Category: JAPANESE FILMS

Newspaper ad for MOROCCO (1930), Note the subtitles in the image. Japanese is written vertically. One of the problems unique to Japanese cinema industry in early 1930s was demise of Benshis, interpreter/lecturer/storyteller of movies. During the silent film era, a Benshi was an essential part of movie experience. He stood right next to the screen and provided live speech to audience, explaining and coloring up the events up on the screen. He gave the background of the story, imitated conversation between characters, or supplemented anecdotes of the film. Popularity of a Benshi was an important ingredient for movie business, sometimes …

In the interview published in Jiji Shinpo, July 3, 1932, T.D. Cochran, the head of Paramount Tokyo Branch, condescendingly pointed out the miserable state of talkie in Japan. He recommended Japanese motion picture studios to quit developing their own “inferior technologies” and to use superior U.S. technologies instead. “It is true that Western-Electric system’s license fee is expensive,” he said. “But we have a discount for Japanese market at $200 per reel. You have to pay $500 per reel in New York.” It’s 60% off. It sounds terribly a good deal. But very few Japanese companies actually adapted the Western …

  In the last post, I discussed about the overall transition from silent to talkies in 1930’s Japanese cinema industry: number of theaters and total number of motion picture consumption. In this entry, let’s look at the talkie transitions at individual motion picture studios. Data is from “Annual Report of Motion Picture Censorship”.