Origins of anime (1900s – 1922)[edit]

See also: List of anime by release date (pre-1939) and Kamishibai

Duration: 4 seconds.0:04Katsudō Shashin

According to Natsuki Matsumoto, the first animated film produced in Japan may have stemmed from
as early as 1907. Known as Katsudō Shashin (活動写真, "Activity Photo"), from its depiction of a boy
in a sailor suit drawing the characters for katsudō shashin, the film was first found in 2005. It consists
of fifty frames stencilled directly onto a strip of celluloid.[7][8] This claim has not been verified though
and predates the first known showing of animated films in Japan. The date and first film publicly
displayed is another source of contention: while no Japanese-produced animation is definitively
known to date before 1916, the possibility exists that other films entered Japan and that no known
records have surfaced to prove a showing prior to 1912.[1] Film titles have surfaced over the years,
but none have been proven to predate this year. The first foreign animation is known to have been
found in Japan in 1910, but it is not clear if the film was ever shown in a cinema or publicly displayed
at all. Yasushi Watanabe found a film known as Fushigi no Bōrudo (不思議のボールド, "Miracle
Board") in the records of the Yoshizawa Shōten (吉沢商店) company. The description
matches James Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, though academic consensus on
whether or not this is a true animated film is disputed.[1] According to Kyokko Yoshiyama, the first
animated film called Nippāru no Henkei (ニッパールの変形, "Nippāru's Transformation") was shown
in Japan at the Asakusa Teikokukan (浅草帝国館) in Tokyo sometime in 1912. However, Yoshiyama
did not refer to the film as "animation." The first confirmed animated film shown in Japan was Les
Exploits de Feu Follet by Émile Cohl on May 15, 1912. While speculation and other "trick films" have
been found in Japan, it is the first recorded account of a public showing of a two-dimensional
animated film in Japanese cinema. During this time, German animations marketed for home release
were distributed in Japan.[1] In 1914, U.S. and European cartoons were introduced to Japan,
[9]
inspiring Japanese creators like Junichi Kouchi and Seitaro Kitayama,[10] both of whom were
considered the "fathers of anime."
Duration: 4 minutes and 19 seconds.4:19Namakura Gatana or Hanawa Hekonai meitō no maki, a short
Japanese animated film produced by Jun'ichi Kōuchi in 1917
Few complete animations made during the beginnings of Japanese animation have survived. The
reasons vary, but many are of commercial nature. After the clips had been run, reels (being property
of the cinemas) were sold to smaller cinemas in the country and then disassembled and sold as
strips or single frames. The earliest anime that was produced in Japan to have survived into the
modern day, The Dull Sword, was released on June 30, 1917, but there it is disputed which title was
the first to get that honour. It has been confirmed that Dekobō Shingachō: Meian no Shippai (凸坊新
画帳・名案の失敗, "Bumpy New Picture Book: Failure of a Great Plan") was made sometime during
February 1917. At least two unconfirmed titles were reported to have been made the previous
month.[1]
The first anime short-films were made by three leading figures in the industry. Ōten Shimokawa was
a political caricaturist and cartoonist who worked for the magazine Tokyo Puck. He was hired
by Tenkatsu to do an animation for them. Due to medical reasons, he was only able to do five
movies, including Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki (1917), before he returned to his previous
work as a cartoonist. Another prominent animator in this period was Jun'ichi Kōuchi. He was a
caricaturist and painter, who also had studied watercolour painting. In 1912, he also entered the
cartoonist sector and was hired for an animation by Kobayashi Shokai later in 1916. He is viewed as
the most technically advanced Japanese animator of the 1910s. His works include around 15
movies. The third was Seitaro Kitayama, an early animator who made animations on his own and
was not hired by larger corporations. He eventually founded his own animation studio, the Kitayama
Eiga Seisakujo, which was later closed due to lack of commercial success. He used the chalkboard
technique, and later paper animation, with and without pre-printed backgrounds. However, the works
of these pioneers were destroyed after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.[6] The works of these
two latter pioneers include Namakura Gatana ("An Obtuse Sword", 1917) and a 1918 film Urashima
Tarō, which were believed to have been discovered together at an antique market in 2007.
[11]
However, it was later established that this Urashima Tarō was most likely an entirely different film
with a story similar to the missing 1918 film by Kitayama, and therefore is no longer credited to him.
As of October 2017, Kitayama's Urashima Tarō remains undiscovered.[12]