The history of Japanese Cinema has over one century. In 1897, Japanese people were introduced to a new invention, which allowed to put images once static in motion; the responsible for the first public demonstration of what would become cinema has its known nowadays was the American company Vitascope. It is clear then since its beginning Japanese cinema established a close relationship with American and European cinema. Two years after the first film projection in the country, Japan produced its first work, and from then on they developed a strong and independent film industry that would become prosperous in the following years.
As any other form of art, Japanese Cinema was strongly influenced by the culture and economic, political and social context of the country. Natural conditions, like the 1923 earthquake, or the unfavorable social and political conjuncture caused by the military coup d’état in 1932 and the following participation on World War II, that culminated with the American occupation of a great part of the Japanese territory, were all responsible for a great delay in the Japanese movie industry, not only on a technical level, but also regarding creativity, since the wave of political films defending the regime imposed by the Japanese government was shortly followed by the censorship dictated by the American government. Despite this hard conditions, Japan never stopped producing films, and its movie industry is one of the biggest and oldest industries in the world, being in third place regarding the number of movies produced.
Distinct film-makers contributed to the growth of Japanese Cinema, like Shōzō Makino, considered the first Japanese director, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu and the unforgettable Akira Kurosawa, who is still considered the greatest Japanese film-maker and the main responsible for the introduction and recognition of Japanese Cinema in the western world, mainly in the 50’s, the golden age of Japanese Cinema.
Nowadays, the Japanese film industry is still in great development; however, the majority of the movies are only exhibited within the country, with the exception of animated movies, which are broadly exported and have a cohesive group of followers in many other countries.
