Mochinaga Tadahito: His Puppet Animations and Musical

Abstract

Known as “The Father of Japanese Puppet Animations”, Tadahito Mochinaga sought to explore ways of incorporating physical expressions like song, dance and musical into his work after WWII. Further, Mochinaga was involved in the production of works for Videocraft International (Rankin/Bass Productions), and in my view, he was the first Japanese animator who experienced the making of a US-style musical animation. Attempting to evaluate his artistic achievement in this essay, I analyze how Mochinaga employed physical expressions in each ofhis works of puppet animation.