Kihachirou Kawamoto

Japanese designer and maker of puppets a director writer and animator of independentlymade stop motion films and president of the Japan Animation Association since 1989 until his death in August 2010 succeeding Osamu Tezuka. Previously an illustrator and doll maker he has collaborated with Tadasu Iizawa and trained under Tadahito Mochinaga and later Ji Trnka. His most famous creations in his native Japan are the puppets he designed and made for a longrunning TV series adaptation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms internationally he is better known for his own short films. Most of these are model animation Tabi and Shijin no Shgai are cutout animation and the Frenchlanguage Farce anthropocynique is mixed media.