Legendary Japanese animator Kihachirō Kawamoto has been making stop motion films for over 50 years.

Kihachirō Kawamoto (link goes to his official site, in Japanese) is a Japanese animator, renowned internationally for his work in stop motion animation. As a boy he was inspired by the work of the acclaimed Czech stop motion filmmaker Jiří Trnka and later trained under him, as well as Japanese stop motion pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga. Many of Kawamoto’s films – including his most recent, 2005′s Book of the Dead – seem strongly influenced by Bunraku puppetry and Japanese Noh theatre.

You can read an interview with him here and see find some of his work on YouTube.