Hayakawa in Japan the USA, Belgium, France, etc.

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

I'm afraid this was some film blog in Japanese, maybe connected with All Cinema 
or some such site.

As I recall, the person saw Atarashiki Tsuchi, and then these out-takes, using 
the same sets, and with Hayakawa whose English must have been quite good, as 
a more major character than in the German version. As I recall, it wasn't really 
100% clear to the Japanese viewer whether Itami was making exactly the same 
movie or a variation.

I believe the same person wrote, or someone else jumped in and responded, 
that back then it was not so uncommon to do this. Before, one could just have 
made intertitles in English later for a US or British Commonwealth audience. 
Japan stayed in the Silent Film Era quite a while longer than some other 
countries, and this might have been a last-stand way to try to preserve 
international marketability in the Age of Sound. 

I wish I had copied and pasted that for the record - but since then I've have had 
two computers suddenly go defunct due to viruses, so I'm afraid the source 
would be lost anyway. Sometimes blog chats among Japanese viewers about 
things like this are very interesting. But, unlike KineJapan, these chats are often 
difficult to verify.

Best Regards,

mmcc