Katsudō Shashin

Katsudō Shashin (活動写真^?, "moving picture"), sometimes called the Matsumoto fragment, is a Japanese animated filmstrip that is the oldest known work of animation from Japan. Its creator is unknown. Evidence suggests it was made before 1912, so it may predate the earliest displays of Western animated films in Japan. It was discovered in a collection of films and projectors in Kyoto in 2005.

The three-second filmstrip depicts a boy who writes "活動写真", removes his hat, and waves. The frames were stencilled in red and black using a device for making magic lantern slides, and the filmstrip was fastened in a loop for continuous play.

Katsudō Shashin consists of a series of cartoon images on fifty frames of a celluloid strip and lasts three seconds at sixteen frames per second. It depicts a young boy in a sailor suit who writes the kanji characters "活動写真" (katsudō shashin, "moving picture") from right to left, then turns to the viewer, removes his hat, and salutes.Katsudō Shashin is a provisional title for the film, whose actual title is unknown.

Unlike in traditional animation, the frames were not produced by photographing the images, but rather were impressed onto film using a stencil. This was done with a kappa-ban, a device for stencilling magic lantern slides. The images were in red and black on a strip of 35 mm film whose ends were fastened in a loop for continuous viewing.

Early printed animation films for optical toys such as the zoetrope predated projected film animation. German toy manufacturer Gebrüder Bing presented a cinematograph at a toy festival in Nuremberg in 1898; soon other toy manufacturers sold similar devices. Live-action films for these devices were expensive to make; possibly as early as 1898 animated films for these devices were on sale, and could be fastened in loops for continuous viewing. Imports of these German devices appeared in Japan at least as early as 1904; films for them likely included animation loops.

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