[KineJapan] Kanto Daishinsai Doc

[Markus Nornes]

In anticipation of next year's 100th anniversary, the Film Archive has been
busy working on the extant films of the disaster (Okajima-san returned for
this). The fruits of their labor are gradually going online, and the
website they've created is really great. Aside from whole films, they have
clips organized by location, etc.

But they just uploaded something special. It's the recording of a
performance at the archive from last May with benshi accompaniment
(Yamashiro Hideyuki) and music (Joichi Yuasa), Matsuda Eigasha regulars.

The benshi performance was interesting. It felt very close to talkie
documentary soundtracks, which were often running narrations like this.
More importantly, it was based on benshi setsumei that were used at the
time. The website also has PDFs and open access scans of those scripts,
along with Yamashiro's final script and notes from Joichi. Happily, there
is closed captioning in Japanese, as some of the old language and lots of
the names are tough to follow.

Here is the link:
https://kantodaishinsai.filmarchives.jp/special/m01_benshi.html

I've seen this film many times, but silent in crappy video versions. This
looks fine, and the addition of benshi and music transform the film. I
found it pretty moving.

It's really wonderful that the Film Archive is getting increasingly serious
about online resources. This is some high quality work. Their other digital
collections are pretty nice; visit if you haven't. There are the posters
and stills (https://www.nfaj.go.jp/onlineservice/digital-gallery/), the
early animation (https://www.nfaj.go.jp/onlineservice/jafc/), and Meiji
films (https://meiji.filmarchives.jp).

I do with they were a little more courageous left Meiji and Taisho for more
Showa and more feature films. What would REALLY be great is opening up the
digitized collection of prewar magazines that sits on a terminal in the
library. I discovered that this summer, and it was really fantastic—both in
terms of content and interface. Next time you visit their library plan on
sitting down and exploring.

Markus
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