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: Japanese Studies
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 Presence of Japanese Manga, Anime, and Animated Films Overseas
Although there are still times when I feel sad, I am doing fine. From a dusty box of unprocessed materials, the image of a young witch and tiny black cat standing at a bakery counter caught my attention. It was a flier of a Japanese animated film, Kiki’s Delivery Service, from 1989. This animated film […]
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 […]
The Unparalleled Japanese Artist (Part I): Noriyoshi Ōrai and His Supreme Cinema Art, which Attracted the Filmmaker George Lucas Across the Sea
Until the 1960’s, the creation of film posters followed traditional rules, according to the distributors’ promotional direction. Their designers, who were mostly anonymous, had to comply with the film studio and its distributors. Since the 1980’s, movie poster designs in Japan have had a period of transition as some designers started to develop their own […]
Film Ephemera and its Creators: Bringing Commercial Media to Cinema Art
Movie posters appeal to the public and delight the eyes of people who see them; in Japan, they are exhibited everywhere downtown, primarily at train stations and movie theaters. Mostly, since the late 1960’s, the design of film posters has reflected the cover design of film programs and fliers. Not only the design of posters, […]
The Advent of “Mini Theater”: The Diversification of International Films in Japan and a New Kind of Film Ephemera
As we discussed in an earlier blog post, Art Theatre Guild (ATG), Japan’s first independent film production company, firmly established the foundation of production and distribution of non-commercial, art house films. Movie theaters that distributed independent films appeared in the Japanese film industry between the 1980’s and the 1990’s. In the post-war period, people’s cultural […]
The Dawn of Art Films in Japan, Art Theatre Guild (ATG): Ushering in Innovative Forms
A powerful logo on some pieces of ephemera immediately caught my attention. The logo, “アートシアター (Āto shiatā/Art Theatre)” or “atg” in its impressive design, stands for Art Theatre Guild (ATG), a film distribution company, founded in 1961. The company built up the foundation of today’s avant-garde film distribution in Japan, and literally made it a […]
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 […]