Momotaro no umiwashi

[Eija Margit Niskanen]

Wow! I guess I have to save some money to buy this...no video rentals 
house it?

Eija

On Jul 30, 2005, at 9:17 AM, M Arnold wrote:

> 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