Cultural Affairs Agency's survey of historical film assets

[wgardne1@swarthmore.edu]

Hi everyone,

On NHK's news program "Ohayo Nippon" this morning here was a brief report
about the Japanese Government's Agency for Cultural Affairs ongoing survey
to identify historical film assets across the country for the goal of
preservation. I think that Aaron and others have reported on this to the
list before, but this message is just to summarize and update for anyone
who may have missed it.

As I understand, the government mailed out over 3000 forms to schools,
museums, and other local cultural and community organizations across Japan
asking them to identify any film resources from roughly the years
1900-1955-- including industrial films, local news films, and films in
private collections. They are stressing the danger of flammable film stock
from this period and the goal of preservation. The survey began on July 30
and runs through October 15, so anyone interested in this might keep their
eyes out for initial reports on the results in mid to late October.

Here are a couple of websites in Japanese describing the project:

http://www.bunka.go.jp/bunkazai/chousa/eizou/index.html

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/wnao/e/70eca8cd0435772dfaafc082c0f54a9f

Best,
Will

-- 
William O. Gardner
Assistant Professor of Japanese
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Swarthmore College
wgardne1 at swarthmore.edu

ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellow, 2007-2008
Visiting Researcher, Faculty of Letters, Keio University, 2007-2008