#is that they had a dude called a benshi who was there in the theater and would live-narrate the film

[recurring-polynya]

So for reasons (fanfic, the reasons are always fanfic), I was reading one of the books from the Japanese film course I took in college, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film by Donald Richie and I was really taken with this chapter on the earliest days of Japanese film-making. For context, Onoe Matsunosuke was a hugely popular actor between 1909 and when he died in 1926. He was famous for his athleticism, particularly kabuki-style sword-fighting. Makino Shozu was described by the book as "the first person to deserve the title of Director in the Western sense of the word."

Onoe has said that during this period of early filmmaking, neither actors nor directors used a script. Instead, Makino carried the plot in his head and called out the lines for the actors while they were on camera, just like the joruri chanter in bunraku. Onoe also recalled what hard work it was. He was required to make nine or more features a month, which meant that he was working on three separate features at any one time. Sometimes, he said, he was so exhausted that he mixed up his parts. And, indeed, overworked, he died on the set."

All of this is to say that I hate that Bleach Episode #298: Film! Festival! Shinigami Film Festival!, in which Ichigo stars in multiple films at once and almost dies, and Renji directs a film by yelling stage directions at people appears to be '''historically accurate,''' but that does, in fact, seem to be the case.