Katsudō Shashin
Director and Producer unknown. Japan ca. 1907

This animation film is also called the Matsumoto fragment, named after its discoverer.

“A young boy dressed in sailor attire and a bright red cap is shown to write the Japanese kanji characters translating to the phrase ‘moving picture.’ As he completes writing the phrase, he faces toward the viewer and bows.
Katsudō Shashin consists of fifty frames of celluloid strip in its three-second duration, with sixteen frames per second. Discovered in 2004, having been purchased with a private collection in Kyoto, it is suspected to have been created between 1905 and 1911. This would make it one of the oldest pieces of animation from Japan.”
MyAnimeList

“Matsumoto Natsuki, a part time lecturer at the Osaka-Tokyo University of Arts and Music found the 50-frame film in an old family projector in Kyoto amongst a collection of foreign animation. It was hand-drawn in two colors, red and black, directly onto the celluloid. The creator is unknown. In the first decade of the 1900s there were very few cinemas in Japan and only the wealthy owned projectors. The animation depicts a young boy wearing a sailor suit writing ‘katsudoushashin’ (movie) on a blackboard, turning around to face the audience and saluting. At 16 frames per second, the animation only lasts 3 seconds.”
Anime News Network

Namakura Gatana (The Dull Sword)
R: Jun’ichi Kôuchi. P: Kobayashi Shokai. Japan 1917

“Namakura Gatana is a short Japanese animated film produced by Jun’ichi Kōuchi in 1917. It was rediscovered by an antique shop employee in Osaka in March 2008. This film (…) tells a story about a foolish samurai’s purchase of a dull-edged sword. It was released on June 30, 1917, and is among the very earliest examples of anime.
Namakura Gatana (translated into ‘dull-edged-sword’) is a short comedy about a dim-witted samurai and his worn down sword which turns completely useless as he tries to fight even the weakest opponents. The samurai, trying to figure out why his old sword won’t cut anyone he strikes, tries desperately to attack random townspeople who defend themselves and knock him out.”
Wikipedia

“Yoshiri Irie, a researcher at Tokyo’s National Film Center, has announced that two of the oldest Japanese animated films were discovered in an antique shop in Osaka in central Japan. In 1917, anime pioneer Jun’ichi Kōuchi released the two-minute Namakura Gatana silent short about a samurai’s foolish purchase of a dull-edged sword. Fellow animator Seitaro Kitayama released Urashima Tarō, an adaptation of a folk tale about a fisherman traveling to an underwater world on a turtle, in 1918. (…) The one film that predates them all is a 50-frame shot of a sailor boy’s salute that was discovered in 2005. An unknown artist hand-drew each frame directly onto the film stock.”
Anime News Network

>>> The First Film Showing Kendo – 1897 on this website