wizard movies, 1930's/40's ?

[Aaron Gerow]

David,

> I've got a couple movies I like a lot, which roughly speaking are:
> 1937, Jinai-ya [Eizo Yamauchi]
> 1937, Jinai-ya ninjutsu Sanyou-den [Masahiro Makino]
> Good vs bad wizards, action packed [like a serial edited into a  
> feature], filled with odd wizard conflicts/transformations... my frog  
> familiar vs your snake familiar, etc.

First, this is Jiraiya (not Jinai-ya), who is is a famous legendary  
ninja from kodan, film, manga, kabuki, what have you. (Jiraiya even  
appears in Kitano's Getting Any? as the weird guy who strikes a pose on  
top of Miyaji-shacho's car.) Like many legendary ninja, he has magical  
abilities and is connected with a frog (this was the dominant image of  
ninja in popular movies for a long time, not today's black clad  
figures). There are many other film versions, including a partially  
extant one with Onoe Matsunosuke. A brief look at the JMDB shows dozens  
of films, but mostly prewar (the lone postwar one was a 1955 Shintoho  
film co-directed by Kato Tai!). But there is a great manga version of  
Jiraiya from the 1950s drawn by my favorite, Sugiura Shigeru:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4309406912/sr=1-10/qid=1161394000/ 
ref=sr_1_10/503-5337258-4347110?ie=UTF8&s=books

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu