was a Japanese artist, considered to be one of the founding artists and pioneers of

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

. Little is known of his early personal life, other than that his family moved to the

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

area when he was nine years old. Here he began working for '' Tokyo Puck'' magazine as a political cartoonist and

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

series artist. At the age of 26, Shimokawa was hired by Tenkatsu Production Company to create a short

animated film Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

. Shimokawa used several

animation Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

techniques that were, at the time, unique: using chalk or white wax on a dark board background to draw characters, rubbing out portions to be animated and drawing with ink directly onto film, whiting out animated portions. At the time,

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 present-day ...

cels (rather than modern

acetate An acetate is a salt formed by the combination of acetic acid with a base (e.g. alkaline, earthy, metallic, nonmetallic, or radical base). "Acetate" also describes the conjugate base or ion (specifically, the negatively charged ion called ...

film) were costly and scarce in Japan, having to be imported. These techniques cut production costs, material costs and completion time. The resulting film was '' Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki'', released in 1917. Though not the earliest animation created in Japan, it is considered to be the first "true" Anime film, as it was the first to be publicly shown in a theater. The film ran only five minutes. As with many animation works created in Japan before the mid-1920s, no trace of the film, or any of Shimokawa's five other short films, has survived. Shimokawa's animation work was cut short by chronic health problems, and he returned to work as a consultant and editor for other production companies making animated films in the 1930s and 1940s. Not much is known of his later life; indeed, very few works bear mention of his contribution beyond his own personal works.

Works

* '' Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki'' (1917) * ''Dekobō shingachō – Meian no shippai'' (1917) * ''Chamebō shingachō – Nomi fūfu shikaeshi no maki'' (1917) * ''Imokawa Mukuzō Chūgaeri no maki'' (1917) * ''Imokawa Mukuzō Tsuri no maki'' (1917)

References

Sources

* Jonathan Clements, Helen McCarthy (2001). ''The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917'', Paperback Edition, Stone Bridge Press.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shimokawa Oten 1892 births 1973 deaths Japanese animators Manga artists People from Miyakojima, Okinawa Place of birth missing