ABSTRACT
The first attempt to make a Japanese film with the so-called cinematographe, took place in the summer of 1897. It offered glimpses of noted sites in Tokyo, among them the famous Nihonbashi bridge. That series of postcard views may be said to have launched Japanese cinema, which soon learned to look for livelier kinds of spectacles. For that, the cinema went indoors, to "views" conveniently framed on stage, in theatrical traditions rieh in human interest. In retrospect, it seems only natural that Japanese cinema should have spent its first decade stealing from classical Kabuki and Bumaku theater.
