For a long time, every house in this country was inhabited by the yokai known as Yanari, or “house-rattlers.” But as wooden houses gradually fell into decline, they came to be inhabited only by the hard of hearing elderly, and the voices of the house-rattlers could no longer be heard. The house-rattlers sometimes feel lonely about that. The protagonist of this work is a small yokai, only a few inches tall, called “Yanari,” which appears in Japanese folklore. It has long been believed that the strange creaking and other mysterious sounds sometimes heard inside houses are the work of these beings, who try to startle the residents. In Japan, people have long believed that the homes they live in, like the house-rattlers, contain unseen shadowy aspects, and they have feared them, calling them “oni” and treating them as something distant from everyday life. Today, this culture is fading, and the residents who once sensed “oni” have grown old, as if living on the side of the oni as shadows of modern, bright society. This work is a video piece that depicts the figures of elderly people being left behind by contemporary society and creatures from folklore, using effects of shadow and light. This is an animated work shot by physically moving dolls on location in my grandmother’s 80-year-old house in a depopulated port town. That house had long accepted and seen off many residents over its 80-year history, and because it still bore traces of the lives they had lived there, I always felt the presence of something “uncanny” whenever I heard a house-rattler in the house, and as a child I was always afraid. In this work, faint natural light, shadows, and the contrast of light and dark shining through the transom were used to create effective boundaries between bright and dark areas inside a Japanese house. I attempted to recreate the folklore creature moving between light and shadow using actual dolls, making it seem as if it truly existed. By filming the dolls at their actual size as the scale of “Yanari,” I aimed to blend our everyday world with the world of animation, and to visualize the eerie presence lurking within the Japanese house. 解説サイト More Information:
https://www.shinobusoejima.com/house-rattler

とある過疎化の進んだ港町に住む、築８０年の祖母の家を使って、実際に人形をその場で動かして撮影したアニメーション作品。その家は、80年と言う長い期間に多くの住民を受け入れ見送り、彼らが生活してきた痕跡が残っているせいか、私は家で家鳴りが聞こえるたびに「得体がしれない」ものがいる気配を覚え、幼心にいつも恐れていた。

本作は、かすかな自然光と影や、欄間から差し込む明暗を使い、日本家屋特有の、家の中の明るい場所・暗い場所の境界線を効果的に作った。光と影の狭間を移動する民間伝承の生き物を、あたかも本当に存在しているかのように、実際に人形を使って再現する試みた。人形の大きさをそのまま「やなり」のサイズ感として、人間のスケール感で撮影することは、私たちの日常とアニメーションの世界を混在させ、日本家屋に潜む不気味な存在の可視化させる意図がある。