The latest work by Sunao Katabuchi, director of "In a Corner of the World" is "Tsurubami-iro no Nagiko-tachi"! Mourning Clothes Cannot Be Taken Off" - The Harsh Reality of the Heian Period (MAPPA STAGE 2023 Report)

The title, teaser visual, video, and "MAPPA STAGE 2023" stage report have been released for the latest work by Sunao Katabuchi, director known for "In a Corner of the World" and other works.

Sunao Katabuchi was born in Osaka in 1960 and is an animation film director who made his directorial debut with the animated film "Mein Dog Lassie. Since its release in November 2016, the film "In a Corner of the World" has been well-received by word of mouth and social networking services, and became the longest-running hit in history. The box-office revenue exceeded 2.7 billion yen.

⇒ The third introductory video for director Sunao Katabuchi's next film, "In This Corner of the World," has been released! Production staffs are also wanted!

⇒Click here for the screening schedule of anime films.

Director Sunao Katabuchi has been eagerly awaited by audiences in Japan and abroad for his next film, following the long animated film "In (many more) corners of the world" (2019), which adds new scenes to "In this corner of the world".

On Sunday, May 21, 2023, during the special event "MAPPA STAGE 2023" hosted by MAPPA, the title, teaser visual, and production footage of his latest work "Tsurubami Iro no Nagiko Tachi" were unveiled all at once.

Director Sunao Katabuchi and producer Manabu Otsuka took the stage at the event and gave a passionate talk about their latest work, which has been highly anticipated around the world. Here is the official report.

Title PV (shortened version)

Making of the film

MAPPA STAGE 2023" Report

Where do people go when they die? Do they disappear?
Tens of thousands dead in Kyoto, corpses left on mountains, wild dogs spreading outside the town...

The people of Kyoto, dressed in their glittering juni-hitoe (twelve-layered kimono), respecting the traditional atmosphere, composing waka poems, and kicking a game of kemari (Japanese football), lead elegant lives.
This was the way it was a thousand years ago, as described in textbooks. However, during my journey, I found a new and different view.

Sunao Katabuchi's latest film, "Tsurubami Iro no Nagiko Tachi," takes us on a thousand-year journey to pick up the trail of these women.

Director Sunao Katabuchi and producer Manabu Otsuka took the stage for a talk session at "MAPPA STAGE 2023," a special event hosted by animation studio MAPPA held in Tokyo on Sunday, May 21. In front of over 5,000 anime fans in attendance, information about Sunao Katabuchi's latest work, "Tsurubami-iro no Nagiko-tachi," his first film since "In (even more) several corners of this world" (2019), was unveiled!

Left: Sunao Katabuchi (Director), Right: Manabu Otsuka (Producer)

The venue was filled with applause when director Sunao Katabuchi and producer Manabu Otsuka took the stage at the call of the MC.

Q. Please begin by saying a few words.
Katabuchi: I started to conceive of this film in 2017, and it has already been 6 years, but I have finally reached the point where I can announce the "title" to you all. Of course, it has also been a number of years that we have not only made the film, but also created a company/studio called Contrail and trained the staff for this film, and we have come this far.

I am Otsuka, the representative of MAPPA and Contrail. Thank you for coming to the MAPPA stage. Please enjoy the show to the end.

Q. About your intention to start a company called "Contrail" separately from MAPPA
Otsuka: Actually, Director Katabuchi has been with MAPPA longer than I have. Director Katabuchi had been working with Maruyama (current MAPPA Chairman) on the "In This Corner of the World" movie since I joined MAPPA, and I had been working on the TV series a lot. These two projects came together in 2016 with the release of "In This Corner of the World" and my appointment as president of MAPPA.

As a result, MAPPA is a studio that produces various works by various directors, creators, actors, and original works, but with "In This Corner of the World," I felt that there was a limit to what MAPPA could produce as a single "line" for Director Katabuchi's works. We decided to create a new studio for making Katabuchi's works! and started Contrail in 2019.

After that, the title PV was shown at the venue, and the title of the work, "Tsurubamiiro no Nagiko-tachi" was announced along with a teaser visual.

Q. What kind of work is "Tsurubamiiro no Nagiko-tachi"?
Katabuchi: It's about the Heian period (794-1192), but as you can see from the current visual, they are all in gray, not wearing the elegant juni-hitoe (12-layered kimono). Tsurubami" refers to acorns from the sawtooth oak tree. The acorns have hats on them, and when you collect the hats, they become black dye. Kurotsurubami means cloth dyed black, in other words, the color of mourning clothes.

　There is a movie called "Mai Mai Shinko and the Magic of a Thousand Years" (2009), in which a girl named "Nagiko, a girl from a thousand years ago" appears. She may have something to do with this movie.

　We have also created an English title for the film in order to convey it to foreign audiences. Mourning Children" means not "morning" but "mourning. Nagiko And The Girls Wearing Tsurubami Black", "Tachi" in Japanese is "Girls" in the English title. Nagiko and the Girls, and the children in mourning. I have scattered glimpses of these various contents. I would like to stop here today.

　You might also think that the Heian period was a time when people wore colorful "juni-hitoe" (12-layered kimono), composed poems, and lived peacefully, but as you have just seen, it was also a time when people always wore mourning clothes and could never take them off. In other words, it was a time when mourning clothes could not be taken off because people were always dying one after another. We have been trying to unravel these things one by one to understand what it was like in those days, and then create a story from the perspective of what the people in those times must have been like.

Otsuka] At first I wondered if the Heian period was something that could only be seen if one studied history. I also thought at first that it would be something you would have to study history to see. I am very much looking forward to seeing it.

Q. I would like to ask you about the staff members.
Katabuchi: The assistant director, Chie Uratani, has worked with us as an assistant director on "Mai Mai Shinko and the Millennium Magic," "In a Corner of the World" and "BLACK LAGOON" as well.
The animation director is Masashi Ando. I had worked with Mr. Ando once a long time ago, but this is the first time we are working together in earnest. He is a veteran in the field of animation, having worked on "Princess Mononoke," "Spirited Away," and the recently released "The Deer King: Yuna and the Journey of a Promise" (21).

　The impressive music that was playing when we announced today's title was composed by Akira Senju. I have been studying with Senju-san how to create music for the Heian period, and above all, I had the opportunity to work with him for the first time on "Princess Alithe" (*Theatrical release: 2001), which was created in 2000, and I thought that Senju-san would be the perfect choice for this production, which has a hidden objectivity to depict the world. I asked Mr. Senju to work on this film because I thought he would be the perfect person for the job. I asked Senju-san to be the perfect person for this project because I thought he would be the perfect person for this project.

　Afterwards, a video showing the production process with the Contraire staff was shown at the venue. The video showed the actual wearing of colorful juni-hitoe (twelve-layered kimono), the actual practice of using torches in the Heian period, when, unlike today, there was no electricity, and the actual use of the torches,
The film also shows the challenge of dyeing "tsurubami" colors, and gives us a glimpse of the process of incorporating these elements into the animation.

Q. So you created the film based on in-depth research?
Katabuchi] Yes, it was. The last thing we did was to come and walk in the twelve-layered kimono and see if we could sit down.　We practiced this. At first we wore cosplay costumes of junihitoe, but the size was totally different from the real thing, so the next time we tried to use the correct size, but it didn't go well because it was our staff who had to do it and they were slow when they sat down. So, we invited a Kyogen performer who usually performs in the traditional Japanese style to sit down in juni-hitoe, and he did it in one movement. I thought to myself, "This is what it means to be accustomed to wearing a kimono.

　The torch is a stick with a cloth wrapped around it, and the cloth is soaked in oil, which gives the impression that it burns. I was surprised to see how long it burned. There was a video of me and Mr. Ando (animation director) pretending to walk with the torch, and we started from the point of wondering how to walk with the torch without shaking the fire.

I also did some insect cultivation. It has something to do with the black vine clothing in the Heian period, but malaria was prevalent and a lot of people died. Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, and the larvae of mosquitoes are centipedes. We cultivated the silkworms in the company, observed them, and made drawings based on the observations. (A small scream from the audience) It was extremely difficult, but it was different from what I had imagined. The staff member who drew the pictures was a newcomer who started working at Contrail for the first time, but he grew up to draw the original pictures like that.

　If I were to draw each thing individually, I might pass by it, but when I made "In This Corner of the World," which I made before, I started to understand the feelings and humanity of the people who lived in the war one by one and drew them. In the course of my research for this project, I have come to understand how the people who lived in the Heian Period more than 1,000 years ago were the same as us and how they differed from us, and I would like to tell the story of the people I have discovered.

Q. How do you feel about the film?
Otsuka] As you can see, most people have the image of an animation studio where people are sitting at their desks drawing pictures, but the people on site are really studying people who lived more than 1,000 years ago, practicing and experiencing what they learned, and then creating pictures of them. I am confident even now that we will be able to convey that persuasiveness on the screen. Please look forward to the release of the film.

Katabuchi: Before we started "painting," we started with the question, "What are we going to paint? I started from the point of "What are you going to draw? We start from the discovery of what we should write in this way. Not because we are doing that, but because we have a lot of hard work ahead of us in creating the screen, so although we have unveiled the title, it will still take several more years to complete... (Otsuka: If it takes too long, we will be in trouble!) (Otsuka: If it takes too long, we'll be in trouble!) We hope it won't take too long, but it will. (Otsuka: We don't want it to take too long, but it will...) We want to make sure it doesn't take too long, but it will take time.

　The word "contrail" means "airplane cloud," and I have been animating for over 40 years and am now over 60 years old, but this is a studio where veterans in their 50s and 60s and young people in their 20s work together. We fly forward and leave airplane clouds behind us, but I work with young people in the hope that they will use this as their own food to grow and become great animated film makers. We are still working with these people, and it will take some time to complete the film, but we look forward to your continued support for "Tsurubami Iro no Nagiko-tachi".

The event ended with Katabuchi and Otsuka being sent off with a big round of applause from the audience.

Outline of the event
MAPPA STAGE 2023" Stage for Sunao Katabuchi's latest film, "Tsurubami Iro no Nagiko Tachi
Date: Sunday, May 21, 2023
Place: Tokyo Garden Theater (2-1-6 Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo)
Speakers:Sunao Katabuchi (Director), Manabu Otsuka (Producer)

Title Release PV (shortened version): #
Making of the film: #

*All text in the original is correct except for line breaks.

Film Information

■"Tsurubami Iro no Nagiko Tachi" (The Tsurubami Colored Nagiko Children)
Original Story/Director/Screenplay: Sunao Katabuchi (Princess Alithe/Mai Mai Shinko and the Millennium Magic/Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni)
Assistant Director: Chie Uratani (Tekkonkinkreet / Mai Mai Shinko and the Millennium Magic / In This Corner of the World)
Animation Director: Masashi Ando (Princess Mononoke / What is your name? /The King of the Deer, Yuna and the Journey of Promise)
Production: Contrail
Official Web Site: #

©The Mourning Children Production Committee/ KUROBURUE