was a Japanese

benshi were Japanese performers who provided live narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or . Role The earliest films available for public display were produced by Western studios, portray ...

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), lit ...

raconteur A humorist (American) or humourist ( British spelling) is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughs. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business ...

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

ist, and

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...

and

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

personality. Musei (as he was called) first came to prominence as a benshi, a narrator of films during the silent era in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. He was celebrated for his restrained but erudite narration that was popular among intellectual film fans.Dym, Jeffrey A.
Tokugawa Musei: A Portrait Sketch of One of Japan's Greatest Narrative Artists
" ''In Praise of Film Studies: Essays in Honor of Makino Mamoru''. Eds. Aaron Gerow and Abé Mark Nornes (Kinema Club, 2001). He concentrated on foreign films such as '' The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' at high-class theaters like the

Aoikan The was a movie theater in the Tameike section of Akasaka, Tokyo, Akasaka in Tokyo, Japan. It existed from the mid–1910s as a high-class foreign film theater, featuring ''benshi'' such as Musei Tokugawa. After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake ...

and the Musashinokan, but also performed Japanese works such as

Teinosuke Kinugasa was a Japanese filmmaker. He was born in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture and died in Kyoto. Kinugasa won the 1954 Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival for '' Gate of Hell''. Biography Kinugasa began his career as an onnagata (actor specializing in ...

's experimental masterpiece ''

A Page of Madness is a 1926 Japanese silent film directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Lost for 45 years until it was rediscovered by Kinugasa in his storehouse in 1971, the film is the product of an avant-garde group of artists in Japan known as the Shinkankakuha ( ...

'' (1926). As the silent era ended, Musei switched to storytelling on stage and on radio, and also began acting and doing narrations in films. He was also famous for his essays, humorous novels, and autobiographical writings, publishing nearly fifty books in his life. Tokugawa Musei chosho, Japanese Wikipedia With the advent of

television in Japan Television in Japan was introduced in 1939. However, experiments date back to the 1920s, with Kenjiro Takayanagi's pioneering experiments in electronic television. Television broadcasting was halted by World War II, after which regular televisio ...

, Musei also became a prominent presence in that medium.

Notes

External links

* *
Clip
of one of Musei Tokugawa's benshi performances. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tokugawa, Musei 1894 births 1971 deaths Japanese male actors Japanese radio personalities Japanese essayists Benshi People from Shimane Prefecture Japanese television personalities Storytellers 20th-century essayists