Dates: November 20 (Weds) - 22 (Fri), 2014

Time: 10:00-17:00

Location: Multi-Purpose Room, Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University (Kinugasa campus)

No entry fee.

Organizers: Kyoto Street Culture Archive: Memories of the Pop Culture Featuring the

Streets, and their Visualization (Digital Humanities Center for Japanese Arts and Cultures); "Project for the Construction of an Archive of Non-Film Materials Related to Showa period Movie theatre Culture" (Kakenhi C); Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University.

In the early Showa period, as motion pictures moved from silent films to "talkies," hand-drawn posters ornamented the interiors of Kyoto cinemas, advertising films currently being shown, and those upcoming. New films were largely being released weekly at that time, and it is easy to imagine that the number of posters would match this.

In this exhibit, we are featuring posters produced at the Shochiku corporation's Ofuna studios for display at the Shochiku-za, Ebisu-za, and other Shochiku-affiliated movie theatres. These include posters illustrated by Takeda Kosei (Ihachiro), who was famous at the time in the world of Kabuki for the posters and signboards he produced for Kyoto's Minami-za Kabuki theatre. Please enjoy this world of hand-drawn movie posters, designed with compositions, touches, and typefaces selected to suit each film. The exhibit also includes maps and photographs of Kyoto cinemas from the Showa 30s-40s (1950s-1970s), as well as photographic signboards, offering a nostalgic glimpse into the Kyoto of that time.

The hand-drawn posters in this exhibit are held by the Kyoto cinema posters production studio Takematsu Gabo and were displayed in Shochiku-affiliated cinemas in central Kyoto around 1928 to 1942. Similar posters were presumably displayed at other cinemas, but only these are known to survive, making them exceptionally important resources for knowing the environments of cinemas at that time. The studio's collection includes roughly 800 posters, all of which were made for Shochiku-affiliated cinemas. This three-day exhibit features roughly 60 posters made at the Shochiku Ofuna studios in 1936-1937, as well as original posters from live theatre venues and Kyoto Shochiku-affiliated cinemas' match announcements, for comparison.