was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and animator

Animator

An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...

. One of the most notable auteurs of anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 of the first half of the 20th century (one of the industry's most prestigious awards, the Mainichi Film Awards' Ōfuji Noburō Award, is named after him), he worked primarily with cutout

Cutout animation

Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs...

 and silhouette animation

Silhouette animation

Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist...

. He also made a number of films in traditional animation

Traditional animation

Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...

, using then-expensive, imported cel

Cel

A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...

s, while his earliest work known to have survived is a live-action/animated film

Live-action/animated film

A live-action/animated film is a motion picture that features a combination of real actors or elements: live-action and animated elements, typically interacting.-History:...

. He trained under Jun'ichi Kōuchi before starting his own company. He is known for his employment of washi

Washi

is a type of paper made in Japan. Washi is commonly made using fibers from the bark of the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub , or the paper mulberry, but also can be made using bamboo, hemp, rice, and wheat...

, especially the coloured and patterned Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 chiyogami, which gives his films a distinctively Japanese appearance. He was one of the first Japanese animators to earn international recognition for his work.

Selected filmography

• Baguda-jō no tōzoku (馬具田城の盗賊) (1926)
• Kujira (鯨) (1927)
• Chinsetsu Yoshida goten (珍説吉田御殿) (1928)
• Mura matsuri [The Village Festival] (村祭) (1930)
• Haru no uta [Song of Spring] (春の唄) (1931)
• Chinkoroheibei tamatebako [Chinkoroheibei and the Treasure Box] (ちんころ平平玉手箱) (1936)
• Kujira (くじら) (1952)
• Yūreisen (幽霊船) (1956)

External links

• Noburō Ōfuji at AnimeVice.com
• Mura Matsuri, a 1930 film by Ōfuji set to a song performed by Eiko Hirai