The Makino Collection has now been fully arranged. This archive started with one book by Charlie Chaplin, discovered at a secondhand bookstore. This provoked a passion for cinema in the young man who found it, inspiring him to become a filmmaker. Over the course of fifty years, the archive grew and his passion was […]
Category: East Asian cinema
Film Advertisements in Newspapers: Extremely Rare and Ephemeral
So, as we’ve established, film fliers are ephemeral. Unless they happened to end up in the hands of collectors, they are supposed to be discarded after being distributed in conjunction with a film’s release. However, there is more ephemeral media than just film fliers: film advertisements within newspapers, for example, when a film is brought […]
The Unparalleled Japanese Artist (Part III): Hisamitsu Noguchi, Admired by the French Filmmaker François Truffaut
As we have discussed earlier on this blog, film ephemera have evolved from the simple stereotypical style when there were lots of strict conventions, such as presenting the film title and a close-up still of the lead actor or actress, to a variety of elaborate designs. Beginning in the 1980s, as all aspects of film […]
The Unparalleled Japanese Artist (Part II): A Collaboration in Perfection, Ken’ichi Samura and Jῡzō Itami
As we discussed in the previous blog entries, film poster creators were a great part of the film ephemera evolution, that removed the distinction between commercial art and cinema art. While all aspects of film were dramatically transformed, the style of collaboration to produce film posters also changed. Filmmakers and poster creators started to seek […]
Japanese Post-War Culture and Foreign Cultures: An Example of the Avid Adaptation of Foreign Culture and Creation of Neo-Hybrid Culture
Now you have a rough idea of the process of integration and huge presence of yōga (foreign films) in Japan and how they reflected the status of the post-war cultural revolution in Japan. While the archival processing is underway, we will look at one lovely example of ephemera, an LP record-sized leaflet, which could also serve […]
The Transition of Pre- and Post-War Film Ephemera in Japan
The initial style of the film handbill, or flier, was seen in Japan before World War II. There were a limited number of movie theaters in Japan at this period, and films were promoted by theaters themselves. The pre-war handbills in the Makino Collection were printed on coarse paper and produced by the movie theaters, unlike […]
The Film Ephemera Collection within the Makino Collection: The Uniqueness of Japanese Film Ephemera
The ephemera within the Makino Collection are the most vibrant part of it. Generally speaking, the word “ephemera” means “something which has a transitory existence”. What exactly does “ephemera” mean in the archival world and in library and information science? The term is defined by the Library of Congress (2008) as: non-commercial, non-book publications in […]
Yōga (Foreign films) and hōga (Japanese films): An Overview of the Japanese Film Industry as Represented in the Makino Collection
The most prevalent films in Japan could be roughly separated into two genres: hōga (Japanese films) and yōga (imported/international/foreign films). According to the Japanese dictionary Daijirin, yōga is understood as “films which were produced in Western countries. Also, the term could indicate foreign films in a broad sense”. Right after World War II, films which […]
A Hidden Collection to be Revealed: Makino Collection Film Ephemera and Rare Book Project
The final phase of the project to make hidden treasures from the Makino Collection available to the public has started moving ahead. The Makino Mamoru Collection on the History of East Asian Film has been lauded for its scholarly value and awarded a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through the administration of […]
East Asian Cinema Materials
I am often asked about Chinese and Korean cinema materials in the Makino Collection. Since processing began with the prewar Japanese materials in the collection, I usually explain that I haven’t gotten to the Chinese and Korean materials yet. This past December, I decided to start going through the boxes that my guide to the […]