<P> According to Natsuki Matsumoto, the first animated film produced in Japan may have stemmed from as early as 1907 . Known as Katsudō Shashin (活動 写真, "Activity Photo"), from its depiction of a boy in a sailor suit drawing the characters for katsudō shashin, the film was first found in 2005 . It consists of fifty frames stenciled directly onto a strip of celluloid . This claim has not been verified though and predates the first known showing of animated films in Japan . The date and first film publicly displayed is another source of contention: while no Japanese - produced animation is definitively known to date before 1917, the possibility exists that other films entered Japan and that no known records have surfaced to prove a showing prior to 1912 . Film titles have surfaced over the years, but none have been proven to predate this year . The first foreign animation is known to have been found in Japan in 1910, but it is not clear if the film was ever shown in a cinema or publicly displayed at all . Yasushi Watanabe found a film known as Fushigi no Bōrudo (不思議 の ボールド, "Miracle Board") in the records of the Yoshizawa Shōten (吉沢 商店) company . The description matches James Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, though academic consensus on whether or not this is a true animated film is disputed . According to Kyokko Yoshiyama, the first animated film called Nippāru no Henkei (ニッパール の 変形, "Nippāru's Transformation") was shown in Japan at the Asakusa Teikokukan (浅草 帝国 館) in Tokyo sometime in 1911 . Yoshiyama did not refer to the film as "animation" though . The first confirmed animated film shown in Japan was Les Exploits de Feu Follet by Émile Cohl on April 15, 1912 . While speculation and other "trick films" have been found in Japan, it is the first recorded account of a public showing of a two - dimensional animated film in Japanese cinema . During this time, German animations marketed for home release were distributed in Japan. . </P> <P> Few complete animations made during the beginnings of Japanese animation have survived . The reasons vary, but many are of commercial nature . After the clips had been run, reels (being property of the cinemas) were sold to smaller cinemas in the country and then disassembled and sold as strips or single frames . The first anime that was produced in Japan was made sometime in 1917, but there it is disputed which title was the first to get that honor . It has been confirmed that Dekobō Shingachō: Meian no Shippai (凸 坊 新 画帳 ・ 名 案 の 失敗, "Bumpy New Picture Book: Failure of a Great Plan") was made sometime during February 1917 . At least two unconfirmed titles were reported to have been made the previous month . </P> <P> The first anime short - films were made by three leading figures in the industry . Ōten Shimokawa was a political caricaturist and cartoonist who worked for the magazine Tokyo Puck . He was hired by Tenkatsu to do an animation for them . Due to medical reasons, he was only able to do five movies, including Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki (1917), before he returned to his previous work as a cartoonist . Another prominent animator in this period was Jun'ichi Kōuchi . He was a caricaturist and painter, who also had studied watercolor painting . In 1912, he also entered the cartoonist sector and was hired for an animation by Kobayashi Shokai later in 1916 . He is viewed as the most technically advanced Japanese animator of the 1910s . His works include around 15 movies . The third was Seitaro Kitayama, an early animator who made animations on his own and was not hired by larger corporations . He eventually founded his own animation studio, the Kitayama Eiga Seisakujo, which was later closed due to lack of commercial success . He utilized the chalkboard technique, and later paper animation, with and without pre-printed backgrounds . The works of these two latter pioneers include Namakura Gatana ("An Obtuse Sword", 1917) and a 1918 film Urashima Tarō which were believed to have been discovered together at an antique market in 2007 . However, this Urashima Tarō was later proved to most likely be a different film of the same story than the 1918 one by Kitayama, which, as of October 2017, remains undiscovered . </P> <P> Yasuji Murata, Hakuzan Kimura, Sanae Yamamoto and Noburō Ōfuji were students of Kitayama Seitaro and worked at his film studio . Kenzō Masaoka, another important animator, worked at a smaller animation studio . In 1923, the Great Kantō earthquake destroyed most of the Kitayama studio and the residing animators spread out and founded studios of their own . </P>

Who was the first person who made anime