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Continuities and Discontinuities in the Japanese "Motion-Pictures"
--An Aspect of Early History--Publication Date:199203
Book title: MEDIA, CULTURE, AND EDUCATION IN JAPAN [A COLLECTION OF PAPERS]
Publisher : National Institute of Multimedia Education
When the first Japanese Ambassador to the United States arrived at Washington in 1858, he was invited one evening to a reception where an optical projection of still pictures were shown. The intention of the host, needless to say, was to entertain the guest from the Far East with the new American device, and the Ambassador enjoyed the hospitality of the American host. But it is interesting and important to note the fact that the Ambassador, after the reception, wrote in his diary as follows:
There was a projection of pictures in a spacious hall. The pictures were mostly scenery and they were pretty. Same as ours.
In other words, the guest was not so much surprised by the show as the host might have expected. He calmly wrote "Same as ours", and this small incident invites us to look back at the traditional Japanese art of pictorial projection in the 19th century.
The prototype of Japanese native "motion-pictures" is Kage-e (shadepictures) or Te-Kage-e (hand-shade-pictures), originally a children's play. The play is very simple. It is the projection of the figures composed by hands and fingers to Shoji (paper sliding door) with candle-light. The fingers can compose, for instance the shape of the head of a fox, the shape of a man's face, and so forth. All you need is to extend your hands and fingers between candle-light and Shoji and move them, and the audience will enjoy the performance from the other side of Shoji.
It was an anonymous invention of Shoji and candle culture. Indeed, before the arrival of television and fluorescent light, Kage-e used to be one of the most popular winter entertainments among Japanese children.
This art later became an adults' play, too. The oldest written record about Kage-e can be found in "Rakuyosyu", a collection of essays published in 1680, and according to this book, Kage-e could be an amateur theater. That is, a group of adults and children making up a play by hand-shades. The educators in the pre-industrial period used to stress the educational value of Kage-e very often. For example, a book titled The Book of Kage-e, published in the 18th century, says:
"The most desirable way of raising very young children is to let them develop their own abilities, but because of their nature, they do not like complicated arts. Such arts are beyond their understanding and they cannot enjoy them. On the other hand, to give ordinary toys is also not ideal for children. Since toys are shaped in particular forms, they cannot absorb children's interests. They are bored by toys sooner or later. Kage-e meets with the psychology of children, because the shapes can be flexible. Kage-e is one of the most desirable educational means for young children".
It should be noted that the toys are defined as "shaped in particular forms". The essence of Kage-e is on the other extreme of something "shaped in particular forms". The basic characteristic of Kage-e is that it lacks "forms". Five fingers, sometimes with the aid of small items, such as chopsticks or matches, can produce various forms on Shoji. (In regard to the varieties of Kage-e, Katei Hyakka Jiten [Home Encyclopedia] of 1925 illustrates 31 basic forms.) A very minor move of finger can change the figure of a dog into the figure of a cow, and this sort of unexpected change is the joy of Kage-e. It is fundamentally different from such well defined games as a jig-saw-puzzle. It was an "informal" art of pre-industrial Japan.
The art of Kage-e has developed into a new stage by the invention of Nishiki-Kage-e. It was an optical projection of still pictures with the aid of candle-light to Shoji screen, and the invention is described as follows:
"The art of Nishiki-Kage-e was devised by a man named Toraku, who used to be a professional painter. By some chance he succeeded in projecting pictures painted on a small piece of glass enlarged by a lens of lookingglass. Thereafter, he painted picture stories on pieces of glass, and performed this art at vaudeville theaters (Yose), and as it became popular, he trained disciples in this new art."
In short, this was a kind of picture-slide projection using lenses. The lens itself might have been an import from the Netherlands, but the combination of glass-painting and Shoji screen was the original device by Toraku, and it should be emphasized that Toraku's invention was not only experimental, but also commercially successful as a vaudeville art. It was an established genre of popular culture in pre-industrial Japan.
As a matter of fact, the city people of the day seemed to be most interested in the projection, and many essay journalists of late 18th century referred to this invention. Since the audience reaction was very active, the performers, i.e., Toraku and his disciples, were encouraged to refine the art. The painting became fullrange color, and the performance came to be accompanied by music. The stories were taken mostly from Kabuki script. Indeed, a conservative critic was somewhat disgusted by the "color and music" and wrote that "the essence of Kage-e is in a quiet, small group setting, not in noisy vaudeville theaters." And such remarks remind us of classicist response to Cinemascope which insists that the best of movie is in standard size screen with monochrome effect.
The development of Nishiki-Kage-e (which later was called Utsushi-e), however, continued all through the first half of the 19th century, and as a result, Japanese Kage-e artists finally succeeded in making "motion-pictures" with multi-screen technique, and this evolution of pictorial projection was most impressive.
The inventor of the "motion-pictures" is unknown. But a man by the name of Bunraku Tamagawa who lived in the suburb of Tokyo in early 19th century was a well-known performer of the multi-screen, and his projectors and slides (glass-paintings) art still being kept in good condition.
In this multi-screen projection, five projectors called Furo [meaning "box"] with candle-light were used, under one-man operation system. Each projector is equipped with different series of pictures, consisting of parts of the total screen, and the operator changed the slides so that the motion-effects on the screen could be produced. For example, the first projector from the left projects the shape of a tree from the beginning to the end. In the second projector, there is a series of man's posture which changes its place on the screen and the third projector succeeds the man's movement to the right. The fourth projector is for the moon in the sky, and the fifth is to make cloud effects over the moon as the story progresses.
The art of this multi-screen projection requires extraordinary skill, and an observer of this type of "motion-picture" wrote about Bunraku, the performer, as follows:
It is a wonderful one-man art. He moves from one projector to another incessantly and the changes of pictures are perfectly synchronized with music. Years of intensive training is the basis for this performance.
In this cultural context, it is understandable that the first Japanese Ambassador saw the American version of pictorial projection as " same as ours", and if he were familiar with the "motion-pictures", his remark actually could have been an understatement. Many things may be said in regard to the independent and unique development of Japanese pictorial perfection and "motion-pictures" before the arrival of modern motion picture devices from abroad, and the most important is the fact that the Japanese public was well prepared for the acceptance of more mechanical projection equipment.
In the spring of 1897, a man by the name of Shibata came back from the United States to Japan with a new projection device, Edison's Kinetoscope. Shibata was the producer-manager of the Japanese section at the Chicago World Exposition in 1893, and since his exhibits of the Japanese tea ceremony and Geisha Dance were so successful, he gave performances at Atlantic City, San Francisco, and other American cities. Kinetoscope was in a sense a "souvenir" from the United States. And interestingly enough, he brought back a film of a Geisha Dance which was taken in Chicago. Upon his return, Shibata immediately demonstrated Kinetoscope for his friends in Tokyo. The films were very short, but his friends were very much impressed by this new machine. Among the viewers of this demonstration, there was a well-known journalist of the day, Ochi Fukuchi, and he suggested that the projection could be commercialized.
A few weeks later, Shibata and his friends rented a theater in downtown Tokyo and publicized the arrival of new "motion pictures". Though admission was extremely high (the equivalent of $2.00 of the day), people were full of curiosity and all the seats were sold out for the period of 18 days, resulting in the balcony of the theater falling down because of too many people standing on it. This was the beginning of modern Japanese motion pictures.
The most interesting thing in the early history of motion pictures in Japan, is the fact that, after Shibata's first demonstration, the people who saw the possibility of the "motion pictures" as mass entertainment were the salesmen of Kage-e, the traditional Japanese "motion-pictures". As mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, Japanese popular artists had developed their own projection devices, and they were able to understand the revolutionary meaning of Kinetoscope immediately. The audience also was culturally prepared to accept modern motion-pictures because they were used to seeing projections in vaudeville theaters. It is natural for the salesmen of Kage-e to perceive Vitascope as the "next" step. In other words, the import of modern motion-pictures was accepted by the Japanese people without any cultural panic or friction. Of course, Vitascope, as well as Cinematography which arrived from France almost at the same time, was "new", but they were "new" in the sense that they could be a "new Kage-e". As a matter of fact, the tradition of Kage-e caused certain technical misunderstandings of Vitascope and Cinematography. As seen before, Kage-e was a Shoji art where the audience looks at the screen from the other side of a projector (the same was true with Nishiki-Kage-e). And the Japanese Kage-e man, who was regarded to be the expert of Kinetoscope, projected the film from the back of the screen as a matter of course. Naturally, the picture was extremely poor and vague, and the expert sprayed water over the screen to make it as transparent as Shoji. It took some time until be found that the American "motion-pictures" must be projected from the other side of the screen.
Indeed, technical curiosity of Japanese motion-picture people was the generator of the movie industry in Japan. It is symbolic that the first Japanese movie theater established in 1903 was named "Denki-Kan" (Electric Pavilion), and the audience was not only exposed to movies but also the various kinds of electric mechanism and their experiments. The contents of the movies were, naturally, an attraction, but people were more interested in the technology itself. This mechanical curiosity played an important role in the development of Japanese movies in later stages, and that tradition was inherited by the electronic industry in contemporary Japan. As a matter of fact, Japanese people today are often more sensitive about the clearness of pictures than the contents of the TV program, and by the same token, they are more interested in hi-fi "sound" than "music" effects. Like that man who was impressed by the "skill" of multi-screen projection 100 years ago, the Japanese today also are more or less, technology-oriented in audio-visual communications.
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