Question re 1940 Toho Musical Film Extravaganza

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

There's a 1940 film, Enoken no Songoku エノケンの孫悟空  (Enoken as Song 
Wukong the Monkey King), directed by Yamamoto Kajiro, starring Enomoto 
Ken'ichi and Rikoran (Yamaguchi Yoshiko). Yamamoto also wrote the script.

There's a suggestion that somehow this film may have been some sort of early 
experiment in color film in Japan.

But my references list the film as B&W.

There's an interesting clip of a song-and-dance number from this film, in good 
condition, with Rikoran and Enoken, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr2FFfBeUe8

It's definitely in black and white. There may have been a DVD of the film a few 
years ago, but if so it doesn't seem to be available now.

I also found a still photo from the film at 

http://blog.u-ai.shop-pro.jp/images/SANY0034.2.3.jpg

which seems to be in B&W, but may possibly be color-enhanced, though I don't 
think so.

I'm basically interested in ruling the idea of color film out for this 1940 Toho 
extravaganza, as well as ruling out the possibility that a few minutes, or one 
scene in the film, may have been in color. 

If anyone has expertise in this period and can help with this, I'd be most 
grateful. I also thought the film might be historically interesting to someone in 
any case. With its Chinese cultural elements, it also may possibly have been part 
of some Greater East Asia propaganda film effort.

Michael McCaskey
Georgetown Univ.