Cinema Year Book of Japan 1938 (1938)

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SHINSEN GUM I A TOHO PICTURE The great change that swept over Japan with the dissolution of the feudal system inaugurated in the Tokugawa era (1603 — 1867) and the founding of its modern regime is known in Japanese history as the Meiji Restoration. It constitutes the most stupendous upheavel experienced by this nation. Some seventy-odd years ago the old conservative forces and the new progressive elements opposed each other and engaged in sanguinary fights, forming the real axis of this transformation. Shinsen Gumi is the name of a small but highly efficient group of samurai which were mustered by the Tokugawa Shogunate at the time. Serving as agents of political reaction, these warriors played the most active part in the struggle. The Shinsen Gumi and their renowned leader, Isami Kondo, have been by far the most popular subject of the ordinary historical film play, and pictures which treat of this subject probably number well over a hundred. The film play under discussion, however, attempts to show in a new light a phase of the Shinsen Gumi which has been entirely ignored in previous pictures. In other words, instead of depicting the glorious, triumphant period of this group as heretofore, it shows how the Shinsen Gumi were overwhelmed by the newly-risen political forces and went swiftly to their destruction. Its merits, moreover, consist in its critical handling of the subject from a historically realistic point of view. The picture has been made from the original scenario by Tomoyoshi Murayama, under the direction of Sotoji Kimura. The result is far from perfect artistically, but as a new type of historical film play, it is worthy of notice as a contribution to the course which the historical cinema of Japan is shaping. AKIRA IVVASAKI 32