Early anime discovered

[Mark Nornes]

 From Reuters (http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/va/20080327/120660518600.html 
), with quotes from our Film Center friend Irie Yoshiro:


  	
All Reuters Movie News
Japan finds films by early "anime" pioneers
Thursday March 27 1:06 AM ET

Two early 20th century Japanese animated movies, crafted by pioneers  
of the "anime" that has since swept the world, have been found in good  
condition, a researcher at Tokyo's National Film Center said on  
Thursday.

U.S. and European animated cartoons were introduced in Japan around  
1914 and soon inspired works by Japanese cartoonists and artists,  
including Junichi Kouchi and Seitaro Kitayama, two of whose works were  
found in an Osaka antique store.

"Nakamura Katana," Kouichi's two-minute silent movie that tells the  
story of a samurai tricked into buying a dull-edged sword, was first  
released in 1917.

Kitayama's "Urashima Taro," based on a folk tale in which a fisherman  
is transported to a fantastic underwater world on the back of a  
turtle, came out the following year.

Together with Oten Shimokawa, whose 1917 "Imokawa Mukuzo, The Janitor"  
is thought to be the first commercial Japanese animated film, Kouichi  
and Kitayama are considered "fathers of Japanese anime," said National  
Film Center researcher Yoshiro Irie.

"Now everything is digitalized, but these early animated films were  
made on the same principles used now," Irie said.

But while modern anime is often used to tell complex, dark stories,  
the brief early Japanese animated films mainly surprised viewers with  
the simple fact the pictures moved, Irie said.

They also made people laugh.

"It was an era when people were surprised just to see that the  
pictures moved," he said. "The films are also full of gags."

(Reporting by Linda Sieg)






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