General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Tale of the White Serpent (1958 film)

The Tale of the White Serpent (白蛇伝, Hakujaden; also released in English as The White Snake Enchantress) is a 1958 Japanese animated fantasy film produced by Toei Doga (now Toei Animation) and released by Toei on October 22, 1958. It was Japan's first full-length color animated feature, adapting the Chinese folk tale of the White Snake, in which the snake spirit Bai-Niang (白娘) and her human lover Xu Xian (許仙) fall in love while the monk Fahai tries to separate them.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Japanese title	白蛇伝 (Hakujaden); English title The White Snake Enchantress¹^•³
Release	October 22, 1958, Toei circuit; 78 minutes; Eastman Color, 35 mm¹
Studio	Toei Doga, founded 1956; the film was completed about two and a half years after the studio's establishment²^•⁴
Director and script	Taiji Yabushita (script and direction); original idea by Shin Uehara; dialogue by Seiji Yashiro¹
Production scale	Cost 40,471,000 yen; about 7 months of drawing; 16,474 key frames and 65,213 in-between frames⁴
Voice cast	Hisaya Morishige (Xu Xian) and Mariko Miyagi (Bai-Niang), both from Toho¹^•⁵
International honors	A special diploma for feature films for children aged 13 to 18 at the 11th International Children's Film Festival in Venice in 1959 and the cultural prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, among other awards¹^•¹⁸

Spoilers

Story

The film is built on the Chinese folk tale known as the Legend of the White Snake, one of China's four great folk tales, a story of marriage between a snake and a human being.³^•⁹ As a boy, Xu Xian keeps a small white snake as a pet and is made to release it. Years later the snake, having become the beautiful woman Bai-Niang, comes to him and the two fall in love, aided by the fish spirit Sho-Sei (少青). The monk Fahai, who knows Bai-Niang's true nature, resolves to use his powers to break up the relationship.¹⁰^•¹¹ The story is set in China's Song era, beside West Lake, and the film adds comic animal companions for Xu Xian, a panda and a cat-bear named Mimi.³

Production background

Toei bought the animation studio Nichido Eiga in 1956 and reorganized its staff into the new company Toei Doga. The people gathered there represented much of the surviving core of Japanese prewar and postwar "manga eiga" (cartoon film) production: animator Yasuji Mori, who had studied under Kenzo Masaoka; Akira Daikuhara, self-taught under Ikuo Ashida; and director Taiji Yabushita.²

The film's subject came from abroad. After the 1956 live-action film Madam White Snake (白夫人の妖恋), a Hong Kong–Japan co-production distributed by Toho, proved popular in Hong Kong, the idea of an animated version of the same legend was brought into Japan.⁶ Toei president Hiroshi Okawa saw a commercial opening in overseas distribution of animation, and the Chinese tale of the white snake spirit and a young man was chosen as the subject.⁷ Production was formally announced at the end of June 1957, and the film was completed on September 3, 1958.⁸^•¹

At the time of release the film was advertised on posters as a "full natural-color feature-length cartoon film" (総天然色長編漫画映画), the term "manga eiga" being the standard label for animation in the Japanese press of the period, although Toei's internal publications also used the word "animation."²

Making the film

Toei Doga built the film on an industrial scale new to Japan, hiring large numbers of staff and using a newly equipped studio in Oizumi, Tokyo, with an organized production system.¹² The production consumed 40,471,000 yen, roughly seven months of drawing, 16,474 key frames, and 65,213 in-between frames.⁴

The key animation was carried entirely by two veterans, Yasuji Mori and Akira Daikuhara, while most of the staff who finished the roughly 65,000 in-between drawings had less than one year of experience.⁷ The in-betweening crew included Yasuo Otsuka, Yoichi Kotabe, Reiko Okuyama, and Gisaburo Sugii, animators who went on to form the core of the next generations of Japanese animation.¹^•¹³ Kazuhiko Okabe and Kiyoshi Hashimoto handled composition and art, Tadayoshi Miki and Mitsuru Nakamura the music, and the voice roles were taken by Hisaya Morishige and Mariko Miyagi; the film was Morishige's first appearance in a Toei film.¹^•¹⁴

Reception and awards

The film received numerous honors at home and abroad. The listed awards include the 9th Blue Ribbon Special Award, special placement in the 1958 NHK film festival best-ten, the 13th Mainichi Film Concours Special Award, the 13th Ministry of Education Art Festival Encouragement Award, the 5th Hokkaido Shimbun Film Award Special Prize, the cultural prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, a special diploma for feature films for children aged 13 to 18 at the 11th International Children's Film Festival in Venice in 1959, and the honorary grand prize at the Mexico Film Festival.¹^•¹⁸ It was also selected by the Ministry of Education and screened in various parts of Japan on that basis.¹⁵

Domestically, the film surprised audiences and industry observers that Japan could produce a work of this scale, and it made Toei Doga's existence known at a stroke.¹⁰ From 1958 onward Toei Doga released roughly one new feature per year through the 1970s, and these cel-animated features were the main driving force of what is called the golden age of "manga eiga."² The film is also credited with influencing later animators and directors, including Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki.¹¹

Restoration and later circulation

In 2018, Toei, Toei Animation, and the National Film Archive of Japan jointly restored the film from Toei's original negative, performing color adjustment, removal of color unevenness and flicker, correction of black frames, and removal of vertical scratches, with reference to surviving cels and related materials.¹⁶ The restored version was shown in the Cannes Classics section of the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival in May 2019 as a 2K DCP, and the 4K DCP version received its world premiere at the National Film Archive of Japan in the same year.¹⁶ A Blu-ray BOX using the new 4K master, with reproductions of the script, storyboards, poster, and other production materials, was released by Toei Video on October 9, 2019.⁴ The film remains in circulation on Japanese streaming services.¹⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026