Extant Japanese Animation 1917-1924

1917 marks the centenary of the advent of commercially produced anime in Japan, but unfortunately it is impossible for us to get a clear picture of what those early years were like.   In the decades following the Second World War it was believed that all of the animation created in the 1910s was lost either in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, the firebombing of Tokyo, or due to just plain neglect.

From what little information survives of this earliest period of animation production, we know that at least 17 short films were made in 1917 by Shimokawa Ōten, Seitarō Kitayama and Jun’ichi Kōuchi.  According to the reckoning of Katsunori Yamaguchi and Yasushi Watanabe (日本ア ニメーション映画史, 1977), at least 12 short films are known two have been released in 1918, followed by one in 1921, 5 in 1922, 3 in 1923 and 6 in 1924.  This may not sound like a lot but considering that the techniques they were using were still experimental in nature and they had only a few assistants to help them, it is actually an impressive number of films for such a short period.  To put it in context, the American animation pioneer Winsor McCay was only making a film every couple of years while in France Émile Cohl directed or co-directed 20 shorts in 2016 (only one of which is extant).

From what little is known about this period, most of the animation was done using simple line drawings or cutouts or a combination of the two techniques.  Because of the expense of celluloid and the time consuming nature of animation, many of the films that appear to be line drawings only actually used cutouts in order to save money, resources, and time. 

1924 is a significant year because it marks the beginning of the directorial careers of two more early animation pioneers: Hakusan Kimura and Noburō Ōfuji.  Very little is known about the life and career of Kimura other than the fact that he was mentored by Kitayama at Kitayama’s own studios (which were destroyed in the 1923 earthquake) and went on to make educational films at Asahi Kinema Gomei-sha.  He also collaborated with Kenzō Masaoka in the development of the first Japanese animation talkie Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka (力と女の世の中, 1933, considered lost).  It is interesting to note that one of Kimura’s the co-directors on The Tale of Crab Temple was Tomu Uchida, who was working at Asahi Kinema Gomei-sha during this early phase of his career.  By 1927 he would move to Nikkatsu where he develop into one of Japan’s top feature film directors. 

Ōfuji was mentored by Kōuchi and was influenced by the silhouette animation films of German pioneer Lotte Reiniger.  He completed his first two films in 1924 and went on to become the first Japanese animator to establish a name for himself internationally at festivals such as Cannes and the Venice Biennale.  An Old Fool was rediscovered in 2013 by a film collector and was restored by IMAGICA. The NFC animation archive currently lists The Story of Tobacco as being released in 1926, but its official filmography of Ōfuji gives 1924 as the date of completion of the first version of the film, which is why I include it here.  It is a fascinating early attempt at mixing live action and animation.  This list of extant films is based on evidence I have of film screenings at the NFC and elsewhere.  I will update this list when I discover evidence of other extant films.

1917

The Dull Sword

なまくら刀

Namakura Gatana

dir. Jun’ichi KŌUCHI (幸内純一)

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1918

Urashima Taro

浦島太郎

Urashima Tarō

dir. Seitarō KITAYAMA (北山清太郎)

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1924

The Hare and the Tortoise

教育お伽漫画　兎と亀

Kyōiku Otogi Manga: Usagi to Kame

dir. Sanae YAMAMOTO (山本早苗)

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1924

The Tale of Crab Temple

蟹満寺縁起

Kani Manji Engi

dir. Hidehiko OKUDA (奥田秀彦), Hakuzan KIMURA (木村白山), Tomu UCHIDA (内田吐夢)

1924

An Old Fool

のろまな爺

Noroma na Oyaji

dir. Noburō Ōfuji (大藤信郎)

1924

A Story of Tobacco

煙り草物語

Kemurigusa Monogatari (shisaku-hin)

dir. Noburō Ōfuji (大藤信郎)

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2017 Cathy Munroe Hotes

The Dull Sword (なまくら刀, 1917)

Japan is celebrating the centenary of anime this year. Due to the paucity of early cinema records in Japan there is much debate as to when exactly animation was first publicly screened in the country. However, we do know that the 1910s saw screenings of foreign works by Émile Cohl, James Stuart Blackton, James Randolph Bray, and Raoul Barré. There is also evidence that many people were experimenting with the animation medium before 1917, but it was the year that the first studio was organised to make animation for public screenings. 

The cartoonists Ōten Shimokawa (下川凹天, 1892-1973), Seitarō Kitayama (北山清太郎, 1888-1945), and Jun’ichi Kōuchi (幸内純一, 1886-1970) produced at least 20 short animated films in 1917. The earliest of these is generally thought to have been Shimokawa’s The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa (芋川椋三玄関番之巻, 1917), but there is evidence that there may have been an earlier work. You can read “Some remarks on the first Japanese animation films in 1917” by Frederick S. Litten to learn what is known about this time period. 

What is clear; however, is that almost all the Japanese animation films from the 1910s have been lost. Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (なまくら刀 / Namakura Gatana, 1917), also known as The Sword of Hanawa Hekonai (塙凹内名刀之巻 / Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki), is the earliest known extant work. The Dull Sword and Kitayama’s Urashima Taro (1918) were miraculously discovered in an Osaka antique shop in 2008 (source). The film originally debuted on 30th of June 1917. 

Watch a news item on the discovery: 

A one-reel silent film, The Dull Sword was digitally restored and can be screened on the National Film Centre’s film archive website with subtitles by Dean Shimauchi. 

The film has a couple of title cards, but much of the apparent dialogue is un-titled. It is likely that these segments of dialogue were filled in by a benshi, or film narrator, as was standard practice in Japanese silent cinema. Watching the film completely silent on the NFC archive website, without the comic interpretation of a benshi, means that the full comic impact of the film is greatly reduced. One of the title cards is actually on its side (90° clockwise). The film was found with this splicing error and left as it was found by the restoration team.

The Dull Sword is a slapstick comedy, which was a popular genre of the silent period. It is likely Kōuchi and his early animation peers would have been familiar with imported comedies of the day such as the films of “the first international movie star” Max Linder of France, and American slapsticks such as those of Fatty Arbuckle, The Keystone Cops (1912-1917), and Charlie Chaplin. There are also elements of slapstick in many Japanese theatrical traditions such as manzai (漫才) and kyōgen (狂言). Add to the mix that Kōuchi was already an established mangaka and caricaturist when he made The Dull Sword, comedy would have come naturally to him. 

The opening title card, tinted yellow, immediately sets the scene as a jidaigeki with the profile of a samurai and a bent sword. The first section of the film is tinted a dark cyan. A samurai appears in an iris shot examining his sword and testing it for sharpness. His eyes roll comically and his sword overlaps the iris matte in a cinematic visual gag. He cuts his finger on the sword then takes it to the swordsmith “Dull Smith”. The dialogue between the swordsmith and the samurai does not have title cards, but it is clearly humorous in nature with much eye-rolling from both men. There is a slapstick routine of the samurai trying and failing to sheath his sword. Once the sword is finally sheathed, the samurai pays the swordsmith and leaves. 

In the next scene, the samurai is walking along the riverbank across from a large town. He gets out his sword and examines it. A title card reveals his desire to try out the sword. The film cuts to a bald, blind man with a cane playing a flute next to a tree. The samurai approaches him from behind. A yellow-tinted title card reveals that the samurai sees the blind man as a possible person to test his sword out on. He says something (presumably threatening judging from his facial expression) to the blind man. The blind man surprises the samurai by jumping up and kicking him in the face with his geta-clad feet. 

The remainder of the film is tinted yellow. The style is also different with silhouette figures instead of detailed caricatures. A traveller with his luggage on a stick carried over his shoulder is running through the forest and encounters the samurai. The samurai tries to attack him, but the traveller outwits him, hitting him on the head with his stick. The traveller runs away as the samurai struggles to raise his head. Via a speech bubble, the samurai accuses the traveller of being a murderer. The samurai tries to stagger off using his sword as a cane, but it breaks and he falls on his face. He throws the useless sword away. He exits frame left and the film concludes with a company logo reading Y.N. & Co. I am not sure what the Y.N. stands for as Kōuchi made the film for the short-lived company Kobayashi Shōkai (小林商会, 1914-17) run by Kisaburō Kobayashi (小林 喜三郎, 1880-1961) 

The film was transferred to digital format at 16 fps. There were many frames missing from the two film fragments (the cyan-tinted fragment and the yellow-tinted fragment) that had to be compensated for during the film restoration. The final restoration consists of a total of 3,180 frames. For such an early work, the animation is done quite well. Much of the cyan fragment has been hand drawn with cutouts used to save money and celluloid. I am not sure why the film switches to silhouette for the second half. The reason may be budgetary rather than stylistic. My own personal view is that such a short film would have been stronger if it had stuck to one style throughout. 

The most interesting thing about The Dull Sword is its use of a Japanese setting and subject matter. According to Jonathan Clements, the film received praise at the time for doing so (Anime: A History, p. 29). Before the discovery of these earliest works, we only had examples of anime from the 1920s-1940s which demonstrated the influence of popular American character design like Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Betty Boop, and Felix the Cat. This earliest extant anime has been drawn in a caricature style typical of the 1910s and the character design is such a contrast with today’s manga and anime styles. It is a wonderful glimpse into a film culture that we know so little about, due to the destruction wreaked by the Great Kantō earthquake if 1923, the firebombing of Tokyo, the flammability of early film stock, and the general neglect of early films after their initial screening runs. I hope one day to see this film interpreted by a benshi performance in order to get the complete cinematic experience. 

 Cathy Munroe Hotes 2017