Ōten Shimokawa, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Ōten Shimokawa

Japanese animator

Date of Birth: 02-May-1892

Place of Birth: Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, Japan

Date of Death: 26-May-1973

Profession: mangaka, animator, film director

Nationality: Japan

Zodiac Sign: Taurus


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About Ōten Shimokawa

  • Oten Shimokawa (or Hekoten Shimokawa) (????, Shimokawa Oten, May 2, 1892 – May 26, 1973) was a Japanese artist, considered to be one of the founding artists and pioneers of anime.
  • Little is known of his early personal life, other than that his family moved to the Tokyo area when he was nine years old.
  • Here he began working for Tokyo Puck Magazine as a political cartoonist and manga series artist. At the age of 26, Shimokawa was hired by Tenkatsu Production Company to create a short animated film.
  • Shimokawa used several animation techniques that were, at the time, unique: using chalk or white wax on a dark board background to draw characters, rubbing out portions to be animated and drawing with ink directly onto film, whiting out animated portions.
  • At the time, celluloid cels (rather than modern acetate film) were costly and scarce in Japan, having to be imported.
  • These techniques cut production costs, material costs and completion time. The resulting film was Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki, released in 1917.
  • Though not the earliest animation created in Japan, it is considered to be the first "true" Anime film, as it was the first to be publicly shown in a theater.
  • The film ran only five minutes.
  • As with many animation works created in Japan before the mid-1920s, no trace of the film, or any of Shimokawa's five other short films, has survived. Shimokawa's animation work was cut short by chronic health problems, and he returned to work as a consultant and editor for other production companies making animated films in the 1930s and 1940s.
  • Not much is known of his later life; indeed, very few works bear mention of his contribution beyond his own personal works.

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