This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

The advent of cinema in the late 19th century changed the world.

Even though motion pictures started as a sideshow oddity, their popularity grew fast as the years went by.

Single-shot films slowly started to evolve in complexity, and audiences' tastes evolved along with them. Within a few decades, people were no longer diving out of the way

of trains coming toward the movie screen, and the first proper era of filmmaking took off,

the silent era. Talking about it now, a century later, there are many misconceptions about

the silent era. For instance, most of the films were not presented in black and white,

but hand-tinted in vivid monochrome hues. It was primitive technology, sure, but audiences

of the time were just as used to color films as we are today. Another misconception is how the world at large took to cinema.

Every country had a different entertainment landscape, and for many countries outside of

Europe and America, moviegoers wanted different things out of their entertainment.

So, follow me to early 20th century, Japan, to see what I mean.

Japan was in the process of modernizing, following the Meiji Restoration.

Industry and commerce was booming, but for entertainment, people largely still look to the classics.

Kabuki Theater was in the middle of a resurgence in popularity, and remained the dominant

entertainment for a night

out on the town. So when movies were first arriving from Europe, they seemed like an oddity.

However, this oddity sparked an entirely new class of entertainer, which eventually allowed

movies to take over Japanese pop culture. Early imported movies were simple scenes of daily life, without much narrative to speak of.

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