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 […]
movie theater handbills
Playbill ephemera or what I refer to as handbills/programs/pamphlets/fliers (chirashi/チラシ) in the Makino Collection, are an interesting source for research on Japanese film. They indicate what films were showing where and when, and may indicate cast and director/writer information. There is often a description of the film and advertisements. They enable scholars to find […]
Searching for archival materials
I will be visiting our offsite storage facility ReCAP again this Friday to examine the contents of about 80 boxes. Last Friday, I visited and looked at 47 boxes. Although almost all the boxes contained monographs, I found Man’ei/満英 related materials, Chinese film magazines, and photographs (mostly of Ri Koran, the film actress also known […]
Online Presentations in Academic Commons and presentation at CEAL 3/20/2013
In addition to YouTube Channel access, digital presentations of the Makino Symposium of 11/11/11 have recently been made available online on Columbia’s Open Access repository, Academic Commons. You can search by presenter name or browse by keywords “Makino Symposium.” Last week, with our Library Director Jim Cheng, I gave an overview of the Makino Collection […]
Online Presentations of the Makino Symposium on YouTube
Since today is 12/12/12, it seems appropriate that we can now announce that the digital remarks and presentations of the Makino Symposium of 11/11/11 have just been made available online for viewing on Columbia’s YouTube channel. Twelve remarks/presentations from the symposium, “The Makino Collection at Columbia: the Present and Future of an Archive,” are now […]
Newspapers in the Makino Collection
Post Hurricane Sandy in NYC, I have been organizing the newspapers in the Makino Collection, which as a whole go from 1926 to 1969, with most of the papers from the 1940s through the 1950s. These include film newspapers for which we have many issues (over 500), like the Shūkan eiga puresu/週刊映画プレス/The Weekly Eiga Press, […]
My Visit with Mr. Makino
This June, I visited with Mr. and Mrs. Makino and scholar Mr. Satoh Yoh at the Makino home in Tokyo. While they showed me some albums containing photographs of individual books taken before the Makino Collection was packed up and sent to our off-site facility in New Jersey, we discussed some of Mr. Makino’s interests […]