Momijigari
(Transl.: Viewing the Autumn Leaves )
R / K: Tsunekichi Shibata. D: Danjuro Ichikawa, Kikugoro Onoe V. P: Nihon Sossen Katsudo Shashinkai. JP 1899
Print: National Film Center (National Museum of Modern Art), Tokyo

“‘Momijigari (紅葉狩)’ or ‘Maple Viewing’ (English title) is a Japanese narrative, performed as theatre in kabuki as shosagoto (dance-focused play) and Noh. It was also the first narrative ever filmed in Japan. The Noh play was written by Kanze Nobumitsu during the Muromachi period. Other titles for the play include Yogoshōgun and Koremochi.”
Wikipedia

“The Noh play of the same name was reworked into this Kabuki version, which is a dance-based sequence presented with three types of musical accompaniment (takemoto, nagauta and tokiwazu). In the story, Taira no Koremochi, visiting Mount Togakushi to enjoy the maple trees and other autumn colors, battles a she-demon from the mountain. At a viewing party in Mount Togakushi that he organizes, Koremochi encounters what he first believes is a beautiful princess named Sarashinahime. He drinks the sake she offers and becomes very drunk. We later learn that Sarashinahime is a demon. She attacks Koremochi, but he eventually overcomes her using the legendary sword Kogarasumaru. (…) The highlight of a dance Sarashinahime performs is her use of two fans. The common name is ‘Nimaiogi’. The actor Danjuro IX struggled to perfect this choreography, performing it for the first time. Its movements are bolder than usual for the dance of a princess. Immediately after this scene, Sarashinahime reveals her true character as a demon and she spies on the drunk and sleeping Koremochi.”
INVITATION TO KABUKI

The film
“Momijigari was planned primarily as a record of the performance of the two famous actors. Shibata, who worked for the Konishi Photographic Store, shot it using a Gaumont camera. It was filmed in November 1899 in an open space behind the Kabuki-za in Tokyo, with Shibata using three reels of film. It was a windy day, however, and a gust blew away one of Danjūrō’s fans, a mishap that remained in the film since retakes were not possible. Since the film was meant only as a record, it was not initially shown publicly. Danjūrō only saw it himself a year after it was filmed. There was an agreement that it would not be screened for the public until after Danjūrō’s death, but when he fell ill and could not appear at a performance at the Naka-za in Osaka, it was screened in his place. It ran from 7 July to 1 August 1903, a long run spurred in part by the fact that Kikugorō had recently died. Danjūrō himself died in September 1903, and the film showed at the Kabuki-za after that, for one week starting on 9 February 1904. (…)

Momijigari is the oldest Japanese-made film for which a print still exists. (…) It is also an early example of the kind of ‘kabuki cinema’ that would become prominent in the first decades of the Japanese film industry, in which films were often records of or attempts to reproduce kabuki theater. According to the film historian Hiroshi Komatsu, it is also an example of how the distinction between fiction and non-fiction cinema was not yet an issue at the time, since the film was both a documentary of a stage performance and a presentation of a fictional story.”
Wikipedia

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