Ponsuke no Haru

Spring Comes to Ponsuke is one of the few almost completely preserved works of Japanese auteur Ikuo Oishi, who was at the time of his work considered the Japanese equivalent of Walt Disney who worked at the Photo Chemical Laboratory, Manga Division, where he would train the next generation of post war Japanese animators that would set the trend for the anime industry in the 1950s.

The short film is without dialogue and suffers from poor preservation as a mark of it's time. I think the themes at play - hunger, lack of resources, difficult environments seemed to represent the overwhelming sentiment of the Japanese ... empire at the time - one of expansionism to justify the sustenance of the civilization.

This short film is available in the public domain thanks to the efforts of the Japanese Animated Film Classics subdivision of the Japanese Archive. At only 11 minutes, it is worth a watch to get broader context of the history of the animated art form in Japan and how the forefathers of the modern unique style took broad inspirations from Walt Disney.