Momotaro no umiwashi

[M Arnold]

From: "Eija Margit Niskanen" <emniskanen at wisc.edu>
> Hi! Does anybody know if the 1943 animation Momotaro no umiwashi is 
> available on video or DVD?

It's included on disc 5 of Kinokuniya's "Nihon Art Animation" 12 DVD set.

http://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/02f/d12/2_12000n_9.htm
http://www.style.fm/log/02_topics/top031218a.html

Earlier this month I was able to spend a couple of afternoons with this 
378,000 yen, 1,334 minute collection of rare animation, and I was very 
impressed. It covers everything from early Ofuji Noburo and prewar shorts to 
wartime propaganda films, postwar shorts (incredible stuff like "Maho no 
pen" and Toei's great "Koneko" films), Masaoka Kenzo, Seo Mitsuyo, Yokoyama 
Ryuichi/Otogi Pro, puppet animation by Mochinaga and Kawamoto, Sannin no Kai 
and much more. . . Kinokuniya says that 95% of this material has never been 
on video before. I don't think they're exaggerating when they advertise the 
box as a once-in-a-lifetime dream collection.

I have only one complaint--for some reason Kinokuniya decided to use 1 layer 
DVDs for almost the entire set. (The Ofuji disc and one or two others were 2 
layer.) Most of the discs have two hours worth of material and many of the 
film sources are old and scratchy, so the result is less than optimal video 
quality. The DVDs are perfectly watchable on a TV screen, but when I 
borrowed the Masaoka disc from a friend a few months ago and watched it on 
my PC, I spotted a number of DVD compression artifacts. I'd much rather see 
flawed copies than none at all, but at about $300 per disc I wish they had 
put just a little more effort into it.

I was surprised to discover that Meiji Gakuin has the set in their video 
library. A few people here mentioned Meigaku when answering Wei Ting's 
questions about locating videos and films, so when I watched the DVDs I 
asked the person in charge of the library if it's possible for non-Meigaku 
students to view their collection. Unfortunately she told me that the 
official answer is "no". I don't know if there's any way to get around that. 
If you know any Geijutsu faculty you may try asking them for information, 
but I was told the video library is only for people at Meigaku.

Does anyone here know of other libraries that have this set? I was prepared 
to go searching around Tokyo until I found it right under my nose. I won't 
be in Tokyo forever though. Is Kinokuniya selling to universities overseas 
too?

Michael Arnold