Title Sequence

The film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya begins, in the manner of older western movies, and as many studio Ghibli movies do with the credits of filmmakers and cast over a unique background. However, for this film the animators noticed a chance to place the movie in a specific historical context and display the credits over a sheet of woodblock printed paper (See the image on the left). This kind of decorated paper was often used during the Heian period (784-1183 CE) for anthologies of poetry which had been beautifully rendered in calligraphy. This technique, called Chigiri-e involves handmade paper which is torn and aligned on other paper and additionally decorated with flecks of metallic dust or colored pigment. After completion, a calligrapher could write poetry over it, creating a beautiful, almost rustic look. As the textbook Art Beyond the West states:

---

At times, these elegant, sprawling, and asymmetrical marks made by the courtly calligraphers have such a strong sense of energy and movement that they seem to dance across the page. Together, the writing format, the loosely flowing inked lines, the decorative setting, and the content of the poetry created a distinctly Japanese and Heian literary and artistic experience (P. 166, Chapter 5)

In the context of the film Kaguya (the English version), the character calligraphy of the original Japanese has been replaced with English print. However, the original credits’ calligraphy is very similar to Heian period examples, and has a loose, ink-brush quality not found in the English version. This simple yet effective touch places the film both in a specific cultural period and also in a larger historical artistic context so that those familiar with the artistic technique will immediately recognize where in Japanese history this film is taking place. 

- Bee

from the 1st volume of collected poems of
Ōnakatomi no Yoshinobu (921–991), Artist Unknown

two pages of the collected poems of Minamoto no Shigeyuki (?-ACE 1000), Artist Unknown