Silent Cinema Soundscapes: Culture of Film and Voice in Prewar Tokyo

During the silent era, cinemas worldwide cultivated distinctive sound cultures to accompany silent films. Japanese cinemas, in particular, developed a particularly rich vocal tradition. While the role of benshi (film orator) is relatively well-known, Japanese theaters also featured a variety of other vocal performances, including gidayū, shinnai, naniwabushi, and biwa songs. This presentation explores the diversity of vocal performance in prewar Japanese cinemas, with a focus on Tokyo, highlighting the historical development of biwa-accompanied screenings. By examining the concurrent evolution of biwa accompaniment and Western music within film venues in Japan, this lecture also considers the framework of film music and affective expression in Japanese cinema.

Kotaro Shibata is a Junior Researcher at Waseda University and a Yanai Initiative Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2019. His first monograph Eigakan ni narihibiita oto (The Sound Resounded in Movie Theater, Shunjusha, 2024) examines the history of Japanese film sound and film music from the silent era to the early sound era. His publications in English include “Musical Practice and Reception in Silent Movie Theaters in Tokyo: Intermission Music and Accompaniment Music” in Aesthetics, No. 25, 2022, and "And the Shamisen Played On: Changing Silent Film Music in Japan" in The World of the Benshi coedited by Michael Emmerich and Daisuke Miyao, Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, 2024. In recent years, he has been actively involved in organizing screenings of Japanese silent films accompanied by benshi narration and live music, often using historical scores or practices.