• Figure 2.5. In the silent era, intertitles were brushed on black cards with white ink made from shells. Few of these cards are extant. The top example survived because Kawai Productions in Kyoto used it as a script cover. The bottom example comes from an unknown film and was preserved in an album owned by actor Onoe Monya. An art deco variation of clerical style, it shows the care with which these brush styles were conceived and executed. Courtesy of the National Film Archive of Japan (top) and benshi Kataoka Ichiro (bottom).

Original calligraphic intertitles for the silent films

From Brushed in Light: Calligraphy in East Asian Cinema by Markus Nornes

Subjects
  • Asian Studies
  • Media Studies
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