:Katsudō Shashin
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{{Use Canadian English|date=June 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2019}}
{{short description|1907 fragment of animated film speculated to be the oldest work of animation in Japan}}
{{nihongo|Katsudō Shashin|活動写真||"motion picture"}},
The three-second filmstrip depicts a boy who writes "{{lang|ja|活動写真}}", 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
File:Katsudō Shashin (1907).webm
Katsudō Shashin consists of a series of cartoon images on fifty frames of a celluloid strip and lasts three seconds at sixteen frames per second.{{sfn|Anime News Network staff|2005}} It depicts a young boy in a sailor suit who writes the kanji characters "{{lang|ja|活動写真}}" (katsudō shashin, "moving picture" or "Activity photo") from right to left, then turns to the viewer, removes his hat, and bows.{{sfn|Anime News Network staff|2005}} Katsudō Shashin is a provisional title for the film, whose actual title is unknown.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=13}}
Unlike in traditional animation, the frames were not produced by photographing the images, but rather were impressed onto film using a stencil.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=98}} This was done with a kappa-ban,{{efn|{{lang|ja|合羽版}} {{lang|tr|kappa-ban}}; the printing process was called kappa-zuri ({{lang|ja|合羽刷り}}) }} a device for stencilling magic lantern slides. The images were in red and black on a strip of 35 mm film{{efn|The filmstrip has since shrunk to 33.5 mm.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=13}} }}{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=116}} whose ends were fastened in a loop for continuous viewing.{{sfn|Asahi Shimbun staff|2005}}
Background
=Imported animation projectors=
Early printed animation films for optical toys such as the zoetrope predate projected film animation. German toy manufacturer Gebrüder Bing presented a cinematograph at a toy festival in Nuremberg in 1898; soon other toy manufacturers sold similar devices.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=9}} 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.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=10}} Imports of these German devices appeared in Japan at least as early as 1904;{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=14}} films for them likely included animation loops.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=15}}
File:Anime cell 1917.jpg's Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki began appearing in theatres in 1917.]]
Projected film technology arrived in Japan from the West in 1896–97.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=112}} The earliest display of foreign animation in Japanese theatres that can be dated with certainty is of the French animator Émile Cohl's The Nipper's Transformations{{efn|{{langx|fr|Les Exploits de Feu Follet|links=no}}; {{langx|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, Seitarō Kitayama, and Jun'ichi Kōuchi in 1917 were the first Japanese animated films to reach theatre screens.{{sfn|Litten|2013|p=27}} The films are lost, but a few have been discovered in "toy movie"{{efn|{{lang|ja|玩具}} {{transliteration|ja|gangu}} }} versions for viewing at home on hand-cranked projectors; the oldest to survive is Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki{{efn|{{lang|ja|塙凹内名刀之巻}} {{transliteration|ja|Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki}}, "Filmreel of Hanawa Hekonai's famous sword"}} (1917), titled Namakura-gatana in its home version.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|pp=96–97}}
Rediscovery
In December 2004, a secondhand dealer in Kyoto contacted Natsuki Matsumoto,{{efn|{{lang|ja|松本 夏樹}} {{transliteration|ja|Matsumoto Natsuki}}, b. 1952}}{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=98}} an expert in iconography at the Osaka University of Arts.{{sfn|Clements|McCarthy|2006|p=169}} The dealer had obtained a collection of films and projectors from an old Kyoto family, and Matsumoto arrived the next month to fetch them.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=98}} The collection included three projectors, eleven 35{{nnbsp}}mm films, and thirteen glass magic lantern slides.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=98}}
When Matsumoto found Katsudō Shashin in the collection,{{sfn|Clements|McCarthy|2006|p=169}} the filmstrip was in poor condition.{{sfn|López|2012|p=584}} The collection included three Western animated filmstrips;{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=12}} Katsudō Shashin may have been made in imitation of such examples of German or other Western animation.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=12}} Based on evidence such as the likely manufacture dates of the projectors in the collection, Matsumoto and animation historian {{Interlanguage link multi|Nobuyuki Tsugata|ja|3=津堅信之}}{{efn|{{lang|ja|津堅 信之}} {{transliteration|ja|Tsugata Nobuyuki}}, b. 1968}} determined the film was most likely made in the late Meiji period, which ended in 1912;{{efn|The Meiji period lasted from 1868 to 1912.}}{{sfnm|1a1=Matsumoto|1a2=Tsugata|1y=2006|1p=101|2a1=Matsumoto|2y=2011|2p=115}} historian Frederick S. Litten has suggested {{circa|1907}} as a likely date,{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=13}} and that "a production date before 1905 or after 1912 is unlikely".{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=15}} At the time, movie theatres were rare in Japan;{{sfn|Asahi Shimbun staff|2005}} evidence suggests Katsudō Shashin was mass-produced to be sold to wealthy owners of home projectors.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|pp=116–117}} The creator of the filmstrip remains unknown;{{sfn|Clements|McCarthy|2006|p=169}} to Matsumoto, the relatively poor quality and low-tech printing technique indicate it was likely from a smaller company.{{sfn|Litten|2014|p=15}}
The discovery was widely covered in Japanese media.{{sfn|Matsumoto|2011|p=98}} 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 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 {{interp|Katsudō Shashin|the newly found film}} should even be called animation in the contemporary sense".{{sfn|López|2012|p=584}}
See also
{{Div col|colwidth=40em}}
- Cinema of Japan
- History of animation
- History of anime
- List of rediscovered films
- List of anime by release date (pre-1939)
{{div col end}}
{{Portal bar|Animation|Anime and manga|Film|Japan}}
Notes
{{Notelist|colwidth=40em}}
References
{{Reflist|colwidth=20em}}
=Works cited=
{{Refbegin|colwidth=40em}}
- {{cite web
|title = Oldest Anime Found
|work = Anime News Network
|author = Anime News Network staff
|date = 7 August 2005
|url = http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2005-08-07/oldest-anime-found
|access-date = 12 February 2014
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070202072042/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2005-08-07/oldest-anime-found
|archive-date = 2 February 2007
}}
- {{cite web
|author = Asahi Shimbun staff
|script-title = ja:日本最古？明治時代のアニメフィルム、京都で発見
|title = Nihon saiko? Meiji jidai no anime firumu, Kyōto de hakken
|trans-title = Oldest in Japan? Meiji-period animated film discovered in Kyoto
|language = ja
|url = http://j.peopledaily.com.cn/2005/08/01/jp20050801_52250.html
|work = China People's Daily Online (Japanese Edition)
|date = 1 August 2005
|access-date = 11 June 2014
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071011110120/http://j.peopledaily.com.cn/2005/08/01/jp20050801_52250.html
|archive-date = 11 October 2007
}}
- {{cite book
|last1 = Clements
|first1 = Jonathan
|author-link1 = Jonathan Clements
|last2 = McCarthy
|first2 = Helen
|author-link2 = Helen McCarthy
|title = The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917
|year = 2006
|publisher = Stone Bridge Press
|isbn = 978-1-84576-500-2
}}
- {{cite journal
|last = Litten
|first = Frederick S.
|script-title = ja:招待研究ノート：日本の映画館で上映された最初の（海外）アニメーション映画について
|title = Shōtai kenkyū nōto: Nihon no eigakan de jōei sareta saisho no (kaigai) animēshon eiga ni tsuite
|language = ja
|trans-title=On the Earliest (Foreign) Animation Shown in Japanese Cinemas
|journal = The Japanese Journal of Animation Studies
|volume = 15
|issue = 1A
|date = 2013
|pages = 27–32
}}
- {{cite web
|last = Litten
|first = Frederick S.
|title = Japanese color animation from ca. 1907 to 1945
|url = http://litten.de/fulltext/color.pdf
|website = litten.de
|date = 17 June 2014
|access-date = 18 June 2014
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140714184537/http://litten.de/fulltext/color.pdf
|archive-date = 14 July 2014
}}
- {{cite conference
|last1 = López
|first1 = Antonio
|title = A New Perspective on the First Japanese Animation
|year = 2012
|publisher = IPCA
|book-title = Published proceedings‚ Confia‚ (International Conference on Illustration and Animation)‚ 29–30 Nov 2012
|pages = 579–586
|isbn = 978-989-97567-6-2
}}
- {{cite journal
|last1 = Matsumoto
|first1 = Natsuki
|last2 = Tsugata
|first2 = Nobuyuki
|title = Kokusan saikō to kangaerareru animēshon firumu no hakken ni tsuite
|trans-title = The discovery of supposedly oldest Japanese animation films
|script-title = ja:国産最古と考えられるアニメーションフィルムの発見について
|language = ja
|journal = Eizōgaku
|issue = 76
|pages = 86–105
|year = 2006
|issn = 0286-0279
}}
- {{cite book
|last = Matsumoto
|first = Natsuki
|chapter = 映画渡来前後の家庭用映像機器
|trans-chapter = Home movie equipment from the earliest days of film in Japan
|language = ja
|pages = 95–128
|editor-first = Kenji
|editor-last = Iwamoto
|script-title = ja:日本映画の誕生
|title = Nihon eiga no tanjō
|trans-title=Birth of Japanese film
|year = 2011
|publisher = Shinwa-sha
|isbn = 978-4-86405-029-6
}}
{{Refend}}
External links
- {{Commons category-inline|Katsudō Shashin (1907 film)}}
- {{IMDb title|1226777}}
{{Animation industry in Japan}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Katsudo Shashin}}
Category:1907 animated short films
Category:1910s animated short films
Category:1900s rediscovered films
Category:Articles containing video clips
Category:Works of unknown authorship
Category:Japanese silent films
Category:Silent films in color