Celluloid Competition: German-Japanese Film Relations, 1929–45

Abstract

From 1929, the Ufa Company in Berlin regularly received visits from one representative of the Japanese film industry. Nagamasa Kawakita, Japanese film pioneer and founder of film import company Tôwa Shôji Gôshi Kaisha, invariably came to Germany once a year and bought the previous year’s feature films and some Kulturfilme to screen in Japan. For the Ufa, this trade represented a steady flow of convertible currency, if not exactly a huge income. Ufa’s international department was under permanent pressure to yield profits, but because it concentrated on the European markets, Japan was never high on its agenda. In this context the Ufa board was reluctant to consider proposals that strayed from the usual business lines. For example, in 1934, Koichi Kishi, a Japanese who sometimes worked for the company’s Kulturfilm and marketing departments, suggested the founding of a German-Japanese film production company offering 1 million Reichsmark as funds to be supplied by the Japanese government. The board was not interested.¹