Before anime : animation and the Pure Film Movement in pre-war Japan

Abstract

This article looks at animation in conjunction with jun'eigageki undo , the Pure Film Movement, that challenged the popularity of mainstream commercial shinpa film and period drama film to advocate the birth of 'Japanese cinema' in Taisho Japan. This means a return to an historical moment when the cinema was being discursively constructed as an object of knowledge in Japan. At that time, animation was not defined as distinct from cinema in terms of social regulations or production concerns. As a result, animation was largely treated in the same way as cinema, and was shaped together with it under similar conditions. Animation, together with cinema, came under the scrutiny of public educators, censors and national ideologues - at the same time that film reformers were arguing for effective uses of camera and narrative in cinema. The point of intersection for these diverse concerns was the construction of a national cinema for international dissemination. Cinema in Japan emerged as national cinema, formed by specific discourses on 'Japan' and on 'cinema'. Animation in Japan was inseparable from this 'Japanese cinema'. Thus, by exploring animation in conjunction with the construction of cinema in Taisho Japan, this article examines what it means to talk about something like anime or 'Japanimation' in the present.