Chapter Commentaries 5

Throughout the 1960s, the Sogetsu Art Center was at the vanguard of all kinds of different artform activities. Yoji Kuri, Hiroshi Manabe, and Ryohei Yanagihara, as the 3-person Animation Group, regularly released experimental animated films. In 1964, the group invited Uno, together with Tadanori Yokoo and Makoto Wada, to submit their own animated works, and Uno released three short films over three years. The first one was La Fête Blanche. Appearing on a pure white screen, the fingertip of a woman resting her chin on her hand turns into a tree branch. This is followed by people and animals magically metamorphizing into different shapes. The second one was Toi et Moi. This one was live-action, beginning with a woman who has body paintings of a mermaid and a horse, and so on. These paintings transform in sensual ways as the woman moves.The third film, Don, uses a picture-card storytelling technique, moving about static pictures attached to sheet celluloid. At about that time, Uno and Yokoo and others formed the Tokyo Illustrator's Club. This became a transitional period, when Uno shifted from graphic designer to becoming an illustrator. His animation also included objects that transformed and metamorphosed magnificently, exhibiting the great potential of his talent.

After his animated films were released, Uno stepped away from the genre for many years. He went back to it, though, in 2011, a time when he was putting his energy into stage design. NHK's Minna no Uta, a long-running song teature by the public TV broadcaster, put Uno in charge of sculpture and illustration for the song Dare ka ga saz wo hite ita (Someone was Playing the Saz). In it he used the puppets he had created for Le Petit Prince for the 4th Project Nyx performance to create a fantasy of visual beauty.