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The earliest known Japanese animation (discovered in 2005) was produced circa 1917 and consists of fifty frames drawn directly onto a strip of celluloid. The untitled short with a running length of about 3 seconds depicts a young boy in a sailor suit writing the kanji "活動写真" (katsudō shashin, for "moving pictures") on a board, then turning towards the viewer, removing his hat, and offering a salute. The creator's identity is unknown.

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Sadly, very few complete animations made during the beginnings of Japanese animation have survived until now. The reasons vary, but many are of commercial nature. After the clips had their big time, reels (being property of the cinemas) were sold to smaller cinemas in the country and then disassembled and sold as strips or single frames.

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Shimokawa Oten was a political caricaturist and cartoonist, who worked for the magazine Tokyo Puck. He was hired by Tenkatsu to do an animation for them. Due to medical reasons, he was only able to do five movies, including Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki, before he returned to his previous work as a cartoonist.

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Another prominent animator in this period was Kōchi Jun'ichi. He was a caricaturist and painter, who also had studied watercolor painting. In 1912 he also entered the cartoonist sector and was hired for an animation by Kobayashi Shokai later in 1916. He is viewed as the most technically advanced Japanese animator of the 1910s. His works include around 15 movies.

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Kitayama Seitaro was an early animator who made animations on his own, not hired by larger corporations. He even founded his own animation studio which was closed due to lack of commercial success. He utilized the chalkboard technique, and later paper animation, with and without pre-printed backgrounds.

The works of these two pioneers include Namakura-gatana (An Obtuse Sword, 1917) and a 1918 film of Urashima Tarō which were discovered together at an antique market in 2007.

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