Koji Yamamura, the Japanese Side of Independent Animation

At the age of thirteen, Koji Yamamura learned from a magazine how to take sheets of paper with drawings on them and turn them into motion: all you need is a Super 8 camera, patience, and the courage to try. From that moment on, his entire career has been shaped by an almost childlike intuition: animation is not just a technique, but a primary gateway to worlds that do not exist—and those who practice it, deep down, always remain a bit like children. The common belief is that animation is a team effort, involving large studios and industrial pipelines. Yet Yamamura turns this notion on its head: true avant-garde art emerges where there is no team, where you can change style with each short film and start afresh with every new project, with no legacy to uphold. For him, independence is not just an economic necessity—it is a creative principle. There is one scene that explains it all: Every morning, Yamamura walks around a temple in Tokyo, listens to the insects, observes the trees, and puts off work to let his ideas settle. It might sound like a retiree's routine, but worlds are born from this walk: Mount Head, his most famous short film, takes a Japanese legend from a hundred years ago and transforms it—instead of characters climbing onto the protagonist's head, he places modern-day citizens enjoying hanami, a picnic under cherry trees, on a disheveled, grotesque mountain head. That short film, just ten minutes long, made it big: festivals in Ottawa, an Oscar nomination, and Grand Prix awards in Annecy and Zagreb. And it all started with a sketchbook full of drawings and the decision to remain an artisan. Another key moment: Hiroshima, 1985. Yamamura is twenty-one years old and meets Ishu Patel, a Canadian director who is a juror at the festival. He watches Patel’s experimental short films and realizes that each work can employ a different technique while maintaining a consistent aesthetic. That's the spark: “I want to do this job.” But Japan does not provide a home for those who make auteur short films. So Yamamura came up with a solution: he opened an animation gallery, Au Praxinoscope, so that people could see originals and materials that would otherwise remain hidden. Then he founded the animation program at the Tokyo University of the Arts: a maximum of sixteen students per year, all mentored like apprentices in a workshop, from the initial idea through to post-production. Here, financial support is scarce, and there are many challenges, but the freedom is absolute: “With each project, I can start over completely.” His philosophy is clear: while industrial animation creates stylistic boundaries and repeats formulas, he prefers the bumpy road of independent short films, where each work can be radically different from the last. One important detail to keep in mind: in Japan, there is almost no public funding for those who work in this field. The risk is constant, the financial return minimal, but the stakes—the ability to convey primal emotions through an almost primordial medium—are extremely high. And for Yamamura, the secret lies right here: the simpler the drawing, the deeper he can go. Here lies the perspective that is often overlooked: when animation is truly independent, it is not just about telling stories. It serves to help us understand how alternative worlds work—and, more importantly, how our minds work. The Japan of the major anime studios is not the Japan of Yamamura's short films, and perhaps this is where a new generation of creators can begin. Every sheet of paper drawn poses a primal question: What if, instead of following tradition, you started from scratch every time? It's not the technique, but the freedom of perspective that makes the difference. If you’ve found yourself thinking that animation is only for big studios, on Lara Notes you can press I’m In—it’s your way of saying that this idea now concerns you. And if, in a few days' time, you find yourself telling someone about Mount Head or Yamamura's walks around the temple, on Lara Notes you can tag the person who was with you using Shared Offline: a record of a conversation worth having will remain. This Note comes from Archipel, and it saved you an hour of interviewing.