Japan’s ear­li­est ani­mat­ed films have been released online

If you’re a fan of Japan­ese cin­e­ma, you’ll already be famil­iar with the country’s rich his­to­ry in ani­ma­tion. But while con­tem­po­rary direc­tors like Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo, Mamoru Oshii and Hayao Miyaza­ki are among the best and bright­est film artists Japan has ever pro­duced, many of the pio­neer­ing ear­ly ani­ma­tion works that influ­enced them have large­ly been for­got­ten – until now.

To mark a cen­tu­ry of Japan­ese ani­mé, the Film Cen­ter at Tokyo’s Nation­al Muse­um of Mod­ern Art has made 64 ani­mat­ed shorts rang­ing from 1917 to 1941 avail­able to stream for free online.

The Japan­ese Ani­mat­ed Film Clas­sics web­site is cur­rent­ly host­ing these incred­i­bly rare films, with titles such as The Dull Sword – thought to be the old­est-sur­viv­ing Japan­ese ani­mat­ed pro­duc­tion – and Momo­taro in the Sky hav­ing nev­er screened out­side of Japan. Even bet­ter, Eng­lish sub­ti­tles have been added to all the films in order to make them more accessible.

In addi­tion to the crude but charm­ing fairy tales, which are clear pre­cur­sors to the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li mas­ter­works we cher­ish today, the col­lec­tion includes edu­ca­tion­al pub­lic ser­vice films (A Sto­ry of Tobac­co, Pre­vent­ing Tuber­cu­lo­sis) and even a hand­ful of pro­pa­gan­da films (Prop­a­gate, Cor­po­ral Norakuro).

Accord­ing to The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, the project took shape in 2014 when a research team from the Film Cen­ter began the painstak­ing process of digi­tis­ing their archives, select­ing excep­tion­al and less­er-seen ani­mat­ed shorts which were no longer in copyright.

The films will be avail­able to stream until the end of 2017, and a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of the web­site is due to arrive soon. Watch the full set of films at ani​ma​tion​.fil​marchives​.jp