Maple Leaf Viewing (1899)

紅葉狩

Taira no Koremochi defeats the Kijo Momiji.

A reel of the Noh drama Momiji-gari, in which Danjuro Ichikawa played opposite Onoe Kikugoro V as an ogress who has disguised herself as the Princess Sarashina. Filmed by Shibata Tsunekichi in the open air on a windy day in November 1899, Danjuro would allow only the one take, so that when his fan blew away in mid-performance the scene had to stay. The film re-emerged at the Kikikan theatre in 1907 where it was a great success and inspired a wave of fiction filmmaking based on traditional Japanese narratives.

Date of release
1899-11-28
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (18)
Runtime
6m
Genres
Action, Fantasy, Music, Horror
Director
Tsunekichi Shibata

Casting

Interesting facts

Momijigari is a Japanese short film shot in early 1899 by Shibata Tsunekichi. It is a record of the kabuki actors Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Danjūrō IX performing a scene from the kabuki play Momijigari. It is the oldest extant Japanese film and the first film to be designated an Important Cultural Property.

Production and exhibition

Momijigari was planned primarily as a record of the performance of the two famous actors. Shibata, who worked for the Konishi Photographic Store, shot it using a Gaumont camera. It was filmed in November 1899 in an open space behind the Kabuki-za in Tokyo, with Shibata using three reels of film. It was a windy day, however, and a gust blew away one of Danjūrō's fans, a mishap that remained in the film since retakes were not possible.

Since the film was meant only as a record, it was not initially shown publicly. Danjūrō only saw it himself a year after it was filmed. There was an agreement that it would not be screened for the public until after Danjūrō's death, but when he fell ill and could not appear at a performance at the Naka-za in Osaka, it was screened in his place.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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