World War II is now over fifty years in the past. For animation fans, those days can be relived every time a retrospective screening of wartime cartoons is held. There seems to be a campus or a fine-arts program every few years in most cities. It's an opportunity to see Confusions of a Nutzy Spy, Der Fuehrer's Face, Tokio Jokio, Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, You're a Sap, Mr. Jap, and those other classics that grow more embarrassing as wartime memories fade.

The Japanese also made many propaganda cartoons, including one notable 37-minute featurette and a 74-minute feature. Unlike the American films, these have not been continuously available over the past half-century. Due to wartime Japan's own cannibalizing of film prints to reuse the film stock, and the destruction by the American Occupation authorities of all propaganda materials that could be found, most of the wartime cartoons were thought to no longer exist. However, the earlier film has been preserved by Tokyo's National Film Center while at least one print of the feature also survived. Today, thanks to the home-video in Japan, the latter is available to a much larger audience than ever saw the original film. It is too primitive to be of much interest to the fans of modern action-adventure Japanese anime, but it is fascinating to anyone with a serious interest in World War II propaganda art and animation, and in the evolution of anime.

Before World War II there were no animation studios in Japan. There were individual enthusiasts who would personally create a short film every year or two. Not all of these were cartoon animation. Cutout silhouette animation, inspired by Lotte Reiniger's 1926 Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, was very popular with some artistic hobbyists. The major Japanese film studios and theatrical distributors were happy to pick up these shorts. Some of the studios even subsidized the more reliable animators.

Mituyo Seo and Momotaro
All film production was tightly controlled by the military-dominated government during the war (which started for Japan in 1937 in China). This ironically turned out to be very good for animation, because the Japanese Navy felt that theatrical cartoons were an ideal medium to instill the patriotic spirit in children. Effective production could not be handled by individual artists, so the first animation shop was organized under Mituyo Seo, who was born in 1911 and who had made more than a half-dozen short cartoons during the 1930s. Seo and a small staff created the 37-minute Momotaro no Umiwashi (Momotaro's Sea Eagles), which was released on March 25, 1943. Momotaro is a popular Japanese fairy-tale boy-hero, roughly similar to Jack the Giant-Killer in Western folklore. In this featurette he is portrayed as a young naval commander leading a squadron of funny-animal monkey fighter pilots (his "sea eagles"). This was popular enough with the public that the government authorized Seo to produce a feature-length sequel. Momotaro Umi no Shimpei (roughly Momotaro's Gods-Blessed Sea Warriors), 74 minutes long, was released by Shochiku, one of Japan's largest film companies, on April 12, 1945. This is the feature that has been available on a Shochiku home-video cassette off and on since 1984.