[Makino Shozo]
August: Korea is made a colony of Japan.
October: The Nippon Columbia record label is founded by Nipponophone Co., Ltd.
Makino Shozo directs his first version of Chushingura ("The Loyal Forty-seven Ronin") with Onoe Matsunosuke. The total (including the sub-stories) consists of 130 film rolls. Makino liked to compare himself to that other pioneer of large-scale films, D.W. Griffiths.
1912
July – Emperor Meiji dies. He is succeeded by his son Yoshihito who becomes Emperor Taisho.
September – Nikkatsu is founded in Kyoto.
September – Burial of Emperor Meiji in Kyoto.
The first major film company, Nikkatsu (Nippon Katsudo Shashin), is established by consolidating the four independent film companies then existing in Japan: Yoshizawa Shoten, Yokota Shokai, M. Pathe (not related to the French company of the same name!) and Fukudo. Prior to the merger, acrimonious negotiations take place, even accompanied by arson attacks on cinemas. The first Nikkatsu studio is in Mukojima, in eastern Tokyo. Period dramas were made in another Nikkatsu studio in Kyoto (the start of the division between both locations, where all period dramas would be made in traditional Kyoto and all contemporary stories in Tokyo). Both Makino Shozo and Onoe Matsunosuke transferred to Nikkatsu, bringing the new company commercial success. The Japanese film industry begins mass production. Note that around this same time in the U.S. the Hollywood studios of Fox and Warner Brothers were established.
In these early years, no copies were made of films. The original was the only copy and it was used up until it was gone. Therefore, there are extremely few early films left. Those that are left, are invariably in a bad condition.
Although intellectuals would see Western films, at this time Japanese films were mostly made with the lower classes and "snotty-nosed kids" as an audience. Gangsters were heavily involved in both the studios and the running of the theaters (until the 1920s).
1913
Takarazuka Revue founded in Hyogo Prefecture.
Makino's The Loyal Forty-seven Ronin is typical of the films made in this period: the cuts are very long, the camera position never shifts, and the star, Onoe Matsunosuke, plays directly into the lens during emotional scenes.
1914
August - In an alliance with the Entente Powers Japan enters World War I, seizing the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence in China and gain recognition as a great power.
December – A large methane gas explosion in the Mitsubishi Hojo coal mine in Fukuoka causes 687 fatalities.
December – Tokyo Station opened with four platforms.
The Japanese film Katusha, based on Tolstoy's Resurrection, draws large audiences. Despite the fact that this film is based on Shingeki, the Japanese version of Western theater (which replaced the Shinpa theater), the heroine was played by the onnagata Tachibana Teijiro. Costumes and settings, however, were made to appear Russian.
Nikkatsu starts making 14 films a month. Individual films now have an average length of 40 minutes. Another studio, Tenkatsu, is formed as a rival to Nikkatsu (but it only survives until 1919). Tenkatsu was more modern, but Nikkatsu continued to control most theaters, as owners were satisfied with its "double bills:" one Kyuha film, and one Shinpa film.
In October, the film magazine Kinema Record is started to support the Pure Film Movement, pleading for reform in Japanese film, such as a broader use of cinematic techniques to tell stories instead of relying on the benshi (the magazine folds in 1917, but its function is taken over by other magazines as Kinema Junpo).
Hayakawa Sesshu (1889-1973) becomes the first Japanese actor to find stardom in the United States (and later also in Europe), under the name of "Sessue Hayakawa." In his American movies, starting with The Typhoon of 1914, he gave a faithful imitation of the tateyaku performance. Hayakawa would play in more than 80 movies and was very popular in the 1910s - his last major role was that of Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which earned him an Oscar nomination.
1915
November 10 – Enthronement of the Taisho Emperor in the Imperial Palace in Kyoto.
Foreign films start to be imported in large numbers. There are now 300 movie theaters in Japan.
1916
November – Prince Hirohito is formally proclaimed Crown Prince and heir apparent.
Intellectuals prefer foreign to Japanese films. The latter mainly attract the common people. The Italian historical drama Cabiria is a big hit.
1917
Makino Shozo makes another version of The Loyal Forty-Seven Ronin. This time he uses a script, reframing pans and matching cuts. In other words, advanced planning is born and films grow more sophisticated.
The call among critics for a broader use of cinematic techniques (moving camera, rapid editing, realistic set design, narrative autonomy, phasing our of onnagata) continues. The Living Corpse by Tanaka Eizo (1886-1968), another Tolstoy adaptation, for the first time uses close-ups and flash-backs. The same is true of another film made this year, The Captain's Daughter by Inoue Masao. Both films put emphasis on having good scripts. But such films could only be made by pretending they were meant for export, and they were shown in theaters used for foreign films. In other words, they were exceptions.
For the first time, Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu overtake foreign companies as the main source of income for Japanese screens.
1918
February 1918 to April 1920 - Spanish Flu pandemic
July – September – Rice riots throughout Japan over the precipitous rise in the price of rice, the main staple of life.
November – World War I ends with the defeat of Germany and its allies.
Kaeriyama Norimasa (1893-1964) makes two experimental - and now lost - films ("The Glow of Life" and "Maid of the Deep Mountains") in order to try to bring some reform to the custom of using benshi and onnagata. The onnagata would disappear in a few year's time, but the benshi would hold out until the mid 1930s - but they agreed to limit their number to one benshi per film, in order to increase the tempo.
Charlie Chaplin's films become very popular.
1919
January: Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. The League of the Nations is established.
Griffith's Intolerance and Chaplin's A Dog's Life are hits in Japan. Due to WWI, European films have stopped being produced and their place is taken by American films.
Film magazine Kinema Junpo starts publication in July. Founded by a group of students who support the Pure Film Movement, it pleads for the use of modern cinematic methods in Japanese film making.
[Reference works used: Currents In Japanese Cinema by Tadao Sato (Tokyo, 1987); The Japanese Film: Art and Industry by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie (reprint Tokyo, 1983); A Hundred Years of Japanese Film by Donald Richie (Tokyo, 2001); Japanese Film Directors by Audrie Bock (Tokyo, 1985); A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors by Alexander Jacoby (Berkeley, 2008); A New History of Japanese Cinema by Isolde Standish (New York, 2005); The Japanese Period Film by S.A. Thornton (Jefferson & London, 2008); Eros plus Massacre, An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema by David Desser (Bloomington and Indianopolis, 1988); Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema by David Bordwell (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1988); Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (Duke University Press: Durham, 2000); The Waves at Genji's Door by Joan Mellen (Pantheon Books: New York, 1976); Japanese Classical Theatre in Film by Keiko I. Macdonald (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994); From Book to Screen by Keiko I. Macdonald (M.E. Sharpe: New York and London, 2000); Reading a Japanese Film by Keiko I. Macdonald (University of Hawai'i Press: Honolulu, 2006); Behind the Pink Curtain, A Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, by Jasper Sharp (Fab Press: Godalming, 2008); Contemporary Japanese Film by Mark Schilling (Weatherhill: New York and Tokyo, 1999); The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp (Stone Bridge Press: Berkeley, 2005); Kitano Takeshi by Aaron Gerow (British Film Institute: London, 2007); Iron Man: the Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto by Tom Mes (Fab Press: Godalming, 2005); Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike by Jasper Sharp (Fab Press: Godalming, 2003); Nihon Eigashi by Sato Tadao (Iwanami Shoten: Tokyo, 2008, 4 vols.); Nihon Eigashi 110-nen by Yomota Inuhiko (Shueisha; Tokyo, 2014). All images are linked from Wikipedia.]
History of Japanese Film by Year