Film Preservation Society

adopt-a-film 04

FPS restored a film deposited with us in early Summer 2007, as the 4th Adopt-a-Film project, which was completed in the Fall of the same year. The report is as follows.

Original material: Kyugeki Kirigakure Saizo 9.5mm Pathe-Baby about 23m (70ft.) Without top title, but with endmark. A white label on the black bobbin (for the size of 20m) says "Kyugeki Kirigakure Saizo". According to Kenetsu Jiho (Censorship record), Bannoshoten made a Pathe-Baby version of "Saizo Kirigakure" on Dec 1930 for the first time, and the same title can be found in the catalogue made between 1931 and 1937 (in the magazine called Pathe-Cine). 

The depositor: Raiko Sakamoto (Benshi Performer) He won the film from an internet auction for 5,000 yen and deposited it with FPS. Foster parents: The Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul (CHIFFS) http://www.chiffs.kr/ The Japanese translated name is Souru chunmuro kokusai eigasai which was suggested by CHIFFS.

Restored version: Kirigakure saizo [Patebebi ban] 35mm 3 minutes at 16fps Saizo Kirigakure [Pathe-Baby version]

Laboratory: IMAGICA West http://www.imagicawest.com/ Tokyo Koon http://www.koon.co.jp/

Cost: about 310,000 yen

35mm answer print screenings: 2007.10.22 10:00am- at a cinema in Shibuya, Tokyo At these screenings, the 5th Adopt-a-Film telecine version was also shown.

The Premiere Screening (although it was on digital format): 2007.10.30 The 1st CHIFFS Central Cinema 11:00am Benshi Performer Raiko Sakamoto, Pianist Mie Yanashita

Foreword

I first met him in Summer 2003, when I visited Puchon Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan). My friend Oh Sungji, who is a film archivist at Korean Film Archive, introduced him to me as "my teacher" and since then they have contacted me every time they visited Tokyo. He's always full of new ideas, but I was surprised when I first heard about the opening of CHIFFS when he took part in the FIAF Tokyo congress. This was because he said the theme of the festival was to be film discovery and restoration. As there are too many film festivals in Korea, he's attempting something completely new, and CHIFFS is where he started his career, and where he is focusing on film history. Such a theme must be a first in Asia. As it fits the aims of FPS, we started thinking of doing something memorable for it, and we came up with a very interesting-looking Pathe-Baby film. There's a white label on the black bobbin saying "Kyugeki Kirigakure Saizo" in brushstrokes. How we got hold of it is written here. We had a meeting in Tokyo when Kim Hongjoon visited Japan again after his press conference at the Cannes film festival and we were officially invited to CHIFFS. He kindly asked his friend (Ms Kim Yonjon from Nihon Joshi University) to interpret, and thanks to her help, I showed this just discovered Pathe-Baby bobbin to him. I asked if it was possible for CHIFFS to give us financial support for the restoration. He just said "OK" to me, which was most unexpected. This is how our new project progressed.

Stage One

Letter of Agreement

In starting up the fourth Adopt-a-Film, we decided to define the project's aims more strictly than before, thinking over our last three restoration experiences. For details, please see here. Following this definition, we prepared a Letter of Agreement in English, and Kim Hongjoon and our head, Takeo Nagano, signed it. The Japanese version of this agreement is going to apply from the 5th project onwards.

How to restore?

As you know, film "restoration" means aiming to make a print as close as possible to how the film was first shown to an audience, which means, in the case of the small gauge films FPS is dealing with, a 35mm print; the original format for the feature film. Both the 1st and the 2nd Adopt-a-Films were blow ups from 16mm Shochiku Graph version to 35mm dupe negative and then 35mm projection print (only the 1st was with wet gate printing). But in the case of Pathe-Baby, the mainstream way of restoration nowadays is to scan the original, and apply digital techniques to eliminate the scratches and stabilize the frames, and record on the 35mm print. The Adopt-a-Film projects are intended to make film restoration familiar to ordinary film fans, so we cannot make the total restoration cost too high. We can expect a certain amount of impact on digital restoration, but the cost is about five to ten times more, which is a rather big difference. You can also never be sure if the results will show such a difference. In this case we decided to do it within the limited conditions but try to get the best results, to "enjoy the game".

Choose your lab

We are so careless. After we decided not to attempt digital restoration, we found out that no domestic lab could deal with it. There was a machine altered by Choichi Imada, but when Ikueisha closed down its laboratory it was taken by IMAGICA west in Osaka. According to IMAGICA west, it would take a long time to get it installed. We were in trouble at this point but soon decided to try a lab in the US or Europe. The official mailing list of Home Movie Day is a useful information tool as there are a lot of film archivists dealing with small gauges daily. This is how I learned that that BB Optics in New Jersey or Prestech in London are trustworthy and doing a great job for Pathe-Baby restoration. CineDia in France was also recommended but they speak only French so I gave up. The famous restoration lab, Haghefilm in Holland is only dealing with 9.5mm to 16mm blow up, so you have to blow up 16mm to 35mm. The cost of digital restoration is getting more reasonable, so they did not recommend us optical printing, which is reasonable advice. Low cost high quality restoration is becoming more common but if an original film in front of you is going to be sent overseas, the worry is greater than the language barrier. It's not so easy to make a decision to do so, which was one thing we found out this time. This is quite possibly the only existing copy of the title in the world, and we have to give it back to the owner after the restoration in the same state as we got it. It took us time to choose between one way and the other and we got a messge from IMAGICA west about testing Imada's machine in July. IMAGICA west gave us much better results than we had expected, however Osaka is geographically far from Tokyo, and to do the answer print check was really hard. I remember that the 1st Adopt-a-Film "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen [Shochiku Graph]" print check and seeing the result of wet printing was just a question of popping out from my part time job to Ekoda station. Thinking back, for such a small grassroots organization as FPS, Ikueisha's lab was so precious.

Stage Two

inspection and telecine

As the start of the actual process, we did the film inspection and transcribed the intertitles (17 in total) and translated them into English. Pathe-Baby intertitling uses a system where the frame is stopped to let the audience read the titles, so there are a few frames only from the original. Thus, if it runs at 24 frames per second, nobody can read it on the screen. This is called flash title, and it appears on 35mm nitrate restoration too, but for a different reason, which is a bit of a problem. Even so, if you stretch it to a readable length, scratches and dirt are frozen in the same place and the intertitles become extremely unnatural (frozen titles). How to avoid this weirdness has become the most difficult part of the whole restoration process. Secondly, we asked Tokyo Koon to do the special cleaning (with the right side of the frame as "before", and the left "after") and telecine*. How we got to know Tokyo Koon is again thanks to Sungji, when she was looking for a telecine house for 8mm in Tokyo, we visited them for the first time and they showed us a demonstration of their cleaning system. *9.5mm telecine can be done by Yoshioka Eizo Sekkei Jimusho in Kyoto. The telecine version was made both before and after the cleaning, and we asked them to stretch the titles. The length of the stretched intertitles were checked by the film owner and by benshi performer Raiko Sakamoto, and used as a reference to make a 35mm print. We made a mistake in not doing telecine as it was with the flash title, so it's impossible to compare the initial state of the 9.5mm and the way it looks after restoration. At this time we did three things: we added the missing toptitle, the unidentified footage after the endmark (it's too dark to say what it is) was eliminated and we adjusted the position of the intertitles, which were too far to the left and the font was too big and wider than the frame at some points, making it totally unbalanced.

Identification

To add the title, we had to identity the original title of this film. "Saizo Kirigakure" was made at least five times before the 1930s. 1. Nikkatsu (Kyoto) 1915 starring Matsunosuke Onoe 2. Nikkatsu (Kyoto) 1919 starring Matsunosuke Onoe 3. Nikkatsu (Kyoto) 1922 starring Matsunosuke Onoe 4. Teikoku Kinema 1922 Ritoku Arashi 5. Kokkatsu (Tokyo) 1920 Shirogoro Sawamura Enjuro Ichikawa ("Iwami Jutaro to Kirigakure Saizo") It's rare to change the title when the feature film has become a small gauge home use digest, but the star actor is not Matusnosuke nor Ritoku, so we guessed it might be no 5. So, we applied for the screenings of Kokkatsu or Tenkatsu films in the same era to the NFC. The cost JPY20,000 (JPY5,000/30 minutes) was covered by CHIFFS, and it was eventually a meeting of the people who took part in this project from outside of FPS. One of the people who took part, film historian Kaoru Fuyuki, pointed out immediately that it was not Shirogoro. The deadline for the press release was coming up, so we gave up on identification, and decided the title as "Saizo Kirigakure [Pathe-Baby version]" (as you can see in the image on the left). This was taken from the hand written title on the label on the bobbin, and the 17th intertitle saying "Kakushite Kirigakure Saizo ha Onoga Isogino Tabi wo tsuzuketa (Saizo Kirigakure is now hurrying on his way)". We were not really sure if CHIFFS would agree to the restoration of an unidentified film but Mr Fuyuki encouraged us, saying "Aren't you keen to see the film? It should be restored". Some of our members and other supporters continued research supposing that the film title was changed from the original, and the benshi performer Midori Sawato and others gave us a lot of useful information. We found a title "Saizo Kirigakure or Sasuke Sarutobi?" in the list of Toy Film collection from Osaka Arts University so we tried to check it thanks to Prof Ota, but the content was totally different. Despite our efforts, as of November 2007 all we can say is that this is a film made by Teikoku Kinema Studio in the 1920s, and the actress could be Midori Ushio. It's just our guess.

How to choose the screening media

The trouble is the projection speed. CHIFFS naturally wanted to show it on film, but it's impossible for them to show it at silent speed (in this case 16 fps). Showing the film at the correct speed is our best case scenario, otherwise the media is decided as digibeta. If only the speed had been changeable, we would have loved to show it on 35mm. Later on, Imada said "That was the right decision. I don't like it to be said that silent film is always at a faster speed". This made us feel better. Although we tried our best to find out the type of projector, and whether its speed could be altered or not, and in what way (we have heard from expert archivist that it's not that difficult depend on the type) the venues were a lot of different cinemas throughout Seoul, and which one was to be the FPS one was not decided until the last minute. So this way was not realistic. They are cinemas with ongoing programs and nobody can touch the projection booth. The UCLA film which was supposed to be part of our program (Tales about film preservation) was cancelled for some reason, so our projection time was reduced from twice to once, from a weekend to a weekday, from afternoon to the morning ... the scale was getting smaller. So we at last gave up the film screenings. That was why we were even more insistent on having the benshi performer and pianist with the screenings and we put in a lot of work to make it happen. Raiko Sakamoto and Mie Yanashita kindly agreed to take part in CHIFFS even in their busy schedules, and extremely professional about the many changes of plan. Wireless microphone, lectern for putting the script on, a small light, the theme music for the benshi's entrance, booking a rehearsal room with a piano, the details of the keyboard and amp in case an upright piano is not available... countless emails were exchanged between CHIFFS and FPS. We thank Kim Eujung and all the other staff members who tried their best to get everything as close to ideal as possible.

The making of the data for the screenings

As the projection media was not film anymore, we shifted our focus towards preparing the data for the projection. This data is not the telecine version from 35mm restored print, but from the telecine from the original 9.5mm at Tokyo Koon, as the quality was much higher. FPS made changes to this data by ourselves, and gave it to Imagica West as a reference for the blow up restoration. We added FPS logo, Adopt-a-Film credit, and the missing top title - three things in total. Logo is always the same, but for the second, more than ten versions of the credit were made and CHIFFS chose the final version. Other things we did were to eliminate the blurred images after the endmark, and adjust the position of the 17 intertitles (centering, and making the font smaller = upper image is "before" and below is "after"). Also, for these 17 titles the background was retouched to be black, so that all the dirt and scratches were gone and we avoided making it look too unnatural (the frozen titles) by stretching. This was successful and the result was better than we expected, which made us so relieved. We also tried making the frames shake artificially to avoid frozen frames but did not use this technique in the end. All those effects were realized by Sadanobu Iida, FPS member.

Stage Three

how to make a 35mm version

The title is outline typeface on a black background. In the case of digital restoration, it can be balanced out flexibly, for example by making black grayish and reducing the sudden change between the sequence and intertitles, or reducing the brightness of the white so that only the characters stand out, but optical printing does not have such freedom, it seems. Also because these intertitles were printed on high contrast negative and high contrast positive they are more generations away from the original, and so the quality was lost in terms of reading the characters in some parts. IMAGICA WEST's process is done far away from Tokyo and is not easy to fully understand but the reference material we got from Mr Kiyotaka Moriwaki at Kyoto Museum was very useful. Pathe-Baby has got perforations on the center of each frame line so a part of the frame was scraped. It's not impossible to make it seen on the screen as it is (full height) but this time we chose the most frequently used way, which is to show the full width. *This picture shows the first intertitles from the top "Ojotchu Okega ha gozaranuka" (4 frames). The notch in the first frame makes the mechanism stop for a while. Full height, full width and artificial destabilization of frames were tested and a test film was made. We've heard that in the case of 35mm, this process is possible if at least six or seven of the intertitle frames remain, and also it is technically impossible to use wet gate for 9.5mm.

Answer Print

The answer print was shown in Tokyo thanks to Kazuo Mikoshiba who used to be an FPS member. We invited FPS members who had helped to make this restoration successful, and it was the best chance to show our gratitude for their support. In other words, inviting them to the preview was the only way we could show our thanks. By inviting as many people as possible, we might raise interest in this project and possibly attract future members but this time unfortunately we could not invite a film technician, and it was held on a weekday morning, so less than ten people attended. FPS's role is to make efforts to have more people get involved. and to foster an atmosphere where the audience can give their honest opinion about the restoration result, which is really important. From now on, we'll ask film technicians who could give us an objective opinion about the quality of the restored print and more film historians, benshi performers, and media people.

Press Release

We published a press release on 1st Oct 2007.see Article from Yomiuri Shimbun Evening paper (2007.10.13). We did not have to publicize that we were looking for a donor, so we just did it for screenings at CHIFFS. At the same time, Adopt-a-Film was covered extensively in an article in Kyodo Tsushin's "Eiga no Chikara" in a variety of local papers and Benshi Sakamoto mentioned it in his Interview at Asahi Beer Aoyama Happy Kenkyujo (10.19). Yanashita-san also spoke about it in her interview in Asahi Shimbun Evening paper "Her piano introduces you to the cinema" (11.12).

Screenings

October 30th, 2007, from 11:00am, Adopt-a-FIlm screenings opened with Kim Hongjoon's introduction. Sakamoto's position was as usual to the left of the screen, and Yanashita-san's upright piano was set on the right. We introduced the basics of Adopt-a-Film, and showed the latest PR on DVD. Then Benshi and Pianist appeared from the auditorium to the warmest applause and in the order of restoration, Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen [Shochiku Graph], Kaihin no Joo [Shochiku Graph], and finally Saizo Kirigakure [Pathe Baby] were shown. We had a media interview later, but at this stage we don't know if any article was published. We were treated by Mr Kim to a big lunch with CHIFFS staff. Their hospitality overall was beyond our wildest expectation. We will report about the four days at CHIFFS in Melmaga FPS vol 30 to 31. As of Nov 2007, Saizo will be shown in the following screenings (on DVD) in Japan. _参007.11.25 FPS Little Screenings Vol.15 Japanese film unidentified. _参008.1.6 Katsudo Club/FPS Toshihajime Otakaraeiga Joeikai Vol.1 _参008.1.13 FPS Yanesen Silent Film Show We are always looking for a person or group who is showing Saizo Kirigakure. We wish it could be on film but even on DVD is possible as well. Please contact us at any time.

On reflection

To be honest, I did not expect it would take such a long time to restore a film only three minutes long. I must have been too optimistic. I could have done more research on past 9.5mm restoration. I got the film in May, and the restoration was completed in October - half a year was spent on this project. Every single stage of the process was done in a hurry, and I was too fast, or kept somebody waiting, or repeatedly made careless mistakes. As a result, I just found out that the number of decisions to be made does not necessarily parallel the length of the film. I had to prepare a lot of extra materials for oversea screenings such as references in English and other data. The subtitles were already done, so it was sad they were not used. We realized that to set the goal is important. We have to compromise sometimes, but the deadline was already decided as the festival date was the end of October, which helped us in a way. Adopt a Film No 3 was not really connected to this No 4, but we did a certain coordination between No 4 and No 5 in terms of preview, press release, media interview etc. Adopt-a-Film is an ongoing project so we hope this report is made good use of for future projects, so that we do not have to repeat the same mistake again.

The donation of negative films

We are looking for an archive in which our 35mm print and negatives can be stored for long term restoration (November 2007).

Acknowledgment

Adopt-a-Film happens thanks to the understanding of the film owner and the foster parent. We send our deepest thanks to Raiko Sakamoto and the director of the Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul, Mr Kim Hong Joon.

 (Kae Ishihara)

adopt-a-film 03

Student Chronicles: Showa Era (Gakusei Sandaiki Showa Jidai ) [Makino Graph]

1930, Makino Productions
Original script by Naoyuki Hatta
Cinematographed by Ihachi Omori
Directed by Ryota Kawanami, Eisuke Takizawa, Tameyoshi Kubo
Makino Graph was edited by Juzo Tanaka
Cast:
Baseball Sketch (Yakyu no Maki): Shiro Yokozawa, Komako Sunada, Takashi Yamaguchi,Takeshi Shimoyama
Lodging Sketch (Geshuku no Maki): Hiroshi Tsumura, Kiyoko Izumi, Ikuo Terai
Foster Parents: National Film Center Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University Laboratory: IMAGICA Corp.

In winter 2006, Student Chronicles: Showa Era (Gakusei Sandaiki Showa Jidai ) [Makino Graph] was discovered by the film detective at a private house. The original was two rolls of 16mm positive print. According to the document printed at the time of the film release, Student Chronicles, which was first run in the spring of 1930, consisted of three parts; the Tempo Era, the Meiji Era, and the Showa Era. The Tempo Era and Meiji Era were both created as an independent one whole piece, while the  Showa Era was made as an omnibus movie of eight short sketches. What was discovered this time were two episodes of the Showa Era; Baseball Sketch (Yakyu no Maki)(182 feet) and Lodging Sketch (Geshuku no Maki) (180 feet). Baseball Sketch lacked the top title segment. 

After an inspection of the original film, we asked the Ikueisha, Inc. to telecine it. (The laboratory of Ikueisha at Ekoda was unfortunately shut down in November, 2005.) We then had a first meeting at the FPS office, inviting Ms. Mika Tomita of the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University (ARC). The ARC had accomplished great achievements with research and restoration of the Makino Film Production's works including the restoration of Misasa Kouta in May, 2006. After the meeting, Ms. Tomita proposed a digital restoration of the film cooperatively with the National Film Center (NFC), on ground that it would be better for the restored film to be preserved in a national storage. Then we called upon Mr. Fumiaki Itakura of the NFC for this project. However, so much time had passed until the film was actually sent to a laboratory because of prolonged talks among the FPS, ARC, and NFC.

The main issue was what textual information to be put at the top of the restored film. With the previous Adopt-a-Film projects, restorations were done solely by the FPS; therefore on the top the FPS logo mark would appear first, followed by credits of adopters, as a sign of our reverence. This time, however, the ARC and NFC were also main players of the restoration, and they naturally had different opinions. Another argument was how to present the beginning part of the Baseball Sketch which lacked the top title. Various propositions were made by the three entities, and the following was decided.

1. Top title would begin with Trilateral Restoration, then the FPS logo mark, then credits of foster parents
2. Order of the two episodes was decided according to what was written on the original box; i.e. Baseball Sketch would come first, followed by Lodging Sketch
3. A title Baseball Sketch would be inserted before Baseball Sketch begins.

The FPS logo mark and foster parents' credits were remade by the FPS Mariko Goda based on the title design and fonts formerly created by the Ikueisha, Inc.

Regrettably, so much time had been spent for the argument that there was not enough time for an actual restoring operation. This FPS' third Adopt-a-Film project became a trilateral restoring project, while still being an Adopt-a-Film project. This uniqueness triggered an opportunity for us to rethink what our original idea for the Adopt-a-Film project should be.

Following a length inspection at the NFC, Kyobashi, in late November, the film was transferred to IMAGICA Corp. in December.Here at IMAGICA, the condition and shrinkage were inspected and then the film was HD telecined. Mr. Takehiko Ochi was the person in charge of the restoring operation._ The restoring process was as follows.

1.Scanning of the original 16 mm positive print with a 2K resolution wet gate system (a method to erase scratches on base surface with a special solvent)
2.Digital adjustment of shaking and flickering, and removal of scratches and stains
3.Recording of the adjusted image data to a 35mm negative print
4.Transfer of the negative print to a 35 mm positive print for screening.

At the end of the year, the three organizations viewed a HD-telecined version at IMAGICA, and received explanations about future procedure and schedule. The biggest issue was dotted stains. The stains looked almost like fireworks or watermarks especially on scenes with sky background. The above process #2 involved both digital and eye examinations, but so much time and effort would be needed for the stains to be removed with manual operations. Many of the stains, however, were removed at the time of the first digital viewing in February, 2007. The stains came off during wet gate scanning, not by digital removing operations. Whether this was due to refractive index of the solvent or the solvent's capability itself did not become clear by this time's restoration. Shaking and flickering were also fixed. During the viewing, the three organizations expressed the following opinions: ranularity is too strong; lack is too tight that subtitles look unnaturally static.

The above adjustments were made spontaneously by the engineers and the results could be observed in very short time. The next digital viewing was held in March. Splice remains, and big stains and scratches were removed since the last viewing. Close-ups of characters in the Baseball Sketch (which had a lot of close-up shots) became stunningly vivid, and shapes of characters in the Lodging Sketch became apparent after removal of film cements which had been running off the splices. Overall, what had not been obvious stood up this time, and power of the film seemed strengthened. Burnt dusts clinging to the bottom of almost every frame of the Lodging Sketch remained, because despite it was possible to remove them, foggy stains would remain. We decided this would be the final version; then it was recorded to a 35 mm negative print which was then transferred to a 35 mm print for screening. A film viewing was held in late March. Images looked softer in film. The work was now finished, and the original 16 mm print was returned to the owner by film detective. Because the projection speed at IMAGICA in March was at 24 frames per second, we did another viewing at 16 frames per second at the NFC in May. This time, flickering was so obvious that we realized screening environment does matter.

From this view point, with a report on the restoration outcome, symposium was held at Ritsumeikan University in October 2007._ And at the viewing at NFC, mackie line (a phenomenon that white outlines appear around black hair and black outfit) was pointed out by Mr. Nobuo Nakamura (film engineer), but we could not be sure whether this had already existed in the 16mm original print, or was created during the restoration process. The viewing did not provide an environment where viewers could freely discuss, and as a result, such important comments like this were heard for the first time after the restoration operation had already been finished. We learned that it is important to have more discussions during a restoration process.

This year marks the 100th birthday of a film director Masahiro Makino. From January 2008, NFC holds the Masahiro Makino Retrospective at his Centenary, and Student Chronicles will be put on screen in March._ We hope to see you at the NFC. Finally, the FPS would like to thank all those who have contributed to this restoration and the owner of the original film print.

Nozomi Nakagawa

adopt-a-film 01

The film we discovered, "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen"(1929), was telecined and a video copy was shown at Laputa Asagaya in Tokyo. It was reported in some major newspapers as being "the discovery of a rare film". "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen" is the earliest nonsense comedy directed by comedy master Torajiro Saito, whose 100th anniversary is being celebrated this year (2005). The copy we found was a digest version on 16mm, and, we are undertaking a brand new project called "Adopt a Film" with the aim of restoring it as a 35mm print.

How we discovered the collection

In the fall of 2004, we received information about old films being stored by one of the town's old families, and we started to do research. What we found was a collection of small gauges from the early Showa era. For their family business they have a special kind of "kura"(storehouse) which is well ventilated, and the films were sleeping there in good condition.The collection was built up from the 1920s to 30s and contains digest versions of Japanese or American feature films, animations, newsreels, and home movies shot on family sports days or seasonal festivals. In the prewar era, there was no entertainment in the area where the family lives. For local people, the family bought a projector and small gauge films, which was the start of the collection. Family members who remembered those days said every Saturday night local people gathered together to have film shows which were weekly events everybody looked forward to. However, the war dragged on and on, and the wartime mood started casting shadows even on the rural areas of Japan, and the weekly film shows gradually flickered out. At the end of the war in 1945, they were not able to re-open the shows. The collection was subject to strict censorship on motion picture films by GHQ. GHQ,which occupied Japan to democratize it, kept checking on propaganda films in wartime and the samurai dramas supposedly based on feudalism. In the course of their activities, part of the collection was cut and some of the films were confiscated. One of the confiscated/destroyed films was the legendary lost film "Ronin-gai" 1928-29 by Masahiro Makino (according to our research). Later on, the rest of the collection was locked up in the kura for a long peaceful sleep. Half a century passed before we approached it to waken them up and the films appeared in front of us again. The films were on aluminium reels, and each reel was in a steel can, or a paper box, with 20 such containers kept in a wooden box. The kura is the kind especially built for cold & dry environments. The paper boxes had name tags and were checked with a red mark, which was probably the sign of the censor. Some of the aluminium reels had deteriorated with rust, but the films themselves looked in good condition, with no sign of shrinkage or deterioration. In this world, there are films with a nasty smell of vinegar even though they were made less than 10 years ago, so we reconfirmed the importance of the storage conditions and environment in the field of film preservation. Luckily those films survived for three quarters of a century. Well then, what kind of titles did we find?

The discovery of "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen"

The collection centers around films produced in the late 1920s to 30s. The feature films were all digest versions on 16mm which were sold in those days. The major titles were Kenji Mizoguchi's "Tokyo Koshinkyoku", a.k.a. "Tokyo March" (1929); Yasujiro Ozu's "I Graduated But..." and "A Straightforward Boy"(both 1929); Torajiro Saito's "Ishikawa Goemon no Hoji" (1929) etc. 9.5mm digest versions of films such as "A Straightforward Boy" or "Ishikawa Goemon no Hoji" were recently found and donated to National Film Center, Tokyo. They were properly preserved as our film heritage. Then I found something I'd never heard the title of (I'm ashamed of this thinking back, though) in the boxes of rare fims. The two reels were in a paper box and the label read "100 million yen". The owner remembered vividly what sort of film it was. "The most popular ones were Chaplin-like comedies. "100 million yen" was funny as well. It was everyone's favourite." What kind of film is this - so popular and clear in the memory? We borrowed the film and took it back to Tokyo to do research on it and it was revealed as the long lost work of Torajiro Saito, the comedy master. By checking it on a viewer, we realised that there was no doubt. The title in the print is "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen". According to "Kinema Jumpo", the title should be written in Chinese numerals but the original title is not defined because the original 35mm no longer remains. It is the second earliest surviving work by Torajiro Saito (The earliest is "Akeyuku Sora" a.k.a. "The Dawning Sky"(1929)), and the earliest of his comedies, it seems. According to the magazine, this is a film made with the prize-winning script in the Shochiku Kamata Studio at that time. It seems competitions were common in those days to stimulate creativity in the studio, and at the same time it was a good way of getting extra income for directors and script-writers. The lost Yasujiro Ozu film "Ero-gami no Onryo"(1930) was said to have been one of those. The script-writer of "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen" was the famous Tadao Ikeda, who left behind outstanding works from comedies to human dramas. The story is that a young runaway couple got lost in Mt. Akagi, where a lot of people were searching for the buried treasure of master thief Chuji Kunisada, and they clashed with a mysterious character and encountered ghosts. The young couple are played by Tatsuo Saito and Junko Matsui, and the girl's parents by Takeshi Sakamoto and Mitsuko Yoshikawa, who were well known in Ozu films. Especially, tall and handsome Tatsuo Saito's gawky character is impressive. Shigeru Kokura played Chuji Kunisada (his ghost, though), in the style of Denjiro Okochi from "A Diary of Chuji's Travels", which was the hit movie of the day. The wide open piercing eyes and crouching pose reminds us of Okochi's. In addition, according to Masumi Tanaka (film historian), it seems Chishu Ryu was in the film somewhere in a very small role. None of us noticed him. For the readers of this article, we'd like you to keep an eye out for him. By coincidence, 2005 is film director Torajiro Saito's 100th anniversary. Through the discovery, restoration and screening of this film, can we somehow promote the importance of film preservation?_ That was how FPS started the brand new project. Of course we'll continue doing detailed research on this collection as a whole, and we hope we can even check films existing somewhere else, frame by frame, to find out which one is the "longest"/closest to the original print. Also, newsreels and home movies should be considered as the local area's heritage, so we should try to convince the owner to preserve and show them, but at present we are unfortunately not experienced enough to do so. To promote film preservation and FPS' activities, what we can do for sure right now is to let people know about film preservation, as a start. As a result we are launching a brand new project to make the preservation of "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen" possible by means of public donations. Film preservation, of the public, by the public, for the public. That is the "Adopt a Film" project.

Adopt a Film

This new project, "Adopt a Film", is simply asking for money from the public for restoration and_ the donor is designated as the foster parent of the film. This time the money was used for the 35mm blow-up version. The name of the parent is going to be credited at the beginning of the restoration print. The audience who see the restored print will know the fact that this film would never have been revived without the help of the parent and realise the process of film preservation. The persistent efforts, which are usually hardly visible to the audience or film fans, are going to be revealed by this credit of "Adopt a Film". Of course we expect this system could be a way to get funds for non-commercial film preservation activities, but more importantly, we would like as many people who didn't know about film preservation as possible to understand what it means through this project. The preview of the telecined "Modern Horror 100,000,000 yen" at Laputa Asagaya (Tokyo) on June 12th, 2005 was held to look for a parent. We handed out the flyers and explained this project, then from among the audience we got applications to be "parents" (more that one person) who could pay all the cost of restoration! More than anybody else, they are deeply connected to the director Torajiro Saito, so probably Saito himself was shocked in heaven. This is far better than we expected, so this time we decided to ask those people to be "parents". Who do you think they are? It'll be clear if you look at the restored print. Actually we got some other people who could happily have given us part of the cost, but this time they'll understand if they look at those names. We hope those people will help us next time (there are already films we have in mind). Thanks in advance for your cooperation. The restoration work is now going on at Ikueisha Co. which has helped us quite a lot for a long time. We have some plans for the screening and we'll let you know on this website as soon as we know.