manga Department in front of Fujimidai Station. After 1:30, Shonen Sunday finished and I gave Tezuka a ride back to the president's office. Sensei took a break and talked about the upcoming recruitment of new members. After 2:00, Masateru Yoshimura went to the Princess Knight team alone. We listened to a flexi disc (record) of Princess Kaguya and talked all night about our dreams for future works. After 4:00am, I went to sleep in my company car, which was parked in the garage of Osamu Tezuka's house.
Kappa-san and Shoji's wedding took place at 3:15, with a fun atmosphere. Shoji looked very cute in her white wedding dress. At 6:00, everyone lifted Tomioka up in the air, rice grains were thrown at her, she was thrown against the ceiling, and someone apparently stabbed her in the back with a fork, but it ended safely.
I go to work by train. Since Princess Knight was a big challenge this week, I was scheduled to be transferred to the Ribbon Knight team, but since the president's office is also busy, I was asked to do both for the rest of the month.
In the morning, I have a meeting with Watanabe, the producer of Ribbon Knight. I had returned the car that was kept for the president's office, but I decided to borrow it for the rest of this month, and at 2:00 I head to Uto's house with his mother and Oshima to mail COM. At 5:30, we play volleyball in the plaza outside Studio 2 until it gets dark. I take the train home and arrive just after 8:00, take a bath at 10:00, then watch TV and compose music. It was past midnight, so I rushed off to bed without writing in my diary.
NOTE: This was written at 10:00pm on April 25th
I got up before 8:00 to punch in, then went back to my car and slept for a while. I bought a bass guitar.
NOTE: I was in Mushi Production's band and played the keyboard, but when the bass guitarist, Shirahata, left the company, I became the bass guitarist. We practiced every day during lunch break in the dressing room next to the shoe lockers on the first floor of Studio 2.
Go see a movie, go to work at 6:00, and go to bed at 11:30.
Waiting for Osamu Tezuka to proofread the 17th episode of Princess Knight. I went in the morning because he said he would look at it, but it was already 4:00. Let me sleep!! After 4:00, he proofreads the characters for the 18th episode, and they were only ready by 5:00. After that, COM's name came up and I was asked to wait.
Even after 1:00am, COM still hadn't been completed because they hadn't submitted a draft, so I was told to wait in the editor's office until tomorrow (on the 8th), which brought tears to my eyes because my schedule was gone and now I can't get any work done.
I'm impressed that I can continue this kind of work without getting tired of it. When I was in charge of episode 17, I started with the enthusiastic idea of "finish it a week in advance," but the schedule was completely taken up by just proofreading. If I remember correctly, when the proofreading for episode 11 wasn't completed, I went all the way up to Lake Sayama and thought of killing myself out of spite.
Tomorrow I'll feel better again. I'm so tired. I don't want to do anything. There are so many things I want to do. I can't do anything for myself. Is this okay? Yes, I thought about it before, this is fine. I'm still young. I'll do my best.
I don't know who first suggested it, but someone [on the Princess Knight team] suggested going to Shikinejima, one of the Izu Islands. We decided that if we camped, we could go for just the boat fare, so we looked up the timetable for the boat service, which only runs twice a week, and started making plans. Having heard rumors, the women in the production office and all the other project managers said they wanted to go, and so, without exaggerating, we decided in our youthful ignorance to go on strike.
In other words, it was an attempt to threaten the producers, as an act of rebellion. At the end of summer, everyone applied for a week's vacation starting on the 4th.
The overtime was cut off at 70 hours, with the remaining 8 hours converted to paid time off, so no one had more paid leave than they could use.
Even so, when it came to taking time off, each of us made arrangements in a way that would not cause us any problems or remorse.
The rebellion was set in motion, and the production team, except for the AP, took a boat from Takeshiba to Shikinejima via Niijima. The ship was hit by a typhoon and was rocked by heavy waves. Nevertheless, when we arrived at the island, a small boat picked us up and we boarded the ship that was anchored offshore and landed at Shikinejima.
Although we camped, the beach campsite only had running water from 2:00 to 4:00, which was not ideal, but we enjoyed our first vacation in a long time. Those in charge of work had to go home first. But tragedy struck: a typhoon came. No boat, no way to get home, no way to get off the island at all.
A telegram was sent from the island's post office: "We're still working on the island, even though we're in a typhoon."
We returned two days later than planned and went straight back to Studio 2. Everyone apologized, but the desks were gone. Most of them were sent to the preparation room for the "Wanpaku Tanteidan" in Studio 3.
I got up around 9:00 and watched TV shows like "Untitled Concert". I had breakfast around 11:00 and went to see a movie before 12:00. It was very crowded, so I ended up standing to watch the first movie, "Rebecca".
Rebecca is a Hitchcock film, and even though it's a romance film, I was impressed by the unique quality of Hitchcock. Chaplin's "A Countess from Hong Kong" was very good, but I was even more impressed by the last movie, "The Last Adventure" starring Alain Delon. I was deeply moved by the scene where a woman is killed and the two of them put her in a diving suit and sink her. At the end, Alain Delon is killed as well, but the scene where they gradually destroy the island's fortress was good.
Afterword from my time in the President's Office.
There was no one who could take the job. . . . It was a legend that if you went to Osamu Tezuka, you would go through hell. That people who went there were killed. Fortunately, I was "the chosen one" and became a clergyman. A priest. A job more akin to being a "shosei", like in the old days, than to being Osamu Tezuka's secretary.
Miyashita had been his secretary for a long time, and two executives, Shimakata and Takahashi, came to work there. Shimakata became the head of the president's office, so I was also responsible for assisting him with things he didn't understand about Mushi Production's production.
. . . The president's office was the main building (Osamu Tezuka's home), so I spent a lot of time with his family. I was courteous, polite, and fair-eyed, and they took very good care of me. Tezuka's parents' rooms were next to mine, so I was often invited over to visit.
. . . Incidentally, there was a wooden nameplate hanging on the north side of the entrance's Japanese-style lattice door. It read "Yutaka Tezuka", but no one could read the "Yutaka" on it. I wondered who that was, since he called his father "Kitakaze-san".
In the fall, a man calling himself Saburo Hatano, the executive director of Nippon Herald Films, contacted the president's office, asking if the president was coming. The call was transferred to Shimakata, who had a feeling that something good might be happening. Shimakata explained that the call was serious, and that it sounded like a good deal, and immediately handed the phone over to Tezuka.
The request was: “Could you please make a feature-length animation for adults?”
Tezuka's first plan for an anime for adults was Goethe's "Faust." . . . This was a work that he had always wanted to adapt into an anime. . . . However, in 1967, the movie "Doctor Faustus" starring Elizabeth Taylor was released, which led to the cancellation of the project.
In the publishing world, monthly releases of books like the World Color Encyclopedia, History of Japan, and Complete Works of World Literature were all the rage.
Around this time, books like One Thousand and One Nights also began to be published monthly. I had left a copy of it on my desk, and it caught the eye of Mr. Tezuka.
Tezuka Productions is established to produce manga.
Mushi Production and Nippon Herald held a presentation for "One Thousand and One Nights."
Osamu Tezuka ordered me to buy a Bible. I didn't know what a "Bible" was yet. I simply went to a bookstore, asked for a "Bible" and bought one.
Sensei assumed that since I had already seen "Creation", [known in the US as "The Bible : In the Beginning..."] I would buy "Genesis" and "The Old Testament," so he didn't say anything.
The teacher replied, "No, that's not it."
I was a godless person, so I knew nothing about religion. . . . I went to Shakujii Library and studied the "Bible." There was an "Old Testament" and a "New Testament." I read the "Old Testament" and realized that it was the plot of the movie "Creation". I had the New Testament replaced with the Old Testament and gave it to Sensei.
After receiving the Old Testament, Tezuka-sensei smiled and quietly said, "Thank you for your hard work."
We quickly produced a film to show to the media and the Herald. In just five minutes, we had Aldin building the "Tower of Babel." We used a lot of multi-layering to create a three-dimensional effect, making it a powerful scene. At the preview screening at the Herald, we got a great response.
It was only five minutes. And yet the New Year had come. The delivery deadline in March was fast approaching.
The whole company started working on "One Thousand and One Nights." To keep us awake, we played Beatles, jazz, and other music all night long. This was before cassette tapes, and we used a device called an 8-track.
We were all desperate to finish it by the end of May, but everyone was very tired. We were calling up the outsourcing people we had asked to do work in the past, and persuading those who had quit their jobs and become salarymen or housewives to do the video and finishing work.
One day, the prefab site was filled with a deadly mood. Producer Hirokawa, who was not in good physical condition anyway, was so tired that he fell asleep in a corner. Someone asked him,
"How many hours have you been asleep?”
“I've been asleep for two hours," he replied.
"What! You've been sleeping for two hours?" "Wake up!"
At the time everyone wasn't acting normal. Because of this, even though he was already exhausted and depressed, his depression got worse. And so, Hirokawa had no choice but to leave the battlefield. He had already lost his humanity.
A shock ran through the people in the production room.
Some sharp-tongued person said, "Kappa's plate has dried up."
Kappa-san, that's what everyone called Atsushi Tomioka behind his back. He was very caring and was respected and loved by his subordinates, so they called him that with affection. However, he hated being called that, and if anyone called him Kappa-san to his face, he would punch them.
. . . It turns out that Producer Tomioka had given up. It's said if the plate on a Kappa's head dries out, it can't survive. Tomioka said he wants to step down.
"We are currently discussing this with Sensei and the executives," he said. Apparently the producer who had been managing the schedule, Hirokawa, was gone, and the upper echelons were already in disarray. They were unable to keep track of the flow of the finished product, which caused a panic.
The progress was such that we had to pick up the cels from the subcontractors even though they were still wet. So we placed a coloring shelf in the back seat of the car and transported the cels on the shelf, being careful not to damage each one. We had to be careful while driving so as not to get the cels dirty, but we also had the heater on full blast because we wanted to dry them as quickly as possible. It was already early summer in June, and if it was sunny, the temperature inside the car would rise mercilessly and we would break out in a sweat. On top of that, we had to fight the urge to sleep.
The last shot was done. The negative can was labeled and stamped "immediate rush."
"Be careful," I was told as I drove off to Toyo Photo Processing Laboratory. I handed the film to the receptionist and told him I would like it sent out on the same day.
In the evening, we went to Toyo Development to pick up the finished rush prints and returned to Mushi Pro. The editing took place in the presence of Tezuka and others who had been waiting in the editing room. After the work was finished, we had a preview on the third floor. After checking the retakes, the rush prints were delivered to Eiichi at the Tokyo Studio Center. It was already 9:00pm.
NOTE: The person who delivered the report at that time had not slept for over a week. From what I heard, he had been so exhausted that he had fallen asleep in the lobby. This wasn't unreasonable, but Eiichi writes about it in his book as follows:
"I went out into the hallway to get some fresh air. Outside the door, on the floor, the driver was sleeping like a dead body, waiting for the roll to be finished. It looked so comfy that I wanted to kick him awake."
"One Thousand and One Nights" premiered at the Milano-za theater in Shinjuku, the Pantheon in Shibuya, and Shochiku Central in Higashi-Ginza, the same venues as "Pictures at an Exhibition." Tezuka received a report from the staff who had split up to check out each cinema, who said "long lines have formed."
Even at the general release screenings, "One Thousand and One Nights" continued to draw huge crowds. Nippon Herald Films distributed gift bags to all staff members of Mushi Pro.
Everyone joyfully opened the bags. Every face was filled with anticipation. However, the contents disappointed them, for it was a small sum of money, not in bills, but in coins.
Someone who had been in the entertainment industry and got a bag said, “that’s what a gift bag is!”
Everyone burst out laughing.
Disclaimer: I'm not good at writing, and I wanted to study writing a bit more. So I thought I'd write about the past, but I realized that it was impossible to remember and write about some things from my past, and I couldn't write any more. So I came up with a plan and decided to write everything as fiction, so I could keep writing.
Therefore, all of the following events are fiction.
Please note that the characters, names, places, etc. that appear in this [side story] are unrelated to actual names and events.
The first time I spoke to Takeo Utsumi was when he was working on the illustrations for "Jungle Emperor Leo". I was hanging out during my usual break in the parking lot of Studio 2 when I saw a man riding an unusual bike. He had an intimidating face and was rather hard to approach, but he started talking to me. When I started talking to him, he told me that his bike was called a Rikuo, and he was surprisingly kind. That was the start of our conversation. The murderous "One Thousand and One Nights" at Mushi Production had just finished and I had some free time.
Perhaps as a result of being busy, there was a marriage boom at Mushi Pro. All of my fellow project members, except for Takeyuki Kanda, who married his childhood friend, got married then. Including Makoto Motohashi, Satoru Makimoto, Yasuo Oda, and Yasuo Shibue. The only ones who were not yet married were Noboru Adachi, Hideo Katayama, Yukimatsu Ito, and Tsutomu Chikai, and it seemed like if I wasn't careful, someone else would get ahead of me. In an attempt to recapture my long-awaited youth, I tried to talk to as many women as possible. Fortunately, Mushi Pro had always been famous for having a lot of beautiful women.
Ryuko (name withheld), who worked in the telephone exchange, had an incredible talent for remembering phone numbers after hearing them once. For Ryuko, this job was a gift from heaven, but she too was possessed by the demon of anime production and transferred to the production office.
When it got late, I would drive her to her parents' house in Tokorozawa. This gave Ryuko a good impression of me as a "very nice person". Thanks to that, I met the girl of my dreams, K-san (name withheld), and we became close friends.
On July 7th, for Tanabata there was talk of holding a Gogo Party in the first floor room of Studio 2, and it was decided to hold a concert by the "Mushi Pro Electric Band".
. . . We were able to sell party tickets to neighboring studios such as Toei Animation and Tatsuko Productions. That day, lead guitarist Kazuo Ushigoe was on a roll. He had initially agreed to turn up the volume on his guitar amp to 4, but before he knew it, it was at full volume. This was a habit of his, ever since practice, and he would turn up the volume when he got excited. So he turned up the volume on lead vocalist Jun Kiguchi, who still couldn't hear because of the guitar, so he sang at the top of his lungs. After an hour, I got tired, and I wanted to drink something. The song was "Suzie Q" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
. . . The performance lasted for a whopping 50 minutes, and everyone danced as if they were releasing their daily frustrations. . . . While at work, Mr. Tezuka "reached his limit," so his mother came out on an errand and gently put a stop to it, though the session continued until late into the night.
I was going to drop off K-san and her friend, Shizuko Kasai, who was apparently a recruit who joined the company in June last year. She lives in Katayama, Niiza. "I'll drop off Utsumi-kun too," she said, and we went to Utsumi's apartment in Higashikurume.
The two women I talked to at Utsumi's apartment took out teacups and teapots from the cabinet and made tea for us. While we were saying things like, "Women like this are great." It was almost 11:00 and K-san's curfew was approaching, so we decided to call it a day.
I put on my shoes first and waited at the door for Kasai to come out. When I asked, "What? Where's Kasai?" K-san nudged me with her elbow and said, "You idiot!"
They were already living together. As I was dropping her off, I asked her if she knew. She replied, "Well, I thought it was strange."
At that time, I enjoyed meeting her, and we would go to the movies and drive around. I wondered how I was able to continue working as I had done before, but I knew that if I tried, I could. I also went to the beach and bowled, and had a lot of fun days. I wondered why I hadn't enjoyed my youth sooner, and wished I'd realized this earlier. I was lying to myself like that.
Our date destination was the nearby Shakujii Park with Sanbo-ji Pond in the distance. The early morning tranquility made me feel like I was in the world of a Chinese ink painting, and it was very refreshing.
In September, when the production of Dororo was coming to an end, Atsushi Tomioka, who was planning Tomorrow's Joe, was called by Tezuka and told, "I'd like to thank Takashi Yanase for his help with One Thousand and One Nights and have him make an anime for me. I'd like you to produce it."
This plan was created when Tezuka was talking with Takashi Yanase and he asked, "Would you like to make your own anime?" Yanase had always wanted to make an anime, so he replied, "Yes, please."
Tezuka brought the idea up at a board meeting, but was turned down. They said they could not allocate a budget for such an experimental film, and the project was delayed. However, Tezuka said that he would do it with his own money, so it was forced through. There were still no plans for the next Animerama, so Studio 2 and its animators were relatively idle. Also, the number of staff members quitting at the time was increasing, including Eiichi Yamamoto and many others who left to go independent.
Kappa-san couldn't refuse, as a thank you for One Thousand and One Nights, but he didn't have time for it as he was extremely busy planning "Ashita no Joe."
At that time, I, the most senior member of the production team, pouted and went to complain to Kappa-san, saying, "I'm supposed to be a producer for the One Thousand and One Nights team, but I'm not in the credits for the ending we saw at the theater. The producers who helped out with "Dororo" and those who went to "Dororo and Hyakkimaru" are all on it, so why am I the only one left out? I worked harder than anyone else, but there's no proof that I made "One Thousand and One Nights.""
Kappa-san was usually difficult to deal with, and would always snap at his superiors. At first, I thought he would be a pain, and that this was impossible to fix, but then he had an idea. I'm not sure if he thought it up because he was the type of person who could be easily persuaded if you flattered him, but he humbly said to me, "As an apology, I'll leave the next Yanase movie to you. Mr. Tezuka also really wants you to do it, and I'll entrust everything to you. Just tell me if you're in trouble and I won't interfere at all."
When I heard Tezuka-sensei said he wanted me to do it I became extremely enthusiastic, forgot about the credits complaints, and promised to take it on. I immediately went to greet Tezuka, who had known me well since our days in the president's office. Mr. Tezuka agreed, and said, "I'll leave everything to you from now on."
I was given an office on the first floor of Studio 2. There was a large locker and a desk, and I was the only one in the office, which was too big.
Tezuka-sensei told me that he had contacted Yanase and asked me to go and discuss the details. I immediately went to Yanase's house, which is located halfway up the hill in front of the main gate of the Self-Defense Force's Camp in Ichigaya. It was close to Fuji TV, so I was able to get there easily just by looking at the address.
I was shown to Yanase's studio, where a female assistant brought us drinks. I had a detailed meeting with Yanase, who had a kind smile, about the schedule, and he showed me the picture book for "The Kindly Lion" that he was going to make. Yanase said that the storyboard would be ready soon and that he had the music, too, and that he had already prepared a "The Kindly Lion" slideshow presentation.
The story was wonderful, and I was moved.
I told this story to Umi-kun [Utsumi]. He said, "Let's go hiking together sometime." I'd like to climb a mountain in Oku-Musashi, even if it's a low one, to commemorate my last days as a bachelor."
I immediately bought a guidebook and a 1:50,000 scale map from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) to start making plans. My ambitious plan was to go from Mt. Buko (altitude approximately 1,300m) to Mt. Komochi (altitude 1,273m), along the ridge to Mt. Omochi (altitude 1,294m), and then to Mt. Takekawa (altitude 1,052m).
. . . Trains still only ran as far as Agano, and tracks to Chichibu were under construction. I thought I would drive part of the way, then take a bus to the trailhead of Mt. Buko and leave my car at the way back.
In October, Umi-kun and I had a schedule that matched up. If we missed this chance, we wouldn't be able to do it again this year. Yamamori said he'd go next time, so we decided to go ahead with it.
. . . After waiting for 20 minutes, We got on a bus and went to the entrance of the mountain trail. It was past 11:00 when we arrived at the Urayama trailhead. I hadn't eaten anything since morning, but I had brought some money, so we immediately started climbing Mt. Buko to get something to eat and drink at the store on the summit. I ran energetically, saying things like "You go first" and "Hello" as I passed people, and we reached the summit at 12:30.
Having eaten nothing since morning, I was really hungry, so I immediately looked for a store, but there was no store anywhere. According to the map, Mt. Komochi is the boiling pot near the other side of the ridge.
I asked a climber, "Is there a tea shop on Mt. Komochi?" and he replied, "Maybe there is." I felt too defeated to go down like this, so I decided to hold off until I reached Mt. Komochi, where I could get something to eat.
"Even if it's a little expensive, I'll eat my fill," I thought.
. . . Whether it was from fatigue or an empty stomach, we didn't reach Mt. Komochi, which was nearby, until after 2:00. What's more, there was no shop there either. It seemed that it was no longer hiking time along the ridgeline, and there was no one around. With a faint hope that there might be a shop on Mt. Omochi, we continued on to Mt. Omochi. We arrived just after 3:00, but there was no shop there either, and it was already getting dark.
We made the plan in the summer, when it was still light until 6:00, but I had forgotten that the sun sets early in the mountains. As the sun quickly sank behind them, darkness crept in. Umi-kun smoked, so he brought a disposable lighter, and we could barely see the way using the light from it, checking the signposts as we walked.
. . . But this lighter also had its limits. It ran out of gas and would no longer light. I rubbed a stone against it to create sparks to check the path as I walked. But that soon ran out too.
We couldn't see anything. The two of us collapsed on our backs.
"I wonder if this is what it's like to be lost," he said.
"But it's not cool to be lost in a place like this." We laughed, but it just made us even hungrier. At the time, we had nothing. We had changed into mountain climbing clothes, so there was nothing in our pockets.
. . . "I brought a raincoat, should I put it on?" I said, getting up, when I saw a strange sight. The moon had come out, and the road was clearly visible.
"Thank goodness."
"I'm hungry," we said, singing along to a marching tune, and regained our composure and started walking, eventually arriving at Mt. Takekawa.
Of course, the tea shop was closed and the place was cleared and nothing was left. We looked around and saw a bucket. Maybe it was filled with rainwater. If I just gargled, maybe my mouth would stop drying out.
Finally, I gave in to temptation and put it in my mouth. I was going to gargle it, but one drop passed through to my throat. I couldn't stop myself, so I ended up drinking it. I wondered what was in it, if it was mop water, but I didn't feel nauseous.
Umi-kun also found another bucket, and drank some too.
"I wonder if it's okay?"
"I don't know."
"I wonder if I'll get an upset stomach later."
"There's a medicine box in the car, so I'll drink some of that."
Maybe, because we had drunk the water, we felt a little better.
. . . [Eventually] we made it to Yamabushi Pass and finally returned to my car. I looked at the car's clock and it was only 7:00. We thought we had been walking so long it was already midnight.
I was so exhausted.
. . . Shortly afterwards, on my birthday, October 14th, 1969, the 19km section from Agano Station to Seibu Chichibu Station opened.
"A gathering to celebrate Takashi Yanase" was held at Jan-jan in Shibuya. I went to the party with Hori, Kamiguchi, Wako, Nabe, Maya and others. There were a lot of young people there, all with a vibrant urban look, and coming from the countryside of Fujimidai, I was a little overwhelmed. The venue was also decorated with disco-style lighting, and the atmosphere was lively whether I liked it or not. I was also surprised by how smoothly Yanase-sensei hosted the event. The songs were by Bonny Jacks, accompanied by a live band.
The party was lively, and when Yanase asked, "Is there anyone whose birthday is this month?" I honestly raised my hand. He said, "Please come forward," so I did. I think there were five or six of us. Bonny Jacks celebrated with music, and then we decided to sing "Tenohira ni Taiyo wo" (The Sun in Your Hands). I thought, "Oh shit, I don't remember it." Even though I liked Yanase-sensei, I hadn't had time to listen to this famous song yet. I regretted not coming forward. But, as the saying goes, "When some gods throw things away, there are other gods who pick things up." He handed me the sheet music, with beautiful illustrations. Finally, I was able to sing, and enjoyed it.
"Actually," said Yanase, who was the host, "He's a staff member of Mushi Production, which is currently making 'The Kindly Lion.'" He introduced the audience to the others who came with him. He then asked the others who came with him to come up on stage, and introduced them one by one. They applauded and I blushed. Because I looked like one of the Bonny Jacks, I joined the group and sang the song with them. Unexpectedly, I had a wonderful evening with my friends, literally losing track of time as we enjoyed ourselves.
I had been imitating Yanase-sensei's poetry collections and writing imitation lyrics in my notebooks since my school days, and had I made a small collection of poems and showed it to everyone. Then my good friends Takeo Utsumi and Hiroaki Yamamori teamed up and created a collection of poems together and published it. To my chagrin, their poems were better than mine. I really liked Utsumi's poem, "When you get married, I'll send you a round mirror. I'll send you a round mirror, because it would be a waste if your round face is too big to fit inside it." I wrote a song about it.
One day, in an attempt to cheer up the animators, I made a picture story show-style doodle on animation paper, imitating Yanase. The title was "Kurobuta no Tanko." It was a parody of the song "Kuroneko no Tango," which was popular at the time. It was a simple story with poor drawing skills, but we were staying overnight and had no entertainment, so it made everyone laugh, which seemed to ease the tension a little, and I felt like the animation improved.
Another day, I wrote something silly like "I'm too tired to drive today" on a piece of animation paper and pinned it to a shelf on my desk with a thumb tack. This went over well, so I hung another piece of animation paper from the ceiling with something like "Must-Complete Video by November 16th (Sunday) Kindy Lion: United." This prompted the animators to start hanging doodles underneath it. There were 50 of them in total, and such trivial mischief brought the Kindly Lion team together. When Kindly Lion finished, the doodles were taken down. But, they were not thrown away. Rather, carefully stored away and treasured as memories.
The second Animarama following "One Thousand and One Nights" was decided to be "Cleopatra".
Although Eiichi Yamamoto had left Mushi Production, they decided to have him participate in the film as co-director with Osamu Tezuka.
. . . The production took place in Studio 2, with the cooperation of the "Ashita no Joe" and "Moomin" teams.
As the deadline for completing "The Kindly Lion" approached, there was no time to play any more.
I also became best friends with Yamamori, who worked with Utsumi on "Kindly Lion". Yamamori was renting a room in a nearby pastry shop, but I was surprised at how small the room was, under the stairs. But he didn't mind, saying that it came with meals and that he could sleep there.
. . . At that time, drinking coffee to stay awake like Tezuka did was not yet common, and most people preferred to drink tea. Drinks were also limited to juices, such as cider, Bireley's orange juice, and Pocari lemon juice. Coke was still rare. It tasted like the medicine you get when you have a cold. In fact, it was around 10 years later, around 1980, that I was able to drink Coke.
Some people had alcohol hidden away, and as the mood rose, people started playing the guitar. The illustrator, Kamiguchi, was a skilled enka singer, performing songs such as "Hot Spring Town Elegy" and "Is Sake Tears or Sighs?"
There was a woman called Yoko Yamamoto, who was a different person with the same name as the actor. She had a high fever and caught a cold while working. Her house was in Asakusa, so I drove her home. She was shivering from the cold, so I turned the heater up to the highest setting, even though it was midsummer, and drove her home drenched in sweat. She also promoted me as a "good person."
Everyone knew that she was a crybaby, so they purposely chose a sad song and played it near her. She said "you're making me cry again," and she immediately started crying. This got everyone excited. That's how we would relieve stress.
. . . The following New Year brought a shock. It was the news that Mr. Yutaka Yoshimura, who had done background work for TCJ's Ninpu Kamui Gaiden and Sazae-san, had committed suicide on temple grounds.
What happened to Yutaka Yoshimura seemed like a fire on the other side of the river, and it was shocking to hear that he was only 21 years old. But at Mushi Pro, as I've written about before, there were only happy stories.
I felt lonely as one after another of my colleagues quit, but it seemed that they were doing so to go independent, and Mushi Production's business was deteriorating, so there was no hope of pay increases or bonuses. But there was still a sense of security within Mushi Pro, as if to say, "Osamu Tezuka is waiting in the wings."
I didn't know much about Utsumi's partner, Kasai, but it turns out she joined the company in response to a recruitment call in June last year.
Utsumi must have fallen in love at first sight and gone after her fiercely.
She said "Come to my apartment tonight, with K-san." I knew it was Umi-kun's apartment. I had been to his apartment several times.
. . . They poured juice, but couldn't get to the point. He just drank tea and didn't follow the conversation. Finally, he managed to say, "We want to get married." Then, the two of them bowed and asked us to take care of them.
It seems that the reason why Tezuka-sensei liked to call young staff members to chat late at night was because of his mother, and Tezuka-sensei's mother called the office phone during the 3:00pm break, asking if she could come by for a visit. We had tea and sweets, and sang songs accompanied by his mother on the piano.
We wanted to ask Tezuka-sensei to be the matchmaker, but Umi-kun declined, saying it was too intimidating. At the meeting with the mother, we announced that "Umi-kun has made up his mind and has decided to get married." Tezuka's mother called his father, Kitakaze-san, in his room next door and said, "We'd like to be the matchmakers." The father's eyes lit up with joy behind his glasses, and he immediately agreed.
"Takashi Yanase's Lecture" was held at Prince Takanawa Hotel. I was ordered by Tezuka to go, but I don't remember much about what I did. I remember that the audience was full of female college students, and that I screened a 16mm film of "The Kindly Lion" on a projector. At the end, Yanase gave me an envelope saying it was for taxi fare. I declined, saying "I do this for work," but he insisted, so I accepted it.
That day, I went straight home and looked into the envelope. There was 20,000 yen in it. At that time, I was working 70 hours of overtime, and my salary for one paycheck (paid biweekly) was still not more than 20,000 yen.
The next morning, I went to the president's office first thing and reported to Tezuka about the previous day, saying, "I received this as taxi fare, but since I went there for work, I'll give this to the company." Then, smiling, Sensei said, "You've been given it, so keep it." Needless to say, I immediately went to the bank and saved the money.
Around this time, they had decided to get married, so on Sundays I went out with Umi-kun to look for a venue. Kasai-kun had called them beforehand, and we went to check the location.
We visited Shinjuku Station Building, Chinzanso, Diamond Hotel, churches, and other venues often used by Mushi Production, but none of them satisfied Umi-kun and his family.
We finally decided on the New Japan Hall near Tamachi Station, where we had previously held a lecture by Takashi Yanase. We decided to charge a fee.
Although the venue was far away, I wanted everyone to come, so I set the fee at 1,000 yen. I ended up being the MC, and had to practice the language I would use at such an auspicious occasion, but I had a great time.
The meeting took place in the mother's room.
When they said they would start making the invitations, we all offered to split up and make them, but they wanted to make them heartfelt, so they wanted just the two of them to make them.
The invitation was then shown to me. It was a postcard-sized colored paper folded in half, with the following on the front:
"Announcement of marriage:
Takeo Utsumi
Shizuko Kasai
A picture of two people riding a motorcycle.
Inside,
"XX the girl"
"Motorcycle bastard."
"We met by chance"
"I'm getting married."
"Is this a prank by God...?"
On the next page,
Announcement: May 4th 1:30-4:00PM
Shibata-cho New Japan Hall
Entry fee: 1000 yen"
. . . I couldn't help but smile when I imagined the two of them happily working on this project in their apartments after work.
I received the 8th Ofuji Noburo Award at the Mainichi Film Awards for "The Kindly Lion." I feel that all my hard work has paid off. With "Pictures at an Exhibition," I only remember helping out, and my name is not in the credits, but this time I produced it all by myself, without giving Kappa-san any trouble or complaining at all. I even served as assistant director and was involved in the entire production, which was a very fulfilling experience, and it won me the Ofuji Noburo Award. I cannot express to you how happy I was.
I went with Umi-kun, his girlfriend Chi-ko, and K-ko to the New Japan Hall for a meeting. I learned for the first time that Chi-ko's parents made the wedding dress, and since they live nearby, they said they would show it to K-ko next time. When I said, "Let me see it," she said, "Men, please see it on the day."
It's impossible to do it all with the 1,000 yen fee, so of course it will be out of pocket. The more friends come, the more money they have to spend, and the expenses pile up. "But it's a once in a lifetime thing, so I'll do my best even if I have to get a part-time job," he said, and her eyes lit up as she watched.
. . . This month, Umi-kun has been taking a lot of days off. I thought he was working a part-time job because the wedding was hard, but when I asked Chi-ko about it, she said he was really sick. I nagged him not to push himself too hard, saying that it was a Mushi Pro tradition for everyone to help out at weddings, so I took them to Umi-kun's apartment and dropped K-ko off. "Umi-kun, you look tired," K-ko said in the car.
. . . On Friday May 8th, Tezuka-sensei's mother called to gather the organizing committee for Umi-kun's wedding. Utsumi and the others were there, despite being absent most of the time, so we had a final meeting to make arrangements. The reception was handled by a woman from the production and general affairs department, who also confirmed the attendance so far. Once most of the arrangements had been finalized, Tezuka-sensei, who had finished some of his work, showed up.
. . . He said, "I think I'll be able to attend on the day," and he decided to come in his car with his parents, who were acting as matchmakers.
"Now that I think about it, at Masayan's wedding, everyone drew colorful graffiti on the new car he'd finally bought. And on top of that, he had a lot of empty cans hanging from the back of his car, on the bumper and muffler. They departed with everyone waving goodbye, but it was so flashy. The empty cans made a loud clang, and Masayan drove off, looking helpless, but everyone was laughing their heads off."
When that story came up, everyone remembered and laughed.
"And then you know what? After we turned the gate and were out of sight, we went into the gas station and the two of us took off the cans."
"That's right, in that condition you wouldn't be able to make it to the hotel."
"And then they wiped the graffiti off the car."
"That's not quite the first job we did together."
"But then some idiot wrote it in colored paint."
"Finishing paint doesn't fade."
"So my cuffs are soaked, my shoes are soaked."
Just imagining it, everyone is laughing their heads off.
. . . "You'd better be careful Utsumi, getting married in less than a year might make her resent you." We were good-natured friends who made threats like that and then laughed again.
As I walked them back to their apartment, he said, "I'm sorry for causing everyone trouble," and I replied, "Everyone's having a great time; no one is bothered with you. On the contrary, you're sharing our joy; everyone was happy today, just like you were."
He looked haggard again, but I said goodbye to the two of them and dropped K off, saying, "You should keep your part-time work to a minimum."
When someone said to me, "Utsumi didn't seem in good spirits," I replied, "It's the struggles leading up to getting married."
On Monday, May 11th, I was very busy with Eiichi Yamamoto and others at the back room of Nippon Television's 20th Century "Birth of Japan". Since Eiichi and others went out drinking in the evening, I couldn't do any more work. Then, just after 6:00, I got a call from Tezuka-sensei's mother, who was worried and asked me to go and check on Umi-kun. After that, I practiced singing with the mother's piano accompaniment.
On Tuesday, May 12th, I was busy with the shooting of "Birth of Japan" until Eiichi-san left, and I worked until almost 10:00. After 10:00, I went to visit Umi-kun's apartment, and K-ko, who was waiting for me, said he'd been resting for a long time.
Utsumi's apartment was in Higashikurume. Utsumi and his friends, who commuted by train, got off at Higashikurume Station, crossed the bridge, exited the only ticket gate on the north side of the platform, and walked back along the narrow road of the station towards Ikebukuro.
. . . I parked the car in a field and went with K-san to Umi-kun's apartment.
I knocked lightly and said my name, and Shizuko came out. Utsumi was sat down, and turned around with a grim look on his face.
When I asked, "Is it okay that he isn't sleeping?" Shizuko answered for him, "If he lies down, he gets in pain and falls down, so he just sleeps sitting in a chair."
He said that when he tried to sleep by lying down on the futon, it was too painful and he couldn't sleep, so he felt more comfortable sitting in a chair like that.
Shizuko and K-san made tea and set it on the table.
Umi-kun was sitting in a chair, leaning against the desk and facing me. He hadn't even been able to shave, and his beard was growing wild.
As we began discussing the wedding, he seemed to perk up a little, and joked about how he'd gotten her driver's license at a nearby driving school, and how he was still nervous about driving, even though they were going on their honeymoon in a car.
"I only have a week left, so I need to get better first," he said, but the conversation turned to concerns about his health.
"I've repeatedly advised her to go to the hospital," Shizuko said.
When I asked, "Have you seen a doctor?"
"Once. Yamada-san."
He said he had just had it checked out a while ago.
"The local doctor won't do, let's get it checked at a bigger hospital."
"I'll get Yamada to take a look at it again," Utsumi said.
"No, you should go to a hospital. Go."
"He hates hospitals," Shizuko said, sounding annoyed.
"This small doctor can't fix it, so let's go to a big hospital in Tanashi," I said, my voice getting louder.
"The neighbors," he said, to lower my tone.
"You shouldn't take on part-time jobs. Right now, you need to get better. If you're worried about the money for the wedding, I can help you out."
"We don't want to cause trouble for other people, so we'll just try our best," said Shizuko.
"Hey, asshole, it's okay to be annoying. You're my friend, you should be annoying me more."
I get another warning that my voice is too loud.
"I don't have a part-time job right now, Shizuko."
"You're in no condition to do that."
"Don't be a spoiled brat, go to the hospital."
I got excited and my voice got louder again.
"Don't be so angry," he apologized in a weak voice.
The next thing I knew, it was around midnight.
"She must be worried too. If things continue like this, you won't be able to have a wedding. Make sure you go to the hospital tomorrow."
"Yes, I'll definitely go," he replied.
Shizuko walks me to the door.
"He says he'll go, so I know you're worried, but I'm counting on you," I said, and left the apartment.
As I was dropping her off, in the car K asked me, "Why didn't you force him to the hospital?" I answered, "It's between the two of them, and there might be a lot going on, so I couldn't be that forceful."
"Maybe we should call an ambulance."
"Hmmm...." I was so indecisive that it irritated K. We went past K's house to Jindaiji Temple, parked the car there, and discussed it.
. . . There was a knock on the door; it was two young police officers on bicycles.
"What's the matter at this late hour?" one of them asked. This was an interrogation.
"We were talking."
"We've received information that a violent criminal is roaming the area, so be on alert. It's dangerous, so please go home," he said. I knew that it was a lie, but I had to move my car.
When I arrived at K's house, the lights were already off and the family seemed to be asleep.
The conversation about Utsumi came back up, so I parked the car on a nearby road and started talking again. A car stopped in front of me, and a man got out and started picking a fight. There was another in the passenger seat, but he didn't seem to move. I was a little annoyed, so I got out of the car and confronted him. He looked drunk, but he wanted a fight, and he was saying nonsense.
A car pulled up behind me, and a man approached, asking in a gentle voice, "What's wrong?"
"This guy is starting trouble." I answered, thinking that help had arrived. But then I noticed that the man was hiding something like a stick in his right hand. I jumped into the driver's seat and he tried to stop me, but I slipped past and escaped. K-san was right, as expected, and now two cars were chasing us. The two circled around, and then four people were chasing us. It was easy to get away from them, as I was used to delivering pay checks from the bank. (Apparently, we were being targeted by extremists?)
It was already 7:00 in the morning when I dropped K off at her house. "I've got an all-night shoot today, so I can't see you," I said as we parted ways.
I was absolutely disgusted with myself, I needed to be more decisive. I was angry because I had hit a sensitive spot, and on top of that I had almost started a fight, which ended with me being attacked by a thug. I was a terrible man for putting K-san in danger, I thought to myself as I returned to the office.
Just as Eiichi Yamamoto arrived, the filming of "Birth of Japan" began. Therefore, the background and cels that were collected the night before had to be matched. They got to work on that task and filming began around noon. Filming continued until nearly 9:00, and Eiichi went out drinking with his friends to soothe his tired body. Eiichi also seemed to be dragging his leg recently, probably due to fatigue. I was also dragging my leg, which was hurt by a sprain. I wondered if sprains were contagious, I thought as I watched Eiichi leave.
For tomorrow, I combined the cells collected from the finishing contractor with the backgrounds sent by the background crew. Normally, the assistant director would do this job, but for "Birth of Japan," I was the only one doing it. Around 11:00, I heard the sound of several people making a commotion on the second floor, but I didn't pay it any attention, thinking it was just the usual.
The "Birth of Japan" room was the farthest room on the first floor of Studio 2, and no one came to ask me about it.
I continued working on preparing for filming, but the noise from the second floor was still going on. I thought about saying something to them, but I was tired and didn't have the energy to do so, so I lined up the chairs and fell asleep just before 4:00.
11:30 p.m. My best friend Utsumi died.
I woke up at 9:00. Perhaps it's my body's alarm, but if I slept with my clothes on, I was able to wake up at 9:00.
I brushed my teeth, washed my face, punched the time clock at Studio 1, and returned.
As I started to climb the stairs to the second floor to say good morning to everyone on the second floor, I bumped into Ushigoe coming down from above, his face looking pale.
"Hey, I heard that Utsumi died."
"Bull. There are jokes that are okay to tell and jokes that are not okay to tell. What are you talking about? Yesterday, I yelled at him to go to the hospital." I screamed, ready to hit him.
"I'm not lying."
Tears were flowing from my eyes.
"It's not a lie, it's true..."
"Yesterday at around 11:30, Kasai called me and the boss, and the others all rushed over. The boss hasn't left yet."
When I saw Ushigoe's tears, I realized that this was no joke, so I jumped in the car and headed to Utsumi's apartment with him.
My mind was blank and I had no idea where we were or how we were driving. He was lying on his futon, his beard neatly shaven, and in his hands a short sword was placed. I was amazed that Kasai-kun had the will to have gone that far, and tears welled up. There was even incense by his pillow, and I lit it and clasped my hands together as he slept peacefully.
. . . As she always did, Shizuko was snuggled up to Takeo's feet as he dozed off, face down on the desk. It seemed like Takeo had woken up, so she asked him if he wanted something to eat. He nodded slightly, so Shizuko made him some porridge, which he usually wouldn't eat. She blew on it to cool it down, and gave him a bite.
Takeo said, "I'll lie down for a bit."
She was surprised that Takeo, who hadn't been able to sleep in bed for days, asked to "lie down," but she supported him and helped him lie down. She felt a little happy that if he could continue sleeping in bed like this, his fatigue would go away and he would recover more quickly.
It was past 11:00 at night, and Shizuko, tired from nursing, was snuggled up next to Takeo.
Takeo was startled by pain and got up, but when she saw him he pretended to be dead.
That was a lot better. "Don't mess around, play dead, or try to scare me again," Shizuko said.
When they first started living together, Takeo would pretend that he was dead and she would mess around with him. She would tickle his armpits and pinch his tummy, and then he couldn't stand it anymore, so he got up and hugged her.
Those memories came back to her mind.
She was glad that he had recovered. She immediately pinched him gently and tickled his armpits. But there was no reaction. He couldn't have endured that much, so she slapped him in surprise, but he hadn't moved at all. His expression was calm. She looked into Takeo's face and just watched. Her mind was blank, the world had stopped. She couldn't think of anything, and didn't know what had happened. Time had simply stopped.
Suddenly coming to her senses, she opened the door, ran outside, and ran to the pay phone. Realizing she didn't have any coins, she hurried back, grabbed a small bottle from the tea dresser, and ran to the phone. With trembling hands, she couldn't open the cap of the bottle, and the cap fell to the floor, as if in slow motion. After the coins fell, she put 10 yen into the phone and called Mushi Pro.
At Mushi Production Studio 2 Mr. Shindo of the animation team was working overtime. Mr. Shindo was the chief animation director, loved by the staff as an older brother and nicknamed "Onushi" because it was his catchphrase.
The phone nearby rang, and when Shindo answered it, he heard a crying, trembling voice say, "Umi-kun died." It took him a while to understand what was being said, but he realised it was a call from Kasai.
He notified the staff around him, got some of them in his car, and rushed over to Utsumi's apartment. When he opened the door, he found Kasai, slumped next to Utsumi, in a daze. An ambulance was called immediately, but they said the autopsy would come later and just went home.
He asked Kasai for the contact information of Utsumi's parents and contacted them, and gave other instructions to his subordinates with great efficiency. He had incense prepared, burned it, folded his hands, and calmed down. When he looked at his face, he saw that he still had stubble. He brought a razor and gently shaved him, placing his hands together and the knife on it. He did everything he could think of with great composure.
They said there would be an autopsy, so I was told to leave Kasai behind and go outside. I called the company from a pay phone and contacted K-ko. I decided to pick her up right away, so I went to the office to pick her up. In the car on the way to the apartment, she kept crying and screaming, "I should have told her to take him to the hospital even if it meant forcing him," and "I should have told her to call an ambulance."
I arrived at the apartment, but Utsumi wasn't there. After the autopsy was over, I contacted Kasai and was told that his family had taken him back to their home in Yachimata. After 4:00, I picked up Tezuka-sensei's mother, K-ko, Enochan, and Masuda-san and headed to Utsumi's parents' house in Yachimata.
Friday May 15th is Tomobiki, so the funeral was moved to the 16th. We canceled the wedding venue reservation.
The funeral was held at his parents' home on Saturday, May 16th, and was attended by many staff members from Mushi Production, including Tezuka-sensei.
. . . In my diary I wrote that "Umi-kun seemed to be smiling a little."
Utsumi's wedding ceremony was cancelled.
I attended Utsumi's funeral in Yachimata
"—10 days before the wedding, my fiancé was tragically killed... The "Ashita no Joe" murder case that gave birth to a tragic bride.
There are 13 TV manga and gekiga programs every week. In the shadow of an unprecedented anime boom, the "stars of today" animators are collapsing one after another due to exhaustion. One hangs himself, another is caught by his fiancé 10 days before the wedding...
"I'm sorry," he wrote in a suicide note to his coworker as he committed suicide.
An animator's health is his age plus 10. An animator's salary is his age times 1000. So they mock themselves by saying. Even if they work themselves to the point of wearing themselves out and becoming 10 years older than they really are, their income is still so low. When Yutaka Yoshimura committed suicide this January, he was 21 years old and his salary was exactly 1,000x his age, or 21,000 yen. He had few ties with his family and was raised by his uncle alone, with only painting and playing guitar as hobbies. He was a lonely young man. Three years ago, he joined TCJ Animation Center, one of the major animation companies, and was happy to have made some good friends.
However, around that time, the company began to streamline, and the number of employees, which had been 200 at its peak, was reduced to almost half, including some who gave up and left the company. This was a shock to Yoshimura.
. . . Yoshimura's dream was to travel abroad. Of course, it was impossible to save up enough money for a trip abroad from a salary of 21,000 yen. Yoshimura started a part-time job delivering milk in the mornings on New Years. "I'll do my best this year," he declared to his colleagues, with a rare bright look on his face.
However, the tiring nature of his job made part-time work impossible. He soon caught a cold and was absent from work for a day. The next day, he was found hanged to death in the grounds of a temple next to his apartment in Yokohama.
There was a suicide note scribbled in pencil.
"I'm so sorry that things have become so difficult. I don't know how to apologize, I'm so sorry. My current company is too strict. I lost. I've caused you all so much trouble, I don't know how to apologize, I'm so sorry. I've been helped so much up until now, and now I've taken revenge like this, I'm a really useless man. I don't know about my company or other companies, but it's terrible. The salary that can't make ends meet without working part-time, and the rationalization that's tearing everyone apart. I lost to that. And to myself. I'm so sorry." (Original text)
In this short sentence, the word "sumimasen" is repeated four times.
. . . Disney's comics cost about $100,000 per production. Japan spends only one-tenth of that. Moreover, animator salaries account for 70% of the total cost. To make a profit, the only option is to cut labor costs. Animator salaries are kept at the bare minimum. They have no choice but to work longer hours and do part-time jobs even after coming home.
As a result, animators age 10 years faster than ordinary people. Even in the anime industry's legendary "Mushi Production," where this is not an exception.
. . . Takeo Utsumi (27), an animator at Mushi Production, had been feeling unwell since the beginning of this year and had to take a lot of time off work.
The direct cause seems to be the theatrical film "One Thousand and One Nights" produced by Mushi Production last year. They were pressed for time to get the film out, and worked almost all night for two months. Two or three staff members are still on sick leave.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Utsumi was a very healthy man. His face and physique looked like he would never die. He may have had overconfidence in his health. After "One Thousand and One Nights," he went on to be in charge of the animation for "Ashita no Joe." "Ashita no Joe" is known for its action scenes. That meant he had to draw a lot of pictures, which made him even more tired.
There were other circumstances that made it difficult to remain idle. Last June, a girl named Shizuko Kasai, who is a color artist, joined the company. While working together on "One Thousand and One Nights," the two hit it off, and after the film was released, during a week's break, Utsumi of Otokichi took Kasai on the back of his motorcycle and went on a trip.
One day after the holidays, Utsumi showed a draft of a poem to his colleague Shimozaki, who could play the guitar, and asked him to set it to music.
When you get married,
I'll send you a round mirror.
I'll send you a round mirror,
because it would be a waste,
if your round face,
is too big to fit inside it.
To be precise, it should be "When we get married." The couple was already engaged. The completed song was to be performed at their wedding.
. . . Even though he was resting, Utsumi couldn't stretch out and sleep. He felt nauseous when he laid down. He had no choice but to lean against his desk, just like he always does when resting at work.
When Shimozaki, who had been asked to officiate at the wedding in May, visited the apartment to discuss the matter, Utsumi remained in the same position and did not even look up. However, his voice sounded surprisingly cheerful as he said, "I think I'll be able to go to work in about a week. I'm sorry I've caused so much trouble for everyone."
However, on the 3rd, during dinner, his condition suddenly worsened. For the first time, Kasai helped him lay down on the futon. He suddenly started to clutch his chest and began to suffer, then he suddenly became quiet.
The colour of his lips had already changed.
Kasai took out the wedding ring he had prepared for the wedding day from the closet and put it on Utsumi's finger. Utsumi took his last breath as he held it in his hands.
The direct cause of death was heart failure, but it seems that it wasn't just his heart that was failing, but also his internal organs.
"At the funeral, which was held in my hometown of Yachimata (Chiba Prefecture), everyone cried out loud," says Shimozaki.
"I would never recommend this to anyone wanting to become an animator. And yet I can't quit this job. One reason is that I love drawing, but more than anything it's because of the wonderful human relationships. Sharing hardships in the same workplace 24 hours a day, we become closer than family. That's why it's so hard to take time off, even when I'm not feeling well, because I know that if I take time off, it will be a burden to one of my coworkers. You could even say that it was this sense of camaraderie that shortened Utsumi's life..."
Even the animators at Mushi Production, known as the "Sleepless City of Nerima," decided to "exercise self-restraint from working overtime after 10:00pm." However, nearly a month has passed since then, and the lights in the Mushi Pro building are still on brightly past midnight.
However, Kasai, who lost her friend and fiancé Utsumi just 10 days before their wedding, is still holed up in the apartment that was supposed to be their new home, and barely goes out at all."
The above is from the June 21, 1970 issue of Weekly Meisei (Volume 621), and has been reproduced almost entirely in its original form.
At the time, this article was full of mistakes and I was very dissatisfied with it. The last part didn't really capture the reality at all. At Mushi Productions there was no sense of 10:00 being overtime, so there was no way to refrain from working overtime after 10:00. We had to refrain from working overtime until past midnight, and we stopped sticking to that. It was never the case that the studio was empty after 12:00.
But that was a time when there was no recording equipment. Mr. Nagasawa was able to write this article just by taking notes from his interview.
Modern recording technology has become very convenient, but there are many interviews that just record voices and convert them into text, and do not capture the inner thoughts of the subjects.
I feel sad that such professional journalists are no longer around.
May 17th, 1970 (Sunday). I stayed overnight to shoot the first episode, and couldn't get any work done.
May 18th, 1970 (Monday). It's fine when I'm at work, but once everyone has left I'm alone in the room and all that's left is regret, and I can't stop the tears from flowing. I don't go home.
May 19th, 1970 (Tuesday). I'm crying as I listen to the sound of the rain. I should just concentrate on my work, but I can't forget.
May 20th, 1970 (Wednesday). Mr. Seyama, the director, comes to my room. He's worried and listens to me. He says, "I'm disappointed in you. I didn't think you were that kind of guy." He encourages me to get better quickly and concentrate on my work. I want to talk to K-ko, but K-ko is also regretful and blames herself. She is always on the move with her friends, and the two of us are the only ones who can't meet.
May 21st, 1970 (Tuesday). I received a call from Kasai, which comforted me. She asked me to help her organize the things Takeo had left at the office on Friday, and to carry them to his apartment.
May 22nd, 1970 (Wednesday). From K-ko's behavior, I had a premonition that we were going to break up.
May 23rd, 1970 (Friday). I went home and slept until noon. I met Kasai-kun, and together we sorted out Umi-kun's belongings and carried them to the apartment. She said she would rent an apartment and live there alone. . . . "I'm scared to be alone," Shizuko said. Tomorrow, May 24th, was the day they were supposed to get married.
No further diary entries were written after this.
In a conversation with Umi-kun and the others, I once said, "I want to write a novel. But I've lived an ordinary life, so I don't have anything worth writing about. If only something great or tragic happened, I could write about it."
That, too, bothered me. I didn't want this to happen, I blamed myself for having had such strange hopes.
And I couldn't even write in my diary, in fact I stopped writing altogether.
NOTE: Yoshifumi Seyama passed away in August 1973.
I've had many interactions with Seyama-san as a director, but on this project I worked with him in the capacity of animation director. Unlike today, a skilled animator was considered to be someone who could draw characters as they really were, and he was one of the few professional animators in that time.
I offer my deepest condolences.
Shizuko Kasai was a strong-willed girl, but she lived alone in an apartment and went to work. However, her attitude towards life became rough. She would drink until late at night, chasing after the visions of Umi-kun, crying, screaming, dancing wildly and crying out "Take me with you." Days like this happened often. She would not return to her apartment, and would continue to drink until the morning. Many of her colleagues were worried about her and followed her.
Around the same time, I rented an apartment. I wanted to splurge on sleep, so I bought a semi-double luxury bed and an air conditioner, which was quite luxurious at the time. I also bought a large bookshelf, a refrigerator, and a Sony Trinitron color TV.
One day, perhaps it was just a dream, but I saw it clearly, and I still remember it vividly.
I was weak when it came to ghosts and spirits. I wonder if that's what they felt when they appear in a dream. I turned to my left and saw Utsumi standing there without saying a word. There was a light shining on him from behind so I could only see his silhouette, but the shadow floating in the pale light was undoubtedly Utsumi.
Strangely, I wasn't scared at all. I wanted to call out to him, but I guess that's why they it call sleep paralysis; I couldn't make a sound or move my body.
I sat up in bed and was stunned for a while. I didn't know if what I had just seen was reality or a dream, but I did know that time was moving.
Umi-kun didn't say anything, but I felt that "I was forgiven." I also heard "Let me go", and I felt that he was asking me to. I had to put an end to this everlasting regret.
I was woken up in the middle of the night by a knock on the door. When I opened the door, Kasai was standing there, looking quite drunk. The taxi driver was also standing there with a pitying look on his face. I paid the fare.
It turns out she had gone out drinking with some friends as usual, and had taken a taxi thinking she could go home on her own, but she felt lonely and couldn't go back to her apartment, so she came to me.
In a drunken state, she calls out to "Takeo" and cries out, "Why did you go alone?" and "Take me with you." I asks her to keep her voice down, as she is disturbing the neighbors.
There was nothing I could do but hold her in my arms, and eventually she fell into a deep sleep, so I laid her down on the bed. I watched over her until the morning, then left a note on the glass table saying, "Going to work first. Feel free to use it," before leaving for work.
When I got home, the place had been neatly tidied up, and there was a note on the glass table apologizing for the previous day, with a note that said "PS: Thank you for the meal," and an empty VSOP bottle that someone had treasured and displayed.
This happened several times, and when I looked into it I found out the illustrator, Nitta-kun, was one of the victims. I started working together with Nitta-kun on watch duties more often.
Around June, Nitta-kun fell ill. In the beginning, I received a call that Kasai-kun had passed out due to drunkenness, and I was forced to stay at Nitta-kun's apartment and take care of Kasai-kun. She was so engrossed in nursing that she stopped drinking and seemed to recover completely.
One day, Nitta-kun started coughing nonstop. They asked his doctor, Nishida, to examine him, but he had already fallen asleep. Just then, Maruyama came by, and with the help of their two wives, they were able to get Nishida to examine him.
Maruyama was Mr. Maruyama from Madhouse, and even back then he never appeared in the public eye, yet in times of emergency he would take appropriate action and was a very reliable person.
. . . Nitta-kun was still unable to leave the hospital, but things were returning to normal at Mushi Pro. Kasai-kun also continued to work without a break.
K-ko's scars were deeper than expected, and the two of us no longer met. Instead, she started going out more often with her friends from school, and she even refused to give me permission to drop her off.
As I watched dejectedly as they went off to have fun, Kasai introduced me to Fumiko and invited her to dinner with us. That's when the mistakes began. It was probably a punishment from heaven. Before I knew it, she had taken up residence in my apartment. I would tell her to go home and go to work, but when I got home, she was there. I was so distressed that I stopped going back to my apartment, and either went back to my parents' house or stayed overnight at the office.
On Saturday, September 13th, Kasai received a call from Fumiko, saying "I took sleeping pills." Kasai immediately rushed to my apartment, called an ambulance, and had me admitted to Tanashi Hospital. I was rushed to the hospital after receiving the call, and was questioned by the police.
I was given pills after a diagnosis so that I could sleep right away to get some rest. I got weeks worth at a time, so I had between 70 and 80 pills. Lately I had been taking them because I couldn'y sleep easily. But I had taken all of them already.
I talked to Fumiko's parents. I explained that I had no feelings for her, but they bowed and asked me if I could live with them for a year. I did not return to my apartment for a long time.
Every time we met, Kasai would apologize, saying, "I'm sorry." I'd replied, "Don't worry about it." My relationship with K-ko was completely over. I was punished for a year. After talking with my parents, we decided to break up.
K continued to work for Mushi Pro and would write to me whenever something happened, but I only read the letters and was unable to understand what they were saying.
Also, when she was drunk she said to me, "Even if we break up, we can still meet if we want, but you'll never be able to see Takeo again," and it made my heart ache.
On June 26th, [Cleopatra] was released at the same venues as "The Thousand and One Nights," Shinjuku Milano-za, Shibuya Pantheon, and Shochiku Central.
. . . We even had the honor of having a questionable scene drawn by Gisaburo Sugii be cut by the Eirin Film Rating Board.
NOTE: Even if you rewatch it today, if you don't know about the events and topics of the time, [Cleopatra's] not funny at all. It's a joke that will never be funny to people who haven't seen Hane Hajime's "Atto Odoroku Tamegoro!" at 11:00pm, or who have never heard Rakugo. There are way too many of those. I think that people today who know the cameo characters can only say that they were famous.
. . . Perhaps for this reason, on September 24th the following year, 1971, Nippon Herald Films gave up on Mushi Production and produced a film based on an original on Yasuji Tanioka story with Tokyo TV Animation (later Nippon TV Video), called "Yasuji's Pornorama: Do It!!". A play on the word "Animerama".
In Tokyo, the box office results for the year were not bad at all, with "One Thousand and One Nights" coming in third and "Cleopatra" coming in tenth. However, the production costs for "Cleopatra" had increased by 30%, resulting in little profit for Mushi Pro, and forcing employees to volunteer. The threat of a labor union was growing in the rift between the two.
I joined "Ashita no Joe"
I'm in charge of production progress for Ashita no Joe Episode 20: A Bruised Victory.
Osamu Tezuka resigned as president of Mushi Pro.
He moved from Mushi Production to Tezuka Productions.
My overtime pay was cut off at 70 hours, and the rest was given to me as paid time off. Naturally, my paid leave increased, and I had accumulated a full year's worth. I took the paid leave thinking I’d be quitting Mushi Production. When Tezuka retired as president, it was naturally assumed that I would also be resigning. I wanted to use my paid leave, but given Mushi Pro's financial situation, I had no choice but to waive my rights. A small severance payment was still given to me.
Tezuka Productions was located on the 2nd to 4th floors of the butcher's building on the right corner just before the railroad tracks on the way to Mushi Pro.
Mr. Saito and Mr. Hirata, who managed the picture books and other publications of Tezuka's, and Tezuka's nephew, Taku Tezuka, established Hiromi Productions on the second floor of an electrical appliance store near Tezuka Productions. They also served as Tezuka's managers.
Manager Hirata introduced me to Norio Suzuki of the film department.
I was told that there was a work that Tezuka wanted me to see, and he showed me "Misuke in the Land of Ice" in a room on the 7th floor, the top floor of his secret office. The music was great and the story was one of my favorites, so I think my eyes were sparkling.
"It's a film for a Yamaha commercial, but we've received another order this year, so do you want to make it together?" There was no way I could refuse, there was no hesitation. If I refused, I would probably go to hell.
. . . The storyboard was delayed, but the drawings were done by Masanobu's Studio TAKE, and the art setting was done by Minoru Nishida at Mukuo Studio. The finishing touches were done by veteran Keiko Ikeda, who had done coloring on cels and picture books, and she was thorough in finishing the work.
NOTE: He is not the same Norio Suzuki (deceased, adventurer) who discovered Hiroo Onoda, who had been fighting as a Japanese soldier for 29 years after the end of the war in February 1974, hiding on Lubang Island in the Philippines.
From the storyboard stage, I was glued to Tezuka-sensei, and although he was busy with magazines, I had plenty of time since I had submitted my resignation, so I stayed overnight for days on end.
Ikeda-san (now Katayama), who also worked for Hiromi Productions, came running over to help with the finishing touches, helping us day and night, unconditionally. And by the time the colors were specified, she had become a resident of the film department on the second floor.
. . . I didn't sleep for days. I was always with Mr. Tezuka, receiving instructions from him about the filming, and even did the work of assistant director, so it was a job I was involved in a lot.
When it came time to start shooting, Tezuka wrote on animation paper that the background image was different, and that he wanted ferns to be drawn in to make it look more like a jungle. This certainly improved the result, but he didn't know how to ask background artist Nishida to make corrections, as all the backgrounds had already been drawn.
I took Sensei's sketches to Nishida and explained the situation, and he started correcting all the backgrounds on the second floor of Tezuka Productions. The backgrounds were the only part I couldn't help with myself, so I could only wash and clean the brushes. But by the time of filming, which began the next day, her was finished. He had fixed everything by himself.
. . . I saw the rushes, and the background looked like a jungle. But I liked the story of "Ice Country" better.
NOTE: When the work was completed, I was not yet an employee of Tezuka Productions. Norio Suzuki explained to me that he could not put my name in the credits. Later, Tezuka found out and gave me the film as a proof that I had made the work.
Tezuka-sensei called me to come to the main house.
When I entered the old president's office, there was a man standing next to Tezuka.
"This is Hirofumi Nishizaki from the Department of Commerce," Sensei introduced me.
"In fact, Mr. Nishizaki decided to broadcast "Apollo's Song" for two seasons at Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)."
Sensei's face lit up with joy, and he said, "You'll produce it for me, right?"
At the time I had made many pilot films based on Osamu Tezuka's original works for Mushi Production, and had tried to sell them, but no one had ever broadcast them. In retrospect, this seems to have been due to a lack of sales force, but perhaps to hide their lack of power, they even created a myth that Tezuka's originals were already outdated and no one would buy them.
. . . Nishizaki was a great hero, and I looked at him with respect and shook his hand firmly, saying "I'll do my best."
In preparation for adapting Apollo's Song into an anime, Tezuka began a new serialization of "Mama-chan" in order to target a lower age rating.
. . . As Mushi Pro had stopped producing works based on Tezuka's originals, their copyright income decreased and they ran out of funds. In order to avoid repeating that mistake, the copyright issue was carefully considered.
Upon investigation, we found out that "Mama-chan" was already a registered trademark, so we couldn't use it.
After a few days of discussion, Tezuka-sensei wrote "Melmo" on the blackboard with a pen, and Taku said, "Like metamorphosis." To be honest, it was written in a language I didn't understand, so "Melmo" seemed like a strange name.
In the end, there was no other name available, and it hadn't been registered, so "Melmo" was selected as it was easy to pronounce, and we registered it. The title was then decided upon as "Marvelous Melmo."
The staff recruitment began, with Tezuka telling me, "Don't cause any trouble for Mushi Pro."
Norio Suzuki, who had been working alone with me in the film production department of Tezuka Productions, is taking on an important producer role on Marvelous Melmo.
"Just recently, the editorial department suddenly received the following letter. (Weekly Heibon, July 1, 1971)
"Due to some considerations, I have decided to step down amicably from my position as president of Mushi Production, a position that has been held with great support for many years.
The failure of Mushi Pro was due to the failure of the productions. But at the same time, I think the fatal flaw was that there were too many personnel-related accidents. It is true that rumors that "Mushi Pro is profitable" led people wanting a share of the profits to flock to Mushi Production like ants.
I also think it was a mistake that, as the initial enthusiasm and fighting spirit began to die down, we began to reorganize ourselves as a company under the guise of streamlining and take on work for our own selfish purposes.
Streamlining has put a strain on staff, resulting in the formation of a labor union among video production companies, something that was previously unthinkable. Naturally, the labor union demands wages and services. I've been forced to sit at mass collective bargaining sessions more often than I do my job. Of course, this is as an executive.
Finally, I resigned my position as president, which was only in name, resigned as an executive, and left Mushi Pro.
Leaving Mushi Production, which I had come to think of as my own child, was undeniably sad. But Mushi Pro was trying to go in a direction that was completely different from my vision, and become independent. And it was also true that the staff no longer needed me, except for financial support.""
When I was overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to handle alone, my good friend Yasumichi Ide from General Affairs, who had moved into a production role, came to me and asked to work on "Melmo" with veteran producer Hideo Katayama.
I was grateful, but refused, saying that "the requirement from Tezuka is that I don't cause any trouble for Mushi Pro." However, they told me that they had already submitted their resignation and it had been accepted, so they had nowhere else to go. When I learned Katayama, who was a powerful producer, would be joining the production, I was so happy that I almost cried.
[Melmo's] schedule was getting delayed again and again, and as someone watching the process, I found the delays in Tezuka's proofreading frustrating. I had asked the producer Suzuki and director Shimakata to proofread, but the magazine always seemed to take priority, and I became paranoid. Whenever something happened I would say things like, "Maybe I should just quit," or "At this rate I'm going to quit," which I now find embarrassing.
I didn't mean any harm, it just slipped out of my mouth, but to the people around me it must have been unpleasant. I couldn't contain myself. At that moment, a bolt of rage struck. Someone shouted, "Stop making so much noise about quitting! If you want to quit so badly, then just do it!" and slammed the desk. It was an unexpected person, Mr. Akashi, the art director, who was usually a gentleman.
The exchange of words was so strong that even though what he was saying was right, I couldn't back down and we ended up getting in a fistfight. Director Shimakata, who tried to intervene, was thrown about 10 meters (not exaggerating). But when we saw Shimakata lying on the ground in pain, both of us got concerned and stopped the fight.
When I calmed down, I realized that I was the one at fault and that he hadn't said anything wrong. I apologized sincerely. And I vowed to never say anything about quitting again
NOTE: Eventually, we became true friends, and he invited my wife and I to his wedding.
Located in Nishihara, Shibuya Ward, southwest of Shinjuku, Tokyo, there is a slightly French-style street, and when you go up the stairs to the second floor, the master, a sophisticated man with a romantic grey look, will make you coffee. He played some great records for me and helped me relax after work.
Cafe Naohiro. And above it was Studio TAKE.
. . . I saw a girl who worked at Naohiro's every day, during my commute to Ashita no Joe
NOTE: She is now my wife.
On this day, art director Teiichi Akashi and Eriko Kono were married at the Sekimachi Catholic Church. The wedding reception started at 1:00pm and I attended with my fiancé.
The script was written by Tatsuo Shibayama, a.k.a. Ryu Shibayama, who was a producer and once the former chairman of the labor union at Mushi Production, and there is a significant scene in the story where Melmo blindly stamps the seal.
"And now, Totoo is, legally, my adopted son," the aunt says. The word "legally" is a brilliant prediction of what was to come.
Perhaps Tezuka had foreseen something ominous.
Marvelous Melmo's final episode broadcast
Episode 26: Goodbye Melmo
The Nishizaki Incident.
. . . I was working on the second floor when Mr. Tezuka came down from the third floor and said, "I can't make my things anymore."
He was in tears and I didn't quite understand what he was saying, but I took it to mean that "Triton of the Sea" was going to be produced entirely by Staff Room and that it could no longer be produced at Tezuka Productions.
In order to console Mr. Tezuka, I told him, "It's fine, let's work on these other projects and do our best," because at the time I was personally planning Angel's Hill and Captain Ken, but he said that this wasn't the case, and that Nishizaki had taken all of his copyrights up to that point. He was crying tears of frustration.
I spoke to Director Shimakata. There was a contract between Osamu Tezuka and Hirofumi Nishizaki, which had Osamu Tezuka's signature and seal on it, and all of Osamu Tezuka's characters up until now have become Hirofumi Nishizaki's personal property.
Therefore, even if we were to produce a work based on Tezuka's original work in the future, the profits would go to Nishizaki personally, so we would not be able to produce any more.
The case went to court, but because of the contract, Tezuka lost the case. And he never spoke about it again.
NOTE: The contract Tezuka-sensei was given was three pages long and written in pencil, looking like nothing more than a memo. Due to his carelessness, he seemed to think it wasn’t a big deal, and, because he was told it was urgently needed and the deadline was late at night, he stamped it blindly without reading the contents.
Regardless of the reason, I believe that if the copyright had remained as it was, Mushi Pro and Mushi Trading could have lasted a little longer. Personally, my life would have been different.
NOTE: Norio Suzuki, who was the head of the film department at Tezuka Productions, was in charge of production and worked in the animation staff room for "Triton of the Sea", but later on, he was found dead alone in his car, which led to an unfortunate incident.
The only asset remaining in the Tezuka Productions Film Division was Takashi Yanase's "The Kind Lion". Shimakata and I tried to sell it to educational film makers as a 16mm audiovisual film for public facilities and libraries, but, since we couldn't use Tezuka's original works, we tried to come up with new plans, such as Microid Z. But we still had the remaining debt for outsourcing payment for Triton, and since we had no money for production costs, the company was in financial difficulty. I felt bad about staying in the Film Division, so in June, after consulting with Shimakata, I offered to resign from my position at Tezuka.
He apologized for putting me in an uncomfortable situation, and gave me the contents of his locker, which contained his precious video recorder, tape recorder, and camera, as a severance payment.
Tezuka Productions closes its film division.
Lease an apartment in Nishihara.
I was in charge of production at Studio TAKE, working on Mon Cheri CoCo. Kozo Masanobu was working as the representative, director, and animation director, and I was also gathering staff, outsourcing, and adjusting schedules. So from the beginning we were very busy and had no time to sleep. In fact, I really didn't sleep at all.
. . . It had been about two weeks since the last time I had a proper sleep, and finally Masanobu and I had a solid plan. Masanobu was going to meet with the animation team in Niigata. I was able to book him a flight for the evening, so I left the rest to them and returned to my apartment in Tanashi for the first time in a long time.
I took a bath and fell asleep in bed, then my wife woke me up, "Masayan called." I looked at the clock and saw that I hadn't even slept for two hours, and she said he couldn't make the flight and the meeting was delayed. Considering my schedule later, I had no choice but to go to Niigata, so I took Masanobu in my car and headed straight there. I think it was Mikuni Pass. We went through a long tunnel, had a meal at the pass, and headed straight for Niigata.
As dawn broke and we reached the Niigata City sign, we got hit by rush hour traffic. That's all I remember, Masayan leaned over and shook my left shoulder, yelling, "Be careful!" I opened my eyes and saw an Isuzu Elf in front of me, and we bumped into each other and stopped. "Why am I here? I was supposed to be sleeping in bed," I thought. I was completely gone.
The car had veered into the oncoming lane and hit an Elf that was trying to avoid it by swerving to the left. But that wasn't all. It hit the first car, then a second, and at this point Masayan woke up and woke me up, and then we collided head-on with a third Elf. Luckily we weren't going very fast in the rush hour so the damage to the car wasn't that bad. However, I was shocked to see Masayan's face—he had cut his forehead on the corner of the rearview mirror. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance, but fortunately wasn't seriously injured. We went to the meeting and returned to Tokyo while there were still trains running. It took several days for the bandage on Masayan's forehead to come off, so word of the traffic accident became popular among the staff.
I was given a six-month driving suspension, and the summary order from the Niigata Summary Court was on file until recently.
NOTE: Someone in Sapporo recently sent me a video of Mon Cheri CoCo. My name was in the opening. I thought it was natural that my name would not be there since I dropped out during the production, but I realized that Masayobu's friendship with me was greater than I had thought. I'm very happy about that.
I received a postcard from Hideo Katayama, who was my right hand man and helped me with the production of Melmo, and Keiko Ikeda, who was in charge of the finishing touches.
"Fleeing from the dust, quietly basking in the autumn sunshine
Savoring the happiness of being together...
This fall, we got married at the Sanin Tsuwano Maria Cathedral.
Water finds a path
Like a river flowing
Our hearts also follow the same path..."
NOTE: At first, I opposed their marriage. I couldn't understand how much he loved her. I had no right to oppose it, as I had no experience in love, but I was too young to understand that. And I still regret it. Looking at the two of them now, I can see that I was wrong in every way. I wanted to tell him that and apologize, but I never had the chance to do so. I'll carry it with me to the next life, and that's the least I can do to apologize to them.
My wedding is held at Shinjuku Station Building. Osamu Tezuka and his wife arranged it. The guardians were Tezuka-sensei's mother and father. Thanks to his father taking many photos, I have a good memory of what the ceremony was like.
I joined Nippon Television Video after being asked by Kazuo Sasaki, whom I met at Mon Cheri CoCo, to take charge of production of Doraemon.
NOTE: Even after Mon Cheri CoCo ended, [Sasaki] continued by taking Doraemon projects to TV stations in Tokyo to sell them. This studio in Tokyo had staff who did animation and finishing work.
When an offer came, Sasaki and I thought, "I want to carry the future of the anime industry from this studio." We talked about creating a studio that would nurture talent who would go places.
Doraemon was contracted for two seasons (26 weeks) from the beginning.
(Already at the time of Mushi Productions, and also at the time of Tezuka Productions' Melmo and Triton, the contracts were six-months. Of course, if it becomes popular (in terms of viewership), it's a different story.)
. . . When I consulted with Sasaki about who should direct the show, I removed the people who had worked on Mon Cheri from the list. [Mitsuo Kaminashi] was a director at Mushi Pro and worked on Astro Boy, Princess Knight, Wanpaku Tanteidan, Moomin, and the Andersen Stories. I strongly recommended Kaminashi because of all these.
. . . As soon as I got [Sasaki's] approval, I went to Kaminashi's house and repeatedly begged him to take on the job. I persuaded them by talking about my dreams for the future and to help nurture young talent at Nippon Television Animation.
He finally relented and was appointed chief director.
[Masao Tokumaru] acted as a liaison between Fujiko-sensei [the author of Doraemon] and handled the script, storyboard, character settings, and color specifications. Recommended by Kazuo Sasaki for scriptwriting and storyboarding.
The production was facilitated mostly by one person, Fujio Kizawa, an employee of NTV TV Video.
. . . There was a bunk bed [in the office] by the window facing Kannana-dori Street, so I was able to take a nap. The windows were double glazed and when closed it was fairly quiet. The air conditioning worked.
Doraemon begins broadcasting.
Episode 1: Here Comes Doraemon!
NOTE: I had a hard time deciding on a color for Doraemon. In the end, Doraemon was blue in the color pages of Fujiko Fujio's original manga. We made several different colors of blue Doraemon, had them proofread by Fujiko Fujio, got his approval, and decided on the color. However, because we made [Doraemon] blue, it blended in with the color of the sky, and we added clouds in the background.
It turned out to be a lot of hard work.
Before the end of the first season (13 broadcasts, 26 episodes), a production meeting was convened, and the TV station decided to continue broadcasting if the audience rating exceeded 10%. The target age group was raised and Doraemon's age was lowered. Doraemon was voiced by Kosei Tomita up to episode 26 (13th broadcast), and from episode 27 (14th broadcast) he was voiced by Masako Nozawa.
The final episode of Doraemon.
The last day of Nippon Television Video.
The sound of a car door slamming echoed throughout the Igarashi Building. Kizawa Fujio got into the passenger seat, his face looking a little flushed. He seemed upset with what he was about to do. The sound of the engine starting echoed through the gap between the buildings, and the Lite Ace van started to move. It was already dark outside. The van did a U-turn at Yamato Overpass and headed towards Nerima. The final episode of Doraemon that I had just watched left me emotionless. Usually, after the final episode had aired, we would have a wrap-up party to blow off steam. But now, in the luggage compartment behind me, there was about 10,000 bags full of animation cels and various materials.
"Nippon TV will really be gone today," Kizawa muttered.
"We have to vacate the building by the end of the day, so we have no choice," I replied. There was a moment of silence. The car turned and went straight through Toyotama, left Route 7 and headed towards Nerima Station. The sound of the blinker echoed. We turned left onto Shin-mejiro Street.
"You finally made it to the final episode, but now what are you going to do?" Kizawa asked.
As we neared the final episode, there was a problem with the outsourcing staff regarding payment for their work. They were concerned that they might not be able to get paid because of President Watanabe's resignation. This wasn't unreasonable, since the industry is known for its financial troubles. Though I worked for companies like Mushi Pro, so I couldn't imagine something like that happening. Some of the subcontractors said that they wouldn't hand over the finished product unless there was a guarantee of payment. Word of this reached the TV station producers, who were worried it would cause a gap in the broadcast. So I went around visiting each of the staff one by one and negotiating with them.
"Will you take responsibility if I don't get paid?"
"If something like that happens, I'll wash my hands and leave the industry, in exchange for you saving face for me right now" I'd reply, to persuade them.
Somehow we managed to get through the situation, and the show was broadcast until the final episode. However, the attitude the company took turned out to be just as the subcontractors feared. We had to pay for the remaining costs by selling our own office supplies. It caused the staff a lot of trouble. That's what Kizawa was asking.
"I'll take responsibility and wash my hands."
"The contractors have told me they aren't asking for that much. There's no need to take all the responsibility on your own" Kizawa said.
With the gas station on our right, we turn right at Tanihara and onto Olympic Street.
"But I want to be true to myself."
Immediately after saying this, I realize I'm lying.
"You're just trying to act cool. You love making anime more than anything. What do you mean, be honest with yourself? You liar!" I thought. We went down a very steep roller coaster-like hill, then back up. A left turn at the overpass and onto Kawagoe Highway.
"Doraemon wasn't in the red, was it?" Kizawa asked.
"That was the thing that concerned me the most as the production chief, but in the end it was in the black. I heard that Sasaki was praised by the president in the past, but it seems that wasn't the case. With the revenue from copyrights coming in, the debt from their previous animations were almost covered, and the president seems to have learned his lesson about how expensive it is to make anime and saw this as a good point to quit. So I made a list of equipment at the Niigata and Tokyo studios. We let the subcontractors set the price, I sold whatever would make money could to deduct from the leftover costs.”
"So, did you buy anything?"
"I heard that it could take single frames, so I bought an 8mm camera and an 8mm projector. Also, unsold taps, brush cleaners, workbenches, colored pencils, pencil sharpeners, and a few erasers. 268,670 yen worth of unwanted items." I still remembered the exact change.
"You bought that much? But you already had a projector and a camera." Kizawa had seen me with a projector and camera before.
"I tried my best to increase the amount we'd pay the subcontractors."
We turned right after Asaka Police Station.
"I went with some of the subcontractors to the warehouse of a shipping company in Shimosato, Higashikurume to pick it all up. The camera and projector were on the list, but they had dissolved."
"What? They weren't there?" Kizawa asked, surprised.
"There was no way to check. The studio there was already closed."
"That's stupid." Kizawa spat out.
"Yeah, anime is stupid."
I pulled into a drive-in with a ramen banner on the right.
. . . "What are you going to do next?"
Kizawa asked, worried about the future.
"I've been working on a project with Dentsu Film Studios, which I've been part of for a while now, at the request of Hiromi Productions. I made a PR film for a nuclear power plant with Joe. After that, I was receiving unemployment benefits, but I had nowhere to go, so I used my apartment as my office and took care of everyone's retirement benefits, advance payments, and other expenses. Assistence in the future will be provided to the agencies and stations from their future copyright revenue. I intend to negotiate with them to see if they can help me."
Eventually we finished our meal, paid the bill, and drove off again.
. . . We crossed Akigase Bridge over the Arakawa River.
Once we reached the end of the bridge, we made a U-turn and headed down the bank.
"Urawa is my hometown, and I went on school trips to Akigase when I was in Rokutsuji Elementary School."
It was pitch black all around.
The headlights lit up the overgrown path.
"The left side is covered with grass now, but this is where Akigase's primroses grow. In the spring there's a lively primrose festival, but no one comes anymore. When I was a student at Warabi High School, I came here to do volunteer work pulling weeds in the primrose habitat."
. . . The road gradually narrowed, and we had to push through the grass. An awful stench entered the car. I could see orange flames burning brightly. Black smoke billowed up, illuminated by the headlights. I backed the car up to the fire.
"We're here.”
Finally, it was time.
The light that came on when I opened the rear gate briefly illuminated a bag of cuts inside the car. Nobita's face was peeking out, smiling.
"Oh. I know who did this cut." Kizawa said, taking out the cel from the bag and holding it up, seeming to recall the hard work that went into it.
"Can't we keep them somewhere?"
Kizawa had been wondering if there was something they could do since the moment we left.
"If you have the space to store them, you can keep as many as you'd like. It was a lot of working making these cuts. Nothing can replace them. But all of today and yesterday there was no one willing to take them. And once the show's over they're just trash. It would cost over 100,000 yen just to process them. So I was asked to dispose of them. And I brought them here."
I knew it would be impossible for Kizawa to keep these in their small apartment.
"Let's do it then."
I urged Kizawa, and he threw the bag into the flames. They went out for a moment, but then the bag caught fire. The fire spread to the background paintings. It didn't spread easily to the cels. Maybe it was reluctant, or maybe it was because of the thickness of the paint. After a while it seemed to give up and the flames started to rise. I watched it burn for a while, but then came to my senses. The two of us threw bags into the flames, one after the other, causing them to go out, again and again.
We threw in flammable items like storyboards and cut sheets, which caught fire easily. But whenever cels went in, the flames got smaller. I poured on the kerosene I brought with me. After a moment, the fire got brighter and burned violently.
"Let's add a little at a time so the flames don’t get too big." It would be troublesome if someone noticed us.
There were scripts for each episode, storyboards, cut sheets, color samples, a color-designated character list, even the original scenario script and a cash ledger. Anything that could burn went in the fire. Just throw them in, one after the other, and mind the flames. Finally, I found enough space to sit in the back of the van and sat down.
"What time is it?"
I looked at the clock in the driver's seat.
"It's just past 1:00am."
I drank the juice that I brought.
"If I could drink beer at a time like this, I feel like I would."
Neither of us drank.
"I just saw the final episode, and in the preview for next week's episode, it said 'Look forward to the next one.'" Kizawa asked, seeming curious.
"I just realized that, even though Doraemon on Nippon TV ended like this, all the staff wanted to continue. I just felt like they would do Doraemon again. That it wasn't the end, and that there would be another episode someday. So I chose 'Look forward to the next one.’ And the yellow bird in the final cut represented my wish for it to come back. In the movie "The Yellow Ribbon of Happiness" that I saw a long time ago, the wish for a safe return was represented by a yellow ribbon, so that's why I made that cut. I don't think anyone will understand the significance, but that's how I felt."
The flames got a little smaller, and it started to get dark again.
"Shall we pick up the pace a bit?"
One after another, bags are thrown in and kerosene is poured on. The flames are bigger than before, getting progressively bolder. The sky began to light up. A pylon came into view and the embankment became clearer. There was just a tremendous amount of black smoke rising.
"Is the fire department going to be okay with this?" Kizawa worried.
"Black smoke usually rises in this area. It's fine, but we shouldn't let it rise too much."
I poured more kerosene on to thin the smoke out.
"It's getting light out, so it should be okay even if the flames get stronger."
The evening star was shining brightly. Soon the sun lit up the embankment on the other side of the river.
"It's already past 6:00," Kizawa said, peering at the clock through the empty van bed. The pile of bags was gone. There was only one left.
Throwing in that bag, the cels inside popped out due to the force. The two of us looked at each other in disbelief. Doraemon is raising his hand with a smile, waving goodbye. And just for a moment, they held back the flames. Then, the cels around Doraemon began to warp. The flames rose with determination. Doraemon's waving hand disappeared into the fire. I stared in amazement.
Some time passed. When we looked at each other's faces again, the area around our eyes was pitch black like a panda’s.
"I'm not crying. It's just the smoke getting into my eyes," I made an excuse. Holding back my tears, I looked up. There was a clear autumn sky, the color of Doraemon. Beyond the bank on the other side of the river, the mountains of Chichibu stood green and lush in the sun. On the left, Mt. Fuji towered majestically.
"Mushi Pro Trading, the company of Osamu Tezuka, who is famous for "Astro Boy," has issued a bounced check for 40 million yen, raising concerns about the impact on the original Mushi Pro."
Mushi Pro goes bankrupt.
The Mushi Pro labor union, led by Chairman Ito, is working on subcontracting the remaining work, and is going through great difficulties to rebuild the company.
Osamu Tezuka’s birthday.
For a while after production ended, I formed a labor union in my apartment in Nishihara, and used it as the base for negotiations with the trustee. For funding, I worked on PR jobs with Joe for Dentsu Films.
NOTE: After March 1975, everyone found work or returned to the countryside, so the labor union at Nippon Television Video came to an end.
I enrolled in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa Vocational Training College.
I graduated from training school and received an award for effort.
My first son was born.
I stopped making animation.
I was a volunteer in my spare time. At that time, the Coming of Age Ceremony was held every year by many volunteer groups that met several months before the ceremony. They shared ideas, joined forces, and received cooperation from the city. Nowadays, it's held by the city, but at the time, we were able to hold a very meaningful Coming of Age Ceremony.
I've acted as a sign language interpreter together with some members of my sign language club, and I had the honor of interpreting Osamu Tezuka's sign language.
Meeting me reminded Tezuka of his painful, agonizing, and regretful experiences at Triton of the Sea, which were beyond words. At the end of the lecture, he wrote the following:
"Believe in people, but don't believe people."
I don't know if the young adults in the audience understood Osamu Tezuka's true intentions. No, perhaps no one did. They probably didn't understand. Maybe I was the only one who understood.
Osamu Tezuka died of stomach cancer (age 60).
After moving to Tezuka Productions with "Marvelous Melmo", I was no longer able to look after [Kasai] as personally as I had done before. Still, I would make an effort to drop by Kasai's workspace on the second floor of Mushi Pro, but with K-san and Uno-san there too, I didn't feel as comfortable there as before.
After I became independent, I was so busy that I only received letters. Even after Mushi Prowent bankrupt, Kasai continued to work hard in the union.
Then I retired from the anime world.
A friend contacted me and said, "Shizuko Kasai has passed away."
Although it was a place in Katayama I knew well, having attended the funeral, it was my first time there and I realized I had never been to her parents' home.
Ms. K was standing in the shade of a tree, and we both noticed each other and exchanged a slight nod.
That was it, there was no conversation.
I met her parents. "I had heard rumors about you for a long time, and I heard that you had been very kind to her."
I was angry at myself and felt ashamed. What kind of help was that? If I was only a half-hearted caretaker, it would have been the opposite of helpful.
I was shown to Shizuko's room on the second floor. She gave me slippers and said, "Chiko told me not to clean it, so it's full of dust." In fact, in the dust was a video desk that Utsumi had used.
. . . Next to it, spread out on a kimono rack, was a wedding dress.
The bridal dress, likely displayed by the bride's parents, was never worn.
The regret of his parents pierced my heart.
"I can't believe I'm going before my parents."
The same words I heard when Utsumi was there.
She was told the name of the disease, but that didn't matter; Shizuko Kasai followed after Takeo Utsumi.
He finally came to pick her up and they set off on their journey together with smiles on their faces.
I curled up in the corner of the room and tried to hold back my tears, but I couldn't stop them from flowing and just starting sobbing for what felt like forever.
Time in that room had indeed stopped.
The End
"Welcome to the Doraemon page.
This is Doraemon, produced by Nippon Television Animation and aired on Nippon Television in April 1973.
. . . Doraemon was my last TV series production.
It's been called the old Doraemon or Nippon TV Doraemon, and it seems that the documents have remained undiscovered until today.
I learned about this when I started using the Internet, and the staff and others realized that there were false rumors circulating.
As the head of production at the time, I wanted to convey the information accurately, so I created this Doraemon page.
. . . I don't remember many of the details. I want to be as accurate as possible, so I won't write anything I'm not sure about yet.
As written in Doraemon's Last Day, very few documents remain.
It was created based on images of trailer cels and film rushes that we still have on hand.
I will write down the Doraemon staff that I have confirmed, and please correct me if I am wrong.
Also, if you have any information about Doraemon on Nippon Television, please let me know."
To answer the question of why the Doraemon documents have not been found until now, I wrote this.
Unfortunately, what is written here is true.
At the time, not many people wanted cells, and there was no place to store them. It would've cost me tens of thousands of yen to hire a company to deal with it. So I reluctantly went to burn it. I felt like I was cremating my work.
What I remember most is how long it took to burn everything.
The location was near the transmission tower where Tama-chan appeared on the Arakawa River this year. This year marks exactly 30 years since the show was broadcast, and I felt like there was some kind of fate involved.
It is now a completely different place and has been developed into a beautiful park.
The seminar started today at 9:00am.
It all started with a request from Mr. S. from Kyushu, a Doraemon fan club member, asking if he could watch the Nippon Television program "Doraemon."
I replied that I'm free almost every day, so please let me know what day would be convenient for you.
. . . We looked for a venue for the event on Saturday, August 26th, and found that we could rent a venue at the Higashikurume City Gender Equality Promotion Center between 9:00 and 12:00.
. . . I inquired if I could invite other members and received permission, so at midnight I called for participation on Doraemon's and Jun Masami's bulletin board.
"The Japan Television Video Research Society will be holding a summer seminar.
August 30th, from 9:00am
Location: Gender Equality Promotion Center
Schedule:
9:00 Preparation
Chatting until 10:00
10:00 Episode 9 "The Roll of the Mirror of Pity"
10:15 Episode 20 "Wish Star Shooting Star"
10:30 Episode 24 "Men Compete with Strength"
10:45 Episode 42 "Weather Box Roll"
11:00 Q&A
11:45 Clean up
12:00 Disband
Cost: Free
Due to venue restrictions, we will limit admission to the first 20 people."
By the evening, I still hadn't received a response to my application, so I decided to send an email to a member in Tokyo.
On the 29th, I received replies from members "Nobi Nobizo Back!!", "sa", "Shishi Six", "CONY199", and my good friend "Hakase" also joined me.
At 10:00, Mr. S from Kyushu met us and we started the screening. However, he said that he could only finish by 11:00 due to his flight, so we stopped the lecture and let him watch the films.
It was past 11:00, but he still wanted to see more, so we showed him two more rush prints without sound, and then he ran off to the airport.
. . . This time, it was billed as a seminar, but we weren't able to do anything that could be called a seminar, and it ended up just being a screening.
This is something I want to tackle in the future. I also felt that there was a limit to what I could do alone. I looked at the websites of high schools and junior high schools hoping to find someone who could help me, and there was a manga club, but no anime club at all. Even my alma mater no longer has one.
"Reiko Muto passed away on the 29th from heart failure at the age of 71. The wake will be held at 6pm on the 31st, and the funeral will be held at 11:00am on November 1st at Kounji Temple, 7-12-22 Kinuta, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. The chief mourner will be her husband, Akira. She was mainly active as a voice actress, including the voice of Melmo in the anime "Marvelous Melmo.""
I got to know Reiko Muto through her role as Midori in "Sabu to Ichi", and she voiced Melmo in "Marvelous Melmo".
At Melmo, the schedule quickly ran out, and we had to do the dubbing on film that had been traced over shots of the storyboards. We often had to do the dubbing on a white piece of film with no footage at all. I don't think the people who saw it on TV would believe that it was dubbed on nothing at all. Now that such a precious work has been remade, I feel sad that there is no chance to see it anymore.
I hadn't seen your name recently and was worried about you, but I never imagined you would pass away so soon.
I had hoped that someday I would be able to meet you again and apologize to you for what happened with "Melmo," but that will no longer be possible.
I offer my deepest condolences.
Answers to questions on the message board.
I am a man born in October 1945. When I was in high school, I used the name Yukio Masami when writing poetry and composing music.
When I was working as both a production manager and assistant director at Mushi Production's Wonder 3, no one could read my name, so I was often called Jun-san. So I used the name Jun Masami when I was assistant director.
. . . My family consists of my wife Junko, my eldest son Jun, and my second son, who is 10 years younger than him and in his third year of high school. I deliberately try to write using gender-neutral language, like Naga Rokusuke, so I won't complain even if I'm mistaken for a woman.
"Akihiro Kanayama, one of the three animation directors of Ashita no Joe, will be holding an "Anime & Manga Illustration Exhibition."
I received an email recently from a fellow ex-Mushi Pro employee, Masakazu Higuchi, who was nicknamed "Higejiji-san" (Bearded Jiji-san) back then because of his bushy beard, after he wrote about it on his blog "Mangado News" http://d.hatena.ne.jp/manga-do/.
I was so filled with nostalgia that I really wanted to meet him, so I counted the days and waited until I finally made it out.
. . . It's always sunny whenever I go out, but today it's even sunnier, and I can see the green mountain range of Okumusashi beyond the banks of the Irumagawa River.
When I drive to Kawagoe, it feels quite far away, but when I took the Seibu Shinjuku Line it only took me about 30 minutes, which reminded me once again how great trains can be.
The venue is Gallery Mugi, a shop selling games and used books near the station. I can see manga books, and it looked like I might find some bargains, so I said I'd stop by on my way home. There was also a pachinko parlor. I would have gone in right away in the past, but it's been two years since I quit. I'm surprised at how strong-willed I was.
. . . Looking at Kanayama's paintings, I, who cannot draw, feel envious of people who can paint such wonderful pictures, but this is something that is simply innate, so there's nothing I can do about it now.
At 12:00, "Sergeant" Yoshimura arrives, and I'm relieved. He introduced me to Higuchi. I searched through the photo album and found only one photo that looked like Higejiji-san. He had brought a photo of him at the "old [Mushi Pro Tuesday Club] beach house." His gentle smile was completely different from his old bearded, intimidating appearance, and he should have looked like a completely different person.
But as soon as we started talking, the man in the photo and Higuchi's face were exactly alike, which was strange. Then, after Mr. Kanayama introduced us, we shook hands and said "It's been a while." Time passed quickly.
I felt a little confused by the unexpected welcome, but also grateful to them.
. . . At 3:30, my friend Yoshimura-kun's lecture started, and I returned for it, but Higuchi was out for a bit, and in his place, Takeo Haraya , a former Mushi Pro cameraman, came. I was able to hear some precious stories about the final days of Mushi Pro, and some behind-the-scenes stories (secrets) about Yamato and other things.
The gathering ended at 5:00, but Higuchi, who had been engrossed in a conversation, returned. And then I saw Nozaki, a former member of the Mushi Pro Archive Office. According to Higuchi, this was supposed to be a small "thank you party for your hard work," but I shamelessly stayed late and listened to the conversations of the three people, forgetting about the time. Before I knew it, it was past 9:30 and the nursing home curfew had come, so I hurriedly thanked everyone for today, said goodbye, and headed home. It had been a wonderful day, and I had enjoyed it a lot. Can you believe that this year has only just begun?
As with other works, We created the story of Moomin without being bound by the original. It felt like a Japanese or Western folk tale I had heard long ago.
I think the development of the Internet is a very good thing, however, it also introduces noise that I don't want to hear.
The original author does not acknowledge these Moomins. That's one of the complaints, and there are even complaints about which is better, the first two-cour Tokyo Movie version or the Mushi Pro version. This is really none of my business. As both companies were making the same anime at the time, there was naturally a sense of rivalry, but we never tried to bring each other down, and had a spirit of helping each other out. So we tried to make something good, something that children would enjoy, but we had no intention of knocking other companies down.
It is truly disheartening to see such criticism being made in later generations.
. . . The Moomin production room was bright. We were so full of confidence that we were making a good work, we didn't complain about the all-nighters and the low salary. We were having fun, so we asked if we could do just one episode and got permission to do the whole production.
But now, Moomin is receiving an unfair evaluation. If it's a problem that it's called Moomin, then calling it something else would be fine.
This is a film that needs to be reevaluated. I hope that a new print will be made from the negative and that it will be screened again, exactly as it was in the old days, without any alterations.
As a former Mushi Pro employee, that is my heartfelt wish.
After Mushi Productions went bankrupt, there was this story. I'll tell it to you since I think some of you may not know about it.
"Astro Boy Returns" from the Mainichi Shimbun, March 29, 1975.
"— Astro Boy Returns —
"Mushi Production, which made Osamu Tezuka's manga popular among children, went bankrupt in the summer of 1973 with a large amount of debt, but on the afternoon of the 28th, at a debtors' meeting held at the 20th Civil Division of the Tokyo District Court, a "compulsory settlement" was reached and the company will restart. Toshio Onishi (59), a fan of Tezuka and the company president who tried hard to revive the company, was appointed president, and Tezuka stepped down from management and devoted himself to manga.
The new company name was "Mushi Pro Planning".
Eighty-one out of 150 creditors attended the creditors' meeting, but the creditors agreed to receive only 28% of the amount of their claims and waive the remaining claims, resulting in a settlement.
(omitted)
Mr. Onishi, a fan of Mr. Tezuka and president of Japan Industrial Resources, a company that handles industrial waste, stepped into Mushi Productions immediately after the company's bankruptcy, invested his own assets to pay off 44% of the debt (approximately 176 million yen), and worked to rebuild the company, leading to the conclusion of a settlement.
The newly launched Mushi Pro will initially publish Tezuka's manga in book form, and may publish a manga magazine as early as this year. They also have plans to open an amusement park called Mushi Pro Kingdom, and open a farm in Takachiho, Miyagi Prefecture, to provide a playground for children."
However, there is no news about what happened to Mushi Pro Planning after that, and I have never heard of the name Mushi Pro Planning itself.
This was widely covered by the media with headlines such as "Astro Boy Returns" in the Mainichi Shimbun and "Astro Boy's Immortal Power is As Expected" in the Asahi Shimbun. It seemed as if this savior would put an end to the matter, but there have been no reports of the progress since then.
Afterwards, it was discovered that this person was a habitual fraudster with several convictions, and he suddenly disappeared.
Fortunately or unfortunately, since the settlement had already been reached, there was little uproar from the creditors. Tezuka also repaid his debts, and everything turned out fine in a strange turn of events.
Naturally, the real estate that the man named Onishi was to provide was in someone else's name.
During the New Year in 1970, I had already returned to my workplace from the president's office when a book arrived at my house from Tezuka-sensei. It was a book by Tezuka called "Manga Specialty Course: Beginner Edition."
There was a bookmark provided by the author inside, and it said that when I open the cover I'd find a pen-drawn picture of Atom and Tezuka's signature.
When I met Tezuka-sensei later and thanked him, he asked me if I had noticed.
"Thank you for the autograph," I said.
I had completely forgotten that this had happened, but later I had a situation where I wanted to copy the Sensei's signature and play a prank on him. So I copied the signature from that book and wrote it down several times. It should have been a treasure, but not understanding its value, I read it many times and it is no longer a nice-looking copy.
I casually flipped the book's cover, revealing Tezuka's signature, and to my surprise, if you look closely, you'll see that the signs are different.
Then I realized, the signature I was imitating had hidden words in it. My name was hidden in it, written in hiragana.
. . . I almost died without ever knowing what Osamu Tezuka was feeling. I never expected to discover this nearly 44 years later, so close to the anniversary of his birth.
It was a day filled with memories and tears.
Starting this year, alongside my main job, I will also be working at the "Society for Research on the History of Osamu Tezuka and Japanese Television Animation."
At 8:00 I watch TV. Took my temperature and blood pressure.
When I got home at 9:00, my wife was already doing the laundry. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, weighed myself, got the newspaper from the mailbox, and had shokupan for breakfast while playing sudoku.
I changed clothes at 11:00. I left the house at 11:50 and walked to Higashikurume Station. I took the 12:20 train and changed to the express at Hibarigaoka Station to go to Ikebukuro.
There was a long line at Miraiza Ikebukuro (Toshima Public Hall), which wrapped around to the right. The line started moving at 12:30 when the doors opened, and the end of the line finally entered the venue at 12:45, so we were able to go inside.
Okabe-sensei, who is also a staff member, seemed to be very busy. The venue was already full, so I took a seat at the left end of the front row.
The film Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space was screened until 1:00.
When the screening ended, the audience erupted in thunderous applause. It reminded me of the screening of "Pictures at an Exhibition."
After a 20-minute break, the lecture by director Yoshiyuki Tomino, which everyone in the venue was eagerly awaiting, began.
When I went to the library's audiovisual room from the north exit, Chichibu was already there and ready to go.
All the power sources for the venue are in the projection room on the mezzanine floor, so I ask Chichibu for instructions on how to operate each light switch, etc.
Kuboki came and we had a meeting. He said we had some time left, so we decided to show Doraemon at the end.
At 11:30 I gave a greeting and explained that "Doraemon" was first broadcast on Nippon Television in 1973.
At 12:29, a call comes in from someone introducing himself as Yonekura and claiming to be a lawyer for Fujiko Productions. He said he was a lawyer, but didn't say his name or firm.
At 1:30pm I meet with my lawyer
. . . The moment I said “Fujiko Productions due to copyright issues”, my heart started pounding again. I felt short of breath. I thought I had a strong heart.
. . . After the explanation, the lawyer's advice to me was harsh.
At 1:32pm I received an email from Okabe-sensei.
Not only was it not allowed to be featured in the PR materials, but it was also not allowed to be shown or exhibited. Not understanding the reason, I immediately called Fujiko Productions. Oh, the voicemail is the same as yesterday? I started talking in the middle of it, but calmed down and listened to what it said, and it said, "They're taking a lunch break from 1:00 to 2:00.”
. . . It's been a while since I've held a lecture.
In the 1960s, we who were involved in anime production risked our lives under harsh working conditions, low wages, and almost all unpaid overtime (capped after 70 hours) because we loved anime.
I want people to understand that it is only natural for us as human beings to want as many people as possible to be interested in the loving work that we’ve been involved in, and to know about it. However, it is also true that there are for-profit companies that wield the sword of copyright law to try to silence these works.
. . . Many of the works I have been involved in never saw the light of day; they have become elusive or have been remade. Fortunately, I have the documents. This makes this delusional old man think that he has received a mission to accurately convey what things were like back then.
Thankfully, I have made many friends, who have taught me that copyright law is not a bad law after all.
On the contrary, he says that it is an ally for someone like me.
The 39th Anniversary of the Original "Doraemon" Broadcast
I checked the checklist. It looks fine.
Had a late breakfast at 11:00. Continued working immediately.
I had to leave at 12:00. My wife had made some instant ramen for me so I could eat it. I ate it quickly.
We arrived at the venue at 12:45. The members of the Nippon Television Video Research Society were already waiting. The performers from the Music Association helped out.
We filled two rooms in the venue. There were a lot of applicants this time, so we had to hold a lottery and limit it to 100 people. Even so, it was cramped, so we cleared away the desks and left only the chairs. There were cel art exhibits around, and people with experience elsewhere were helping out, so it was a very efficient job. It would probably take me five hours to do it.
This time, a musician mentioned Doraemon at some point and started singing the original theme song. I was surprised and asked him how he knew the song. He said that he had watched it as a child, and this was the song that he remembered when he thought of "Doraemon".
The event started at 4:00pm. It started with Atom, followed by Wonder 3 and Kimba the White Lion. The professional trumpet sounds drew applause. There were more than 100 people in the venue.
Goku's Great Adventure. I was surprised to see that some people remembered the dance.
Princess Knight, on violin and flute. Dororo, on electric guitar and bass.
Marvelous Melmo, a soprano singer sings seductively and is applauded.
Other anime theme songs.
5:30, break.
At 5:50, the concert resumed. The long-awaited "Doraemon" theme song was sung by a tenor. The accompaniment was the same as before, just without the bass, as I played the electric bass.
At 6:55, we stopped playing music and started chatting. At 6:59:50, we counted to ten.
The opening theme song of Doraemon begins with a chorus of "Three, Two, One."
The "Provided by," sponsorship line that was used at the time of the broadcast by NTV causes everyone to burst into laughter.
At 8:45. Everyone sang Doraemon, said their final goodbyes, and the event concluded.
The time flew by so quickly, and at 11:40 the party broke up, saying that they had work, and the last train would be leaving soon.
At 11:50, I get back home, take a bath, get changed, blog, and go to bed.
I woke up at 6:00am and felt unwell. It's an important day, so I just go back to sleep.
At 3:57, the bus came. It was a snowy day, and I was quite late. I took the local train to Nerima Station.
[When I arrived] only the organizer of the Osamu Tezuka memorial service was there.
Norimi was worried because she heard that I had gone to visit Sensei's grave. I saw it at 6:05pm
The meeting began at 6:20. I didn't know many people there, so I was prepared to feel a little lonely. The man sitting in front of me was Director Ishiwata of Tezuka Productions. Perhaps they were concerned about the elderly person and spoke to him. Thanks to this, the memorial service became a very enjoyable memory.
I wake up at 5:50 and my day starts as usual. At 9:00 I receive a call from the clinic in front of the station.
The other day during my appointment, I wished him a happy new year. The doctor told me to call him if anything happened.
I got a bad feeling.
Drove to the clinic.
The waiting time was so long.
Unfortunately, a CT scan revealed that I had lung cancer.
At 9:46 pm, I start writing my blog.
I received comments from people I never expected.
Since the beginning of last year, I've had pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and now lung cancer, and this year has been no better.
I had prepared myself for death, but now I have the will to live and I feel great!
I don't have a lot of time today, so "stay tuned!"
I posted a blog at 11:59pm.
"Jun Masami, I hope you are always healthy and happy."
Thanks for your comment. Since it's early-stage cancer, it's okay.
I went to the Warabi High School Cultural Festival.
I went to the reception desk. There was a big sign saying "No photography allowed" so I put my phone away. I looked around each classroom.
On the Wikipedia for Saitama Prefectural Warabi High School, famous alumni includes:
Atsushi Ito - CBC announcer
Yuki Ninagawa - Actress
Atsuko Matsubara - Writer
Sushi Ishigaki - Professional golfer
Izuru Kumasaka - Film director. Winner of the Best Newcomer Award at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival
Daisuke Ban - Actor
I told him that my name, Jun Masami, was listed among the famous people, so I came to say hello.
He then introduced me to the chairman of the association.
