was a Japanese

film studio A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the production ...

active in the 1910s. The name translates as the "Natural Color Moving Picture Company," but it was known as Tenkatsu for short. The company was formed in 1914 by remnants of the

Fukuhōdō was a Japanese film studio active in the early years of cinema in Japan. Background Fukuhōdō was founded in 1910 when Kenzō Tabata built a chain of modern, concrete movie theaters in Tokyo. To supply these eight theaters, Tabata started a p ...

studio that did not take part in the merger that formed

Nikkatsu is a Japanese entertainment company known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio, founded in 1912 during the silent film era. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally ...

, particularly the entrepreneur Kisaburō Kobayashi, and was first aimed at exploiting the

Kinemacolor Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson and, more directly, Ed ...

color motion picture system 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 north ...

. That system became too expensive, so the company soon settled on making regular films, becoming Nikkatsu's main rival in the 1910s. Although it was a decentralized company, one that was run by various bosses and allowed

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, portraying ...

to order the production of films, Tenkatsu played a part in the

Pure Film Movement The was a trend in film criticism and filmmaking in 1910s and early 1920s Japan that advocated what were considered more modern and cinematic modes of filmmaking. Critics in such magazines as '' Kinema Record'' and '' Kinema Junpo'' complained th ...

by allowing its employee

Norimasa Kaeriyama (1 March 1893 – 6 November 1964) was a pioneering Japanese film director and film theorist. Biography Beginning with articles he submitted to Yoshizawa Shōten's magazine ''Katsudō shashinkai'' while still a student, Kaeriyama developed ...

to direct some of the first reformist works incorporating actresses and foreign film technique. It was also known for hiring

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 ...

to produce some of the first Japanese

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

animated films Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

in Japan in 1916. Shimokowa experimented with several techniques until the studio distributed his first short animated movie of 5 minutes duration in January 1917, called ''The Story of the Concierge Mukuzō Imukawa'' ('' Imokawa Mukuzō, genkanban no maki''). Tenkatsu was eventually bought up by Kokkatsu in December 1919.

Notes

Japanese film studios {{film-studio-stub