is a 1938Japanese two-part silent period piece drama film set during the
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...
and produced by Zenshō Cinema. It is now considered to be a
lost film
A lost film is a feature
Feature may refer to:
Computing
* Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch
* Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob
* Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing char ...
.
Plot
One night, Chinami (Reiko Mishima), the daughter of Hyoue Toba (Reizaburo Ichikawa), is mysteriously kidnapped. Hyoue offers a large reward for his daughter's rescue. Yuzuru Kawasaki (Noboru Takashima) and various other men employed by Hyoue set about searching for Chinami. However one of Hyoue's men, Magonojyō Gō (Eizaburo Matsumoto), does not partake in the search, because he was the one who had Chinami kidnapped. Magonojyō's father Senbei has a trained pet ape named "King Kong" (Ryūnosuke Kabayama) and Magonojyō used this creature to perform the kidnapping.
Magonojyō has a score to settle with Hyoue because he had forced Senbei to counterfeit coins. When Senbei refused to do so, he was imprisoned by Hyoue and eventually killed. This is why Magonojyō disguised his identity and went to work for Hyoue, to get close to him in order to get revenge.
Magonojyō eventually corners Hyoue and threatens him with the ape. He offers to give him the whereabouts of Chinami in exchange for the reward money. The ape then takes Hyoue to Magonojyō's secret cellar as a prisoner. The ape then goes berserk and kills Hyoue but is then fatally wounded by Hyoue's men. While all this is happening, Magonojyō leaves Edo with the reward money.
Cast
* as Anthropoid
*Eizaburo Matsumoto as Magonojo Go
* Reizaburo Ichikawa as Hyoe Toba
* Reiko Mishima as Chinami
Production
This silent period piece drama film was produced in 1938 by . The film was broken into two parts. The first part called ''Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu: Henge no Maki / 江戸に現れたキングコング:変化の巻'' (''The King Kong That Appeared in Edo: The Episode of the Monster'') was released on March 31, 1938, while the second part called ''Edo ni Arawareta Kingu Kongu: Ōgon no Maki / 江戸に現れたキングコング:黄金の巻'' (''The King Kong That Appeared in Edo: The Episode of Gold'') was released a week later on April 7, 1938. Both films ran 5 reels in length and premiered at the Yûrakukan theater in Asakusa, Tokyo.
Going by the plot synopsis as well as flyers promoting the film, it is believed by historians that the ape (looking more like a
Poverty Row
Poverty Row is a slang term used to refer to Hollywood films produced from the 1920s to the 1950s by small (and mostly short-lived) B movie studios. Although many of them were based on (or near) today's Gower Street in Hollywood, the term did ...
studio who did not have sound recording equipment (none of the 173 films they produced between 1936 and 1941 were talkies), leads to believe that Zensho was simply trying to capitalize on ''
King Kong
King Kong is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. He has been dubbed The Eighth Wonder of the World, a phrase commonly used within the franchise. His first appearance was in the novelizat ...
'''s 1938 re-issue in that country by promoting the ape as being a giant.
However "King Kong" suit creator and actor Ryūnosuke Kabayama (who later changed his name to )and later created the ape creature seen in the 1956 film ''水戸黄門漫遊記 人喰い狒々''(''
Mito Kōmon
is a Japanese ''jidaigeki'' or period drama that was on prime-time television from 1969 to 2011, making it the longest-running ''jidaigeki'' in Japanese television history. The title character is the historic Tokugawa Mitsukuni, former vice-''sh ...
Manyūki: Hitokui Hihi''), as well as the suit for
Godzilla
is a fictional monster, or '' kaiju'', originating from a series of Japanese films. The character first appeared in the 1954 film '' Godzilla'' and became a worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 32 films prod ...
in the original 1954 film) stated in a 1988 interview "The first model making to be counted as 'special art direction' in Japanese cinema was a giant gorilla which I did for the movie ''The King Kong That Appeared in Edo'' fifty years ago. It was also the first movie to feature certain kinds of special effects."テレビマガジン特別編集 巨大ヒーロー大全集(''TV Magazine Special Edition: Giant Heroes Compendium''). Kodansha Publishing, 1988. Pg.224 With this statement from the suits creator there seems to be some contradiction over the actual size of the title character.