Kobayashi Tomijiro sogi
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A documentary showing the funeral of Tomijiro Kobayashi, founder of the Lion Corporation of Japan.A documentary showing the funeral of Tomijiro Kobayashi, founder of the Lion Corporation of Japan.A documentary showing the funeral of Tomijiro Kobayashi, founder of the Lion Corporation of Japan.
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- TriviaThe original negative, which still exists, is the oldest original negative known of a Japanese film.
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Kobayashi Tomijiro in a wooden box, and so is this movie.
I saw this 7-minute Japanese silent film in October 2005 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile, Italy: the festival screened a 35mm print. Since the film has no intertitles, there was no language barrier. I've seen references to this film as a documentary, but that's incorrect. It would be more accurate to cry this movie as a newsreel, since it merely records a recent event rather than describing and explaining that event as a documentary would have done.
Tomijiro Kobayashi (1852-1910) was a hugely wealthy Japanese industrialist who founded the company Kobayashi Shoten, which ultimately became known as the Lion Corporation as it expanded and prospered. The firm originally sold dentrifices, toothpaste and other products which we would now call 'health and beauty aids': it eventually offered a much wider range of merchandise, and Kobayashi's holdings provided employment to thousands of Japanese workers.
For modern viewers, the most interesting aspects of this film are its views of Japanese streets and traditional funeral pageantry.
As someone who has helped track down some so-called 'lost' films, I'm very intrigued that sometimes the story of a film's fate is more interesting (to me, at least) than the movie itself. This is one such movie. The film was produced by Yoshizawa Shoten, one of Japan's first cinema companies. Following the movie's release to Japanese cinemas in 1910, the original nitrate negative and one release print were carefully preserved in a purpose-built wooden box, and ceremonially presented to the Japanese government's nearest equivalent to the U.S.A.'s Library of Congress (although a very distant equivalent; if the Japanese archives were as retentive as the Library of Congress, far more Japanese films would have survived!). In the 1950s, the Japanese government (with some nudging from U.S. occupation forces) radically tightened fire-safety laws, effecting almost a total ban on films printed on highly combustible nitrate stock. As a result, nearly all of Japan's early films were either deliberately destroyed or allowed to self-destruct. This film, in its elaborate presentation box, survived. The print which I viewed at Sacile is an acetate dupe, struck by the National Film Centre in Tokyo. More for its historic significance than for any aesthetic content, I'll rate this newsreel 7 out of 10. Arigato!
Tomijiro Kobayashi (1852-1910) was a hugely wealthy Japanese industrialist who founded the company Kobayashi Shoten, which ultimately became known as the Lion Corporation as it expanded and prospered. The firm originally sold dentrifices, toothpaste and other products which we would now call 'health and beauty aids': it eventually offered a much wider range of merchandise, and Kobayashi's holdings provided employment to thousands of Japanese workers.
For modern viewers, the most interesting aspects of this film are its views of Japanese streets and traditional funeral pageantry.
As someone who has helped track down some so-called 'lost' films, I'm very intrigued that sometimes the story of a film's fate is more interesting (to me, at least) than the movie itself. This is one such movie. The film was produced by Yoshizawa Shoten, one of Japan's first cinema companies. Following the movie's release to Japanese cinemas in 1910, the original nitrate negative and one release print were carefully preserved in a purpose-built wooden box, and ceremonially presented to the Japanese government's nearest equivalent to the U.S.A.'s Library of Congress (although a very distant equivalent; if the Japanese archives were as retentive as the Library of Congress, far more Japanese films would have survived!). In the 1950s, the Japanese government (with some nudging from U.S. occupation forces) radically tightened fire-safety laws, effecting almost a total ban on films printed on highly combustible nitrate stock. As a result, nearly all of Japan's early films were either deliberately destroyed or allowed to self-destruct. This film, in its elaborate presentation box, survived. The print which I viewed at Sacile is an acetate dupe, struck by the National Film Centre in Tokyo. More for its historic significance than for any aesthetic content, I'll rate this newsreel 7 out of 10. Arigato!
- F Gwynplaine MacIntyre
- Oct 1, 2007
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