• Silent films: 子宝騒動、明け行く空 (Kid Commotion, The Dawning Sky)

5/19/15 (Tues), Tokyo

These were silent films by Torajiro Saito, evidently known in his day as film studio Shochiku’s “king of comedy”. They were narrated by a female benshi, Akiko Sasaki, who sat at the side of the screen and voiced all the roles as well as narrating non-dialogue sections in her own words. The music was newly composed and played live on a keyboard. The setup directly recalled (and perhaps stemmed from) Japan’s Bunraku puppet theater, where the narrator and musician sit in full view of the audience on a raised platform beside the stage and give voice to the voiceless puppets. The mixture of film and live performance seemed very modern somehow, so it’s interesting to note that Japan was doing it nearly a century ago.   Continue reading →