was a Japanese artist, considered to be one of the founding artists and pioneers of

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

. Little is known of his early personal life, other than that his family moved to the

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

area when he was nine years old. Here he began working for Tokyo Puck Magazine as a

political cartoonist An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary. Their cartoons are used to convey and question an aspect of daily news or curre ...

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 Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...

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 was once considered to be the first professional Japanese animated film ever made. It was made by Ōten Shimokawa in 1917 to be shown in a cinema, in this case, in the Asakusa Kinema Kurabu, a theater in Tokyo managed directly by the film compa ...

'', 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.

Works

* ''

'' (1917) * ''Dekobō shingachō – Meian no shippai'' (1917) * ''Chamebō shingachō – Nomi fūfu shikaeshi no maki'' (1917) * ''Imokawa Mukuzō Chūgaeri no maki'' (1917) * ''Imokawa Mukuzō Tsuri no maki'' (1917)

References

Sources

* Jonathan Clements, Helen McCarthy (2001). ''The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917'', Paperback Edition, Stone Bridge Press.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shimokawa Oten 1892 births 1973 deaths Japanese animators Manga artists People from Miyakojima, Okinawa Place of birth missing