[KineJapan] information wanted on late Japanese silents (1936-41)

[reeldrew at aol.com]

 One part of Japanese cinema history I've found particularly elusive has been the late Japanese silent films over a five-year period from early 1936 to early 1941 when production finally ceased. How many of these late silents are extant? Have there been any documentation in articles and books in Japan providing detailed information about them? There is apparently almost nothing in English about these films. The sole exceptions are the lost two-part The King Kong That Appeared in Edo (1938) and the extant Soto Ashuragai, known as Bloody Town in English, also released in 1938.
 This void is part of a wider traditional Western-centric presentation of film history in which the standard texts always stated that after the US transition to sound by late 1929 and Western Europe's similar conversion by the middle of the following year, the silent cinema was a thing of the past everywhere save for Chaplin. In reality, the years from 1930 to 1935 saw a final flowering of silent cinema in Latin America, the Soviet republics, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Asia, resulting in the production of hundreds and hundreds of films beyond the Western horizon. By the end of 1935, the Soviet Union, China and Japan were the last major film-producing countries still making silents. But while the USSR and China finally made the transition the next year, Japan, with its huge annual output of films, made well over 600 silents from 1936 until 1941. Undoubtedly, the major reason for this continuing production of silents in Japan was due to the popularity of the benshi. Although in recent decades there has been far more published in Western languages about the prewar Japanese cinema than in the past, there still seems to be a kind of mystery about the silents produced after Ozu became the last major director to adopt sound. From online sources including the IMDb, I have found that by the end of the '30s and the start of the '40s, there were three small independent companies making most of these last silents--Daito, Kyokuto, and Zenkatsu a.k.a. Zensho Cinema. Joseph L. Anderson had told me years ago that the last Japanese silents were released in 1941. The IMDb lists the following silent releases from 1941: Hatsunobori choshichiro kago, Shuju, Moyuru tamashi, all produced by Kyokuto, and Arashi no naka no kenshi, produced by Zenkatsu. But without an exact release date for any of these, I have no idea which one might have the distinction of being the last Japanese silent film apart from experimental works in later decades.
 As to what finally brought an end to 35mm. theatrical silents at Japan at this time, I think it might have been due to the ever-increasing power of Japan's militarist dictatorship on the eve of the Pacific War. I know that as part of their attempt to control the culture, the militarists oversaw the folding of small companies into large organizations such as when Daito was swallowed up by Nikkatsu. Also, I think the militarists' concern over possible "subversion" by radically-minded benshis may have played a role in killing off silent production. What remains a mystery to me is why virtually all the directors making these late silents--Yashiro Takeshi, Kumagai Soya, Kumagaya Kusaya, Masuda Haruo, Seigun Hiroshi and others--none of them were active in Japanese cinema in any capacity during the Pacific War and the postwar era if the IMDb credits for them are in any way complete. Does anyone have any information as to the seeming total disappearance of this group of filmmakers?  I will very much appreciate any information researchers here can supply on this missing and fascinating chapter of Japanese film history. William M. Drew
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