The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with Japan producing its first animated films in the 1910s, the earliest verifiable Japanese animated film dates from 1917. However, it was not until the 1960s, with the work of Osamu Tezuka, often called the "God of Manga," that anime began to take shape as a distinct cultural phenomenon. Tezuka's Astro Boy (1963) is considered one of the first major anime TV series, setting the foundation for the animation industry. Over the following decades, anime grew in popularity both domestically and internationally, with diverse genres and styles emerging. By the 1980s and 1990s, anime had become a global phenomenon, with influential works such as Akira, Dragon Ball Z, and Sailor Moon reaching international audiences. Today, anime is a major part of global pop culture, known for its unique art styles, storytelling depth, and expansive influence across media.This article, by a German researcher, was first published on January 4, 2013 in The Japanese Journal of Animation Studies, vol. 15, no.1A, 2013, pp. 27–32 Before the advent of film, Japan already had a rich tradition of entertainment with colourful painted figures moving across a projection screen in , a particular Japanese type of magic lantern show popular in the 19th century. Possibly inspired by European phantasmagoria shows, utsushi-e showmen used mechanical slides and developed lightweight wooden projectors (furo) that were handheld so that several performers could each control the motions of different projected figures.
The second generation of animators in the late 1910s included Ōten Shimokawa, Jun'ichi Kōuchi and Seitarō Kitayama, commonly referred to as the "fathers" of anime. Propaganda films, such as Momotarō no Umiwashi (1943) and Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (1945), the latter being the first anime feature film, were made during World War II.
During the 1970s, anime developed further, with the inspiration of Disney animators, separating itself from its Western roots, and developing distinct genres such as mecha and its super robot subgenre. Popular shows from this period include Astro Boy, Lupin III and Mazinger Z. During this period several filmmakers gained worldwide fame, such as Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii. Doraemon, which started airing in 1979, has become the longest-running anime of all time.
In the 1980s, anime became mainstream in Japan, experiencing a boom in production with the rise in popularity of anime including Gundam, Macross, Dragon Ball, and genres such as real robot, space opera and cyberpunk. Space Battleship Yamato and Super Dimension Fortress Macross also achieved worldwide success after being adapted respectively as Star Blazers and Robotech. The 1988 film Akira went on to become an international success. Later, in 2004, the same creators produced Steamboy, which became the most expensive anime film. Spirited Away shared the first prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, while Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence was featured at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Precursors Before film, Japan had already several forms of entertainment based on storytelling and images. Emakimono and kagee are considered precursors of Japanese animation. Emakimono was common in the eleventh century. Traveling storytellers narrated legends and anecdotes while the emakimono was unrolled from right to left with chronological order, as a moving panorama. Kagee was popular during the Edo period and originated from the shadow play of China. Magic lanterns from the Netherlands were also popular in the eighteenth century. The paper play known as kamishibai surged in popularity during the twelfth century and remained popular in the street theater until the 1930s. Puppets of the bunraku theater and ukiyo-e prints are considered precursors of Japanese animated characters. Finally, manga was a heavy inspiration for Japanese animation. Cartoonists Kitazawa Rakuten and Okamoto Ippei used film elements in their strips in the early 20th century.
Origins of anime (1907–1922)
According to Natsuki Matsumoto, the first animated film produced in Japan may have stemmed from as early as 1907. Known as , from its depiction of a boy in a sailor suit drawing the characters for katsudō shashin, the film was first found in 2005. It consists of fifty frames stencilled directly onto a strip of celluloid. This claim has not been verified though and predates the first known showing of animated films in Japan. The date and first film publicly displayed is another source of contention: while no Japanese-produced animation is definitively known to date before 1916, the possibility exists that other films entered Japan and that no known records have surfaced to prove a showing prior to 1912. Film titles have surfaced over the years, but none have been proven to predate this year. The first foreign animation is known to have been found in Japan in 1910, but it is not clear if the film was ever shown in a cinema or publicly displayed at all. Yasushi Watanabe found a film known as in the records of the company. The description matches James Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, though academic consensus on whether or not this is a true animated film is disputed. According to Kyokko Yoshiyama, the first animated film called was shown in Japan at the in Tokyo sometime in 1912. However, Yoshiyama did not refer to the film as "animation". The first confirmed animated film shown in Japan was Les Exploits de Feu Follet by Émile Cohl on May 15, 1912. While speculation and other "trick films" have been found in Japan, it is the first recorded account of a public showing of a two-dimensional animated film in Japanese cinema. During this time, German animations marketed for home release were distributed in Japan. In 1914, American and European cartoons were introduced to Japan, inspiring Japanese creators like Junichi Kouchi and Seitaro Kitayama, both of whom were considered the "fathers of anime".
Few complete animations made during the beginnings of Japanese animation have survived. The reasons vary, but many are of commercial nature. After the clips had been run, reels (being property of the cinemas) were sold to smaller cinemas in the country and then disassembled and sold as strips or single frames. The earliest anime that was produced in Japan to have survived into the modern day, The Dull Sword, was released on June 30, 1917, but there it is disputed which title was the first to get that honour. It has been confirmed that was made sometime during February 1917. A title by the name of Convex new picture book Imo Suke boar hunting volume ( 凸坊新畫帖 芋助猪狩の巻) is the first anime domestic film.
The first anime short-films were made by three leading figures in the industry. Ōten Shimokawa 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 (1917), before he returned to his previous work as a cartoonist. Another prominent animator in this period was Jun'ichi Kōuchi. He was a caricaturist and painter, who also had studied watercolour 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. The third was Seitaro Kitayama, an early animator who made animations on his own and was not hired by larger corporations. He eventually founded his own animation studio, the Kitayama Eiga Seisakujo, which was later closed due to lack of commercial success. He used the chalkboard technique, and later paper animation, with and without pre-printed backgrounds. However, the works of these pioneers were destroyed after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The works of these two latter pioneers include Namakura Gatana ("An Obtuse Sword", 1917) and a 1918 film Urashima Tarō, which were believed to have been discovered together at an antique market in 2007. However, it was later established that this Urashima Tarō was most likely an entirely different film with a story similar to the missing 1918 film by Kitayama, and therefore is no longer credited to him. As of October 2017, Kitayama's Urashima Tarō remains undiscovered.
Pre-war productions (1923–1939) Yasuji Murata, Hakuzan Kimura, Sanae Yamamoto and Noburō Ōfuji were students of Kitayama Seitaro and worked at his film studio. Kenzō Masaoka, another important animator, worked at a smaller animation studio. Many early animated Japanese films were lost after the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, including destroying most of the Kitayama studio, with artists trying to incorporate traditional motifs and stories into a new form.
Prewar animators faced several difficulties. First, they had to compete with foreign producers such as Disney, which were influential on both audiences and producers. Foreign films had already made a profit abroad, and could be undersold in the Japanese market, priced lower than what domestic producers needed to break even. Japanese animators thus had to work cheaply, in small companies with only a handful of employees, which then made it difficult to compete in terms of quality with foreign product that was in color, with sound, and promoted by much bigger companies. Until the mid-1930s, Japanese animation generally used cutout animation instead of cel animation because the celluloid was too expensive.Sharp, Jasper (2009). "The First Frames of Anime". The Roots of Japanese Anime, official booklet, DVD. This resulted in animation that could seem derivative, flat (since motion forward and backward was difficult) and without detail. But just as postwar Japanese animators were able to turn limited animation into a plus, virtuosos such as Yasuji Murata and Noburō Ōfuji were able to perform wonders that they made with cutout animation.
Animators such as Kenzo Masaoka and Mitsuyo Seo, however, did attempt to bring Japanese animation up to the level of foreign work by introducing cel animation, sound, and technology such as the multiplane camera. Masaoka created the first talkie anime, Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka, released in 1933, and the first anime made entirely using cel animation, The Dance of the Chagamas (1934). Seo was the first to use the multiplane camera in Ari-chan in 1941.
Such innovations, however, were difficult to support purely commercially, so prewar animation depended considerably on sponsorship, as animators often concentrated on making PR films for companies, educational films for the government, and eventually works of propaganda for the military.The Roots of Japanese Anime, official booklet, DVD. During this time, censorship and school regulations discouraged film-viewing by children, so anime that could possess educational value was supported and encouraged by the Monbusho (the Ministry of Education). This proved important for producers that had experienced obstacles releasing their work in regular theatres. Animation had found a place in scholastic, political, and industrial use.
During the Second World War