An Interview with Shinnosuke Yakuwa Diretor of Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

Date: 2024 December 07 12:29

Posted by Joe

Scotland Loves Anime visits more than Scotland this time around! In 2024 the popular long running festival decided to have a little adventure south of the border and visited London too. For the inaugural London event they invited Director Shinnosuke Yakuwa as the Guest of Honour. We caught up with him in London to talk more about his latest film Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window, which was part of the London leg screenings.

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You've previously directed the hugely popular Doraemon, what's it like directing a movie based around a different Japanese cultural icon?

Well you're right Doraemon and Totto-chan are both national treasures in a way and there could have well have been the pressure of that, but in this case with Totto-chan there was so much I needed to learn about war, about disability about education that I really didn't have time to feel the pressure as I was obsessed with making the film.



How much research was done for the movie? Did you use descriptions of Tomoe Academy just from the book? Or were there any historical records you use to recreate the school?

Well in-between writing the scripts and doing the storyboards there was a year, a full year that I spent researching. There were historical materials about the Tomoe Academy. I also did research on after school facilities that they had for children with learning difficulties. I also interviewed people about polio. There was a whole year where I didn't do any drawing, I just read books and interviewed people. That was a really valuable process, a valuable time for the animation and I didn't want to waste the opportunity that I had, so I made sure I tried to get all of that into the story board.


Are there many progressive schools like that still in Japan?

Yes, in fact I think there are more now of these types of schools. Education in Japan has become more inclusive. It used to be that children with physical or learning disabilities would be in a separate school, but now they're in the same school as other children and it gives children the opportunity to learn about their differences, about disability and not to see it as something special, but something that makes you unique. It's moving in the right direction.




With the film you went with a very particular nostalgic style, with beautifully painted backgrounds and sets, along with detailed but period looking character designs. Why did you do this?

I wanted to make it so that people of the older generation, the same generation as Totto-chan, people who are now in their 80's and 90's , that the film would bring them back to that time. And also rather than having extreme camerawork and the kind of wide angle shots that are popular nowadays I wanted to have more of a fixed camera and a telephoto type lens. I was kind of referencing Ozu Yasujirō and Akira Kurosawa in the camera work.


Did you consider any other styles in preproduction?

No I didn't have time for that (laughs).



When Totto-chan's imagination kicks in and the animation style changes, was there a lot of extra thought put into those scenes? Where they difficult to animate compared to the rest of the movie?

The main reason for that style is because the Tomoe Academy has this free and unique style of education. I wanted the film to have that freedom of expression as well. Traditionally in 2D Japanese animation that artistic style is difficult to pull off for various reasons. But I believed we could do it and so I just drew whatever images came to mind. In the end we asked individual artists to do those fantasy scenes. Although the first one with the trains was the young animators at Shin-Ei Animation that did that one.

So it was used as training exercise for the new animators?

No not at all, it was a case of their talent is what made is possible. So I did the story boards for the scene, but it was a very talented animator called Yuta Kanbe who redrew the story boards for that scene and then experimented with how to draw that to get the crayon effect and then ended up giving out iPads to the animators involved. They all coloured in each frame. So it was a bit different than the usual way of working!



We noticed there are a lot of extra details in the movie. Like when Totto-chan bows, it hits her on the back of her head and it gives it that element of realism. Are there any extra details in the movie that people might not realise that you're particularly proud of?

Lots! The backpack was an animator called Hatsumi Uegai who added that in herself. It was her first time working as a key animator. She also did the scene with Yasuaki-chan's mother wearing her kimono and she takes a change of clothes and she opens and closes the sliding door. But all of those gestures and the way you move wearing a kimono was something she had to look up because people nowadays don't tend to know that. So there were lots of things to research about how people lived in Japan 80 years ago.

We had an animator Takuya Wada who is very knowledgeable about transportation, about the cars, the trains and he oversaw all the details of those transport scenes. Japanese train fans are quite strict and they like to point out if you get things wrong, but in this case thanks to Wada-san who oversaw that detail they were satisfied it seems!


Which character do you most relate to?

In the sense of the character I feel closest too I would say Toto-chan's father. As an anime director I have very little time at home. But when I'm there I'm trying to find ways of communicating with my daughters. The scene for example where Totto-chan and her father are having a bath together that's straight out of my conversations with my daughters. It's hard as a Dad sometimes to get involved with what happens at school and the worries your children have. But at the same time through your work, in Totto-chan's fathers case as a violinist, I hope that there's something that we can teach our children. In my case I hope that there's something I can teach my children through the work that I do as an anime director and for me Totto-chan's father is the ideal man.



Do you think stories like Totto-chan's are even more relevant now with the way the world could be going?

I think that it's important that those of us born after the war like myself know what happened with Japan and the Second World War. I think there's a lot we can learn from it. But with this film I want the most strongest message to be of mutual understanding. People with disabilities and without disabilities understanding each other. People of different nationalities and religions seeing each other's point of view. I hope that comes across the strongest.

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Otaku News would like to thank Shinnosuke Yakuwa for giving us such awesome answers to our questions. We'd also like to thank the good folks at Scotland Loves Anime for arranging this interview for us and providing us with the opportunity to meet Shinnosuke Yakuwa in person in London.

Source: Otaku News