'Belladonna of Sadness' Project to restore lost original artwork (part 2).
● In search of lost original artwork
As mentioned earlier, the majority of the original art drawings for Belladonna of Sadness have been lost. While they were left stacked in a warehouse for many years, the warehouse was frequented by a number of filmmakers and animation professionals, who were "free to take them" (*note), so it is possible that undiscovered original art works may be found in the future. In fact, there are occasional Belladonna-related items at domestic and international online auctions, but other than posters and pamphlets, most of them are celluloid drawings from the period or colour designation papers that were traced from original animation drawings, and are not original artworks by Kuni Fukai.
*Note
I sent this text of mine to several people involved in animation to check its contents before it was published. One of them, Sunao Katabuchi, a director, told me that when he himself witnessed the original drawings in the warehouse, it was not like 'please feel free to take them', but they were managed in a certain way so that outsiders could not take them out.
However, it was in the 1980s that Director Katabuchi witnessed the original Belladonna drawings in the warehouse, and several old collectors have told me that until the 1970s, the value of filmed animation originals and props from special effects films was not recognised and they were effectively 'please feel free to take them'.
I was once shown a special effects enthusiast's house, where he showed me the uniform of Anne's squad and a paper-mache doll of The Peanuts used in the filming of Godzilla vs Mothra. The doll was on the head of the larval Mothra. There was also a 'real' Oxygen Destroyer from the original Godzilla, and a scroll with a congratulatory message from the Shinto priest of Otojima written in brush script. When the collector went to Toho, he said, "Ah! The Great Thief!" The above is a story from the 1970s. The above is a story from the 1970s, of course, and the collection must be properly managed now.
Off topic.
It was in the summer of 2023 that I, the author (Takekuma), thought, "Let's collect Belladonna's original art drawings and make an art book!" It was in the summer of 2023 that the author (Takekuma) came up with the idea. In autumn, the author was able to find out the contact details of Mr Fukai and contacted him. Mr Fukai is now 89 years old. My father suffered and died at that age, so with all due respect, I was surprised to meet him and to see how well he was.
Mr Fukai did not have any of the original Belladonna paintings. He did not seem to be obsessed with preserving his own work, and did not often receive original paintings back from his clients.
As is the case with comic book manuscripts, illustrations commissioned by magazines were also 'used up' when the manuscripts were sent to print, unless they were the work of a master artist, up to a certain point. The same was true of animation, where the original drawings were often disposed of once the film was completed.
At the end of the 1970s, I heard an enthusiast rumour: "The celluloid pictures of 'The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun' are lying in Tokyo Bay! I had heard this rumour in the late 1970s. It is said that after the film was completed, the staff of the production company, who had trouble disposing of the large number of celluloid pictures, illegally dumped them in Tokyo Bay, but I do not know how true this is.
Nowadays, manga manuscripts no longer need to be returned because digital production has become common, but until the mid-1970s, manga manuscripts were often left in company warehouses and returned if the author wished to have them returned, but if there was no such wish and 10 or 20 years had passed, they were often discarded when there was nowhere else to put them (from the mid-1970s onwards, it became common for manga manuscripts to be serialised in magazines and made into comic books, making them an "asset").
The author has heard that in the 1950s, manga manuscripts that were no longer used after being submitted for rental were sometimes given away as gifts to readers or used to build a bonfire for roasting potatoes in the garden at the end of the year. That way, there were no complaints. Until a certain point in the post-war period, the concept of 'copyright' was almost non-existent for publishers and even authors. However, Sampei Shirato reportedly surprised his editors by requesting that they always return manuscripts after they had been printed. From the very beginning, Shirato had an awareness of authorship and works, but he was an exception.
If the original artwork for Belladonna cannot be found and is likely to have disappeared, there is only one remaining recourse. This is to 'restore' the original Fukai’s drawings from film, DVD or Blu-ray.
● Miraculous 4K digital remastering in the USA. Limited edition luxury book.
The Belladonna of Sadness, in fact, has been converted to 4K and digitally remastered. Not in Japan, but in the USA. In 2016, the 4K version of the film was released on a roadshow in 30 cinemas in the US, a surprising fact that the author learned a few years ago. Apparently, that was the first time it had ever been released theatrically in the US (in France, I was told, it had a long run in art-house theatres in the 1970s and had become a cult movie since then).
The author was unaware of the fact that the film was released in the US until recently. This is because it was not reported at all in Japan. However, in the West, Belladonna has had a passionate fanbase since the 1970s, and it seems that there are some people in the film industry in the US who are also fans and have invested a considerable amount of money to bring the film to cinemas in 4k. At the time of writing, the author is working with someone who is fluent in English to find that person.
Japan, half a century after its release, the film has been half-forgotten and has become a 'visionary animation film' that only the deepest animation fans talk about, while in the West, a 4K version has been released in theatres and even in UHD.
The film is available on Netflix in the US, but it is not available on Netflix in Japan, perhaps due to a contractual relationship (it may be possible to watch it using a subterfuge, but I won't describe it here). The author was astonished at the disparity between Japan and overseas. This is despite the fact that it is a genuine Japanese film.
A limited edition luxury book was published in the US in 2016 to coincide with the film's release in the US. Belladonna" had long ago become an art book.
The author was 'way ahead of me!' ', but when she opened the art book, she realised something. The book was made using film data for 4k screenings, but it was laid out using the original film angle of view of 4:3. However, while that makes it an artbook of the film, it cannot be said to be a faithful reproduction of Fukai's original drawings. Of course, the drawings used in the film are also Fukai's original drawings, but there is a fundamental difference between the original drawings that were filmed and the original drawings before filming. The meaning of this is explained in the next section.
● What is 'original restoration', which is neither restoration nor reproduction?
First of all, I would like you to look at the following scene from The Belladonna of Sadness.
On the day of the village wedding, the groom (Jean) and bride (Jeanne) come to the baron's castle to report their marriage, according to local custom. The baron informs them that they must pay a marriage tax of ten heifers.
The poor young couple have only one heifer in their house and cannot afford to pay it. The bride, Jeanne, kneels at the feet of the Baron's wife and begs for mercy. The camera pans up from Jeanne to a bust-up of the wife looking down coldly at the poor village girl.
This scene is laid out as shown in the following photograph in the US edition of the book.
The lower scene on the left page and the upper scene on the right page were originally drawn as a single picture, but in this art book the lower and upper scenes are split and placed on the left and right pages. The reason for this is that the book basically consists of material that has been simply screen-captured from 3:4 standard size film. In other words, the book is basically just a recording of the film screen as it is, without the time-consuming process of 'original picture restoration'.
Once again, the video of the first scene is captured frame by frame from the film and reconstructed on a computer, resulting in the following single picture.
This was done using a dpx file for 4K screening, connecting the frame images from the first one where Jeanne kneels down to the upper part of the back of her body as she pans up, correcting the colour tones while having Mr Fukai check the computer screen, and then test printing on paper what he had OKed.
Since the final result on paper is the purpose of this project, it is impossible to judge whether the restoration is really correct unless the final result is printed on paper and checked. The colours seen on the monitor screen (transmitted light) are completely different from those seen on the printed paper (reflected light).
A further characteristic of this work is the endless and endless horizontal panning. The opening scene of the work is typical.
A reconstruction of this is shown below. The Belladonna made extensive use of these unusually long, horizontal original art drawings. The picture quoted in the video was 2m 91cm wide when reproduced on B4 paper for eight standard-sized screens. It is an original drawing of almost three metres. This should be made into a bellows-folded (accordion-folded) restored original. When folded, it is B4 size. There are many collections of original animation drawings out there, but it is rare to publish such a long set. This time, we will be returning a set of original drawings in pieces, so I don't think it will be a big problem. What will become a problem is when the luxury book is produced.
The opening scene is also followed by three consecutive vertical animations congratulating Jean and Jeanne. The video is followed by a restored original image.
We hope the you have a better understanding of what the author means by 'original restoration'.
●Crowd-funded restoration of the original drawings, towards a luxury art book
The greatest challenge in making this work into an art book was to restore the lost original drawings by joining them together frame by frame of the film. Each restored original is a definitive draft under the supervision of Fukai. There are nearly 300 such original drawings.
Of course, various lighting and filtering processes were applied when Fukai's paintings were photographed, and it would be impossible or extremely difficult even with current digital technology to completely restore them to their original state.
Nevertheless, I want to take on this task because the original author, Fukai , is still alive and well and continues to paint every day. Mr Fukai will be 90 years old on 5 January. Whatever it takes, we must do it now.
A crowdfunding campaign will be launched at Motion Gallery in early September.
The crowdfunding campaign will be split into two parts. The first part is a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for restoring the original artworks, and the reward for this will be a boxed set of the original artworks, not a book. The restorations will be in B4 size. Some of the artworks are 3-4 meters wide, but they will be printed on rolled paper with the short side of B4.
The second part is a crowdfunding campaign to create a luxury art book. The restored artworks will be edited and made into a luxury hardcover book. I think the price will be over 30,000 yen. As a rule, luxury books will not be sold in bookstores, but will be sold by mail order, taking orders over the Internet.
In addition to this, we are also planning to produce a cheaper book, which we would like to ask a publisher to publish in the general distribution market (we have already received inquiries from several publishers, but have not yet decided where to publish it).
In addition, we will also produce a commentary book of about 200 pages. We plan to ask multiple authors to write manuscripts for this, and it will be a worthwhile read. Both the budget version and the commentary version are expected to be priced at around 5,000 yen.
The second round of the deluxe book crowdfunding will be announced on the official account closer to the launch date.
● Official "Belladonna Original Artwork Restoration Project"
The crowdfunding campaign at Motion Gallery is aimed at domestic audiences, and we are still considering whether to use Kickstarter or Indiegogo for the autumn deluxe book production and overseas crowdfunding. You will be able to find out more by visiting the official website.
Once crowdfunding begins, we would appreciate your cooperation. Rewards range from expensive items printed using high-quality printing to more affordable items (simplified printing or miniature versions).
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