,
sometimes called the Matsumoto fragment, is a Japanese animated filmstrip that is the oldest known work of animation from Japan. Its creator is unknown. Evidence suggests it was made somewhere between 1907 and 1912, so it may predate the earliest displays of Western animated films in Japan. It was discovered in a collection of films and projectors in Kyoto in 2005.
The three-second filmstrip depicts a boy who writes "", removes his hat, and bows. The frames were stencilled in red and black using a device for making magic lantern slides, and the filmstrip was fastened in a loop for continuous play.
Description
''Katsudō Shashin'' consists of a series of cartoon images on fifty frames of a
celluloid
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...
strip and lasts three seconds at sixteen
frames per second. It depicts a young boy in a
sailor suit
A sailor suit is a uniform traditionally worn by enlisted seamen in a navy or other governmental sea services. It later developed into a popular clothing style for children, especially as dress clothes.
Origins and history
In the Royal Navy, th ...
who writes the
kanji characters "" (''katsudō shashin'', "moving picture") from
right to left, then turns to the viewer, removes his hat, and bows. ''Katsudō Shashin'' is a provisional title for the film, whose actual title is unknown.
Unlike in
traditional animation
Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation.
Proce ...
, the frames were not produced by photographing the images, but rather were impressed onto film using a
stencil. This was done with a ''kappa-ban'', a device for stencilling
magic lantern slides. The images were in red and black on a strip of
35 mm film whose ends were fastened in a loop for continuous viewing.
Background
Early printed animation films for optical toys such as the
zoetrope predated projected film animation. German toy manufacturer
Gebrüder Bing presented a
cinematograph
Cinematograph or kinematograph is an early term for several types of motion picture film mechanisms. The name was used for movie cameras as well as film projectors, or for complete systems that also provided means to print films (such as the Cin ...
at a toy festival in Nuremberg in 1898; soon other toy manufacturers sold similar devices. Live-action films for these devices were expensive to make; possibly as early as 1898 animated films for these devices were on sale, and could be fastened in loops for continuous viewing. Imports of these German devices appeared in Japan at least as early as 1904; films for them likely included animation loops.
Projected film technology arrived in Japan from the West in 1896–97. The earliest display of foreign animation in Japanese theatres that can be dated with certainty is of the French animator
Émile Cohl
Émile Eugène Jean Louis Cohl (; né Courtet; 4 January 1857 – 20 January 1938) was a French caricaturist of the largely forgotten Incoherent Movement, cartoonist, and animator, called "The Father of the Animated Cartoon" and "The Oldest Pa ...
's ''The Nipper's Transformations''; ja, ニッパルの変形, links=no ''Nipparu no Henkei'' (1911), which premièred in Tokyo on 15 April 1912. Works by
Ōten Shimokawa
was a Japanese artist, considered to be one of the founding artists and pioneers of anime. Little is known of his early personal life, other than that his family moved to the Tokyo area when he was nine years old. Here he began working for Toky ...
,
Seitarō Kitayama
was an early Japanese animation director whose work includes the first examples of commercial production of anime. Kitayama was referred to as one of the fathers of anime by Yoshirō Irie, a researcher at Japan's National Film Center.
Works
*''B ...
, and
Jun'ichi Kōuchi
was a Japanese animator. He is referred to as one of the "fathers" of anime.
Works
*''Hanawa Hekonai Meitō no Maki, or Namakura Gatana'' (1917)
*''Chamebō Kūkijūno Maki'' (1917)
*''Hanawa Hekonai Kappa Matsuri'' (1917)
*''Eiga Enzetsu Seij ...
in 1917 were the first Japanese animated films to reach theatre screens. The
films are lost, but a few have been discovered in "toy movie" versions for viewing at home on hand-cranked projectors; the oldest to survive is ''Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki'' (1917), titled ''
Namakura-gatana'' in its home version.
Rediscovery
In December 2004, a secondhand dealer in Kyoto contacted Natsuki Matsumoto, an expert in
iconography at the
Osaka University of Arts
is a private arts university located in Kanan, Minamikawachi District, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. The university was founded in 1945 as , changing its name to in 1957, and then to in 1964. The university adopted the current name in 1966.
Nota ...
. The dealer had obtained a collection of films and projectors from an old Kyoto family, and Matsumoto arrived the next month to fetch them. The collection included three projectors, eleven 35mm films, and thirteen glass magic lantern slides.
When Matsumoto found ''Katsudō Shashin'' in the collection, the filmstrip was in poor condition. The collection included three Western animated filmstrips; ''Katsudō Shashin'' may have been made in imitation of such examples of German or other Western animation. Based on evidence such as the likely manufacture dates of the projectors in the collection, Matsumoto and animation historian determined the film was most likely made in the late
Meiji period, which ended in 1912; historian Frederick S. Litten has suggested as a likely date, and that "a production date before 1905 or after 1912 is unlikely". At the time, movie theatres were rare in Japan; evidence suggests ''Katsudō Shashin'' was mass-produced to be sold to wealthy owners of home projectors. The creator of the filmstrip remains unknown; to Matsumoto, the relatively poor quality and low-tech printing technique indicate it was likely from a smaller company.
The discovery was widely covered in Japanese media. Given its speculated date of creation, the film would have been contemporary to—or even have predated—early animated works by Cohl and the American animators
J. Stuart Blackton and
Winsor McCay. The newspaper ''
Asahi Shimbun
is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and ...
'' acknowledged the importance of the discovery of Meiji-period animation, but expressed reservations about placing the film in the genealogy of Japanese animation, writing that it is "controversial that should even be called animation in the contemporary sense".
See also
*
Cinema of Japan
The has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world; as of 2021, it was the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. In 2011 Japan produced 411 feature films that ea ...
*
History of animation
While the history of animation began much earlier, this article is concerned with the development of the medium after the emergence of celluloid film in 1888, as produced for theatrical screenings, television and (non-interactive) home entertai ...
*
History of anime
The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1907.This article, by a German researcher, was first published on January 4, 2013 in ''The Japanese Journal of Animation St ...
*
List of rediscovered films
This is a list of rediscovered films that, once thought lost, have since been discovered, in whole or in part. See List of incomplete or partially lost films and List of rediscovered film footage for films which were not wholly lost.
For a f ...
*
List of anime by release date (pre-1939)
Notes
References
Works cited
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Katsudo Shashin
1907 films
1907 animated films
1900s animated short films
1900s anime films
1910s animated short films
1910s anime films
Anime short films
Articles containing video clips
1900s rediscovered films
Works of unknown authorship
Japanese silent films
Silent films in color
Rediscovered Japanese films