The Story of the Monkey King
About The Story of the Monkey King
The monk Xuanzang sets out for western India to fetch the Mahayana scriptures. On the road he frees Sun Wukong, whom Guanyin had shut inside a rock for making trouble, and Wukong becomes his pupil. Wukong stops a pig monster attacking a girl, and the pig joins the journey as Zhu Bajie. A kappa is renamed Sha Wujing and comes along too. Wukong traps another monster in a stone, throws a ball he took from it, and a snow-topped holy mountain appears: the pagoda where the scriptures are kept. Xuanzang asks the Buddha for them and is told they will arrive on a dragon cart.
Cast & crew
More about The Story of the Monkey King
The Japanese title is 切紙細工 西遊記 孫悟空物語 (Kirigami-zaiku Saiyūki Songokū monogatari). Noburō Ōfuji's second chiyogami film, after Burglars of "Baghdad" Castle. Japanese Animated Film Classics lists the original as three 35mm reels, 1,044 meters, 51 minutes at 18 frames per second, released by Chūō Eigasha on October 29, 1926. Banno Shoten also issued a 9.5mm Pathé Baby reduction.
Themes
Technique
The figures are cut from patterned chiyogami paper, the same method Ōfuji had just used for Baguda Castle.
Preservation
The original three-reel 35mm film is not what circulates. The surviving copy is a 16mm digest. Japanese Animated Film Classics traces the digital version from a 16mm positive at the Planet Film Archive to a 35mm internegative at the National Film Center and then a 35mm positive. The digest has no end title.
Notes
- A Kinema Junpō advertisement on October 11, 1926 (issue 242, page 29) called it "a good old Chiyogami Eiga created in pure Japanese style.
- Akira Iwasaki reviewed it in Kinema Junpō on November 11, 1926 (issue 245, page 53).
- In the surviving print, Xuanzang takes Sha Wujing as a disciple after the sutra scene, with snow falling on the monk and his three smiling pupils. The archive reordered that episode to match the story when it posted the video on August 3, 2017.
- The digest has no end title.
Scenes
- Xuanzang frees Sun Wukong from the rock where Guanyin had confined him.
- Wukong throws a ball taken from a monster, and a snow-covered pagoda rises.
- Snow falls on Xuanzang and his three disciples after the scriptures are granted.
Also available
- Japanese Animated Film Classics (work 41061)
- Wikimedia Commons (The Story of the Monkey King (1926).webm)
