Talk:The King Kong That Appeared in Edo

message: Why has there been no proper investigation into the possibility that this movie/article is an internet hoax?161.65.209.228 (talk) 07:05, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

message: There seems to have been no information at all about this film before 2004 or so. No mention in 'Famous Monsters of Film land' which regularly had articles about lost or rare sci fi/horror films. No film books mention this film. Fuminori Ohashi, who worked on the Godzilla/Gojira films never mentioned this film once in numerous interviews, despite the fact this would have been his first film as a special effects artist, and he would not have that position again for 16 years when 'Gojira'. One would reasonably believe that Ohashi might have mentioned working on this film. 
The supposed director (Sôya Kumagai) has no autobiographical information at all, and no other film credits are to be found, either on imdb, or through other extensive searches on the internet. 
The supposed writer (Daijô Aoyama) has no autobiographical information at all, and no other film credits are to be found, either on imdb, or through other extensive searches on the internet. 
Fuminori Ohashi, a real special effects and costume/make up artist, is noted as being the special effects man here. If this is to be believed, then he worked on this as a special effects artist and then did nothing until Gojira (1954) 16 years later 
The supposed company that made that has only one other credit to its name and that is the other fictional Kong movie the hoaxer posted: Edo ni arawareta Kingu Kongu: Ôgon no maki (1938) this alleged company produced no other films. 
None of the following cast members have any other film credits whatsoever. You would think that at least a few of them would have done films before and after. The overwhelming majority of these alleged actors seem to not have existed, save for this alleged film: 
Ryutaro Hibiki 
Reizaburo Ichikawa 
Ginbei Inoue 
Ryunosuke Kabayama 
Keisuke Matsudaira 
Eizaburo Matsumoto 
Shojiro Ogata 
Shotaro Shiba 
Shin Taga 
Keinosuke Yashiro 
The only exceptions being: 
Reiko Mishima has one other alleged film credit in 1940's 'Ryôgoku no san'nin-musume 
Noboru Takashima has five other film credits in 1931-1932, then only the alleged Kong film in 1938, and nothing beyond that. The 6 year lapse in activity is somewhat odd. 
Fuminori Ohashi, who as previously mentioned, never mentioned this film during his lifetime. 
The only alleged photos from this film are exceptionally small jpeg files which make close inspection very difficult. 
One photo seems to show a man in a gorilla costume holding a female doll and scaling what seems to be re-dressed packing crates. Given that the alleged film takes place in Edo during the middle ages, you would expect to see the architecture typical of Japan at that time (Sloped triangular roofs) instead of the box like buildings that are shown. 
The second photo alleges to show a movie poster, but again the image size is too small to accurately scrutinize. It looks to be a re-dressed 'Gojira' poster from 1954, only with images of what seems to be a man in ape make up, and a miniature female. In short, it looks like it was done in Adobe Photoshop and then shrunk small enough to deter close inspection. 
On message boards and on Wikipedia, the author(s?) mention that these photos come from "rare books" found in Japan. It's pretty likely that if this film actually existed, we would have found many more images, and someone in Japan would have surely scanned photos from these books and uploaded larger images. 
The characters listed for this film feature an unusual number of characters with first and surnames. Search most films from Japan, or America, at that time and it would be unusual for so many minor characters to be listed by first and last name. Usually only the main characters would have these distinctions. 
Some characters listings are just simply odd: 'Man in charcoal shop', 'Boy in rice shop', 'Kuroami, hunchback', as well as the misspelled (at least I believe it's misspelled) ' Clerk at soy source shop'. 
I'm guessing Kuroami the hunchback stopped by the rice shop, patted the boy on the head, bought some charcoal at the charcoal shop (31 kinds of charcoal: we guarantee it!) stopped by the 'soy source shop' and then went home to barbeque his rice. Perhaps he did all this prior to Kong's arrival, or perhaps this was part of the celebration after Kong was defeated! 
In addition, the article cites supposed negative reviews, a build up towards the release date, "rare books" that have photos that "prove" the films existence, but never state the title of these books, when they were published, what newspapers reviewed this film, what the reviewers actually said, where they got any of this information or any other evidence to corroborate that this movie existed. With such a big build up to the release date, one would surmise that there would be quite a lot of surviving publicity materials such as stills, lobby cards, and posters. Even in 1930s Japan films were advertised in newspapers. Why haven't these surfaced? Why was there apparently no mention or recollection of this film from 1938-2005 or so??? 
Another oddity is that other than stating that Kong attacks medival Edo, the writer/writers/hoaxer(s)do not specify what the actual plot was. For instance, how was Kong brought to Edo? How was he defeated?  
Like Martin Balsam's detective character in 'Psycho' said: "This ain't jelling"  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.174.189.236 (talk) 23:30, August 23, 2007 (UTC) 
None of this proves that the film does not exist, but give the growing number of improbabilities, and inconsistencies, it's hard to conclude that this is anything other than a hoax.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.174.189.236 (talk) 00:51, August 22, 2007 (UTC) 
The purported photo of "Kong" used as "proof" by the likely hoaxters, clearly shows buildings that are of European architecture. There were no such buildings in Edo, and few in modern Tokyo. If you blow up the photo you can clearly see the buildings one with a steeple{!!??}
I, personally, don't think it's true. This is too farfetched, and, frankly, the world would have known by now if the original movie was a rip off. Only one review on imdb says the reviewer watched it, and there is no mention of a plot, special effects or ANYTHING at all. The review only says a (and I paraphrase) "Few people in the world, (the reviewer) included have seen it". If this movie existed and I could have seen it, I would be damn quick to spread the word and prove it exists.Dskzero (talk) 03:09, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read the bottom section, regarding the book which mentions this movie.  For awhile, the image was one of the larger arguments in favor of the movie; but, given the mention in the Japanese (and presumably in the English translated version of the) book, we can't pretend the movie didn't exist just because the image is dubious. Neier (talk) 10:38, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Dude! Since the special effects director was the same for Gojira/This (I think, check me on that), then he could have suggested REUSING the poster! Many films have only recently appeared, the plot could easily have been so simple that there wasn't much more to it, the models of the buildings are examples of the fact that it was EXTREMELY CHEAP! They probably went broke on the SUIT! The fact that Toho almost went BANKRUPT on Gojira shows that, especially in 1938, NO ONE KNEW HOW TO DO THIS STUFF! What you're saying is the equivilant of saying that the sole reason Bill Gates started Microsoft was to make money by taking over the market - wait, that's true... But you get the point! The image being so small, well - The book image could be TINY!!! No matter HOW good technology, there STILL is just SO much you can do to make an image look good. Do you know how many Kong parodies there are!? Well, this is outright INFRINGEMENT!!! Which is PROBABLY why the studio didn't MAKE anything else! AND, seeming as (also by the picture) it was SO cheap, the actors were PROBABLY people they got off the street! Also, (see below) if so many films were destroyed, then there IS nothing to SHOW they're other work. In addition, (also referring to below, I don't want to write another one of these!) the reason that it would be destroyed in the 30's is because that was simply an EXAMPLE of what kinds of films, such as 'My CD's keep getting scratched! Just look at this one here!' (True Story!) There were probably just as many destroyed in the '30's. Think of it! Before Godzilla (and for that matter, besides horribly-done monster movies the 50's couldn't replicate!) no one could really THINK of any Japanese films! This was probably more of a fan-film! I wouldn't be surprised if it was made on 16-mm! Which is probably the reason that the book was low quality pictures-ed-whatever! It was of a low quality print! And, about the repeating-hoaxes, no, they're NOT being called sources! Well, they are, but not the way that you're saying it. The way you're saying it, countless biographies should be taken off the shelves because they relied on a reliable witness. And, THOSE books can be treated as sources! All of the websites take one source (by extension) - this book! Someone who's read this, please translate the whole thing! You don't even have to scan it! Why, think of all of the Thomas Edison films that are lost! Hundreds were made, hardly any exist! The reason that the film has only surfaced in 2004 is because no one's really NONE much about it until then, because it's much harder to find something if you don't know WHAT it is; for example, finding treasure without a map is hard, but without even knowing it's treasure, just that there was SOMETHING SOMEWHERE, you wouldn't even be interested in it! And the person who found the book didn't even KNOW there was something in it! It's much harder to find something that existed before computers, because there wasn't as many records! I know someone (I don't nesecarily BELIEVE them, then I'd be one of you crazies arguing against it) who claims to of found someone whom THEY don't really believe who showed her a secrecy contract against him saying that cable boxes can watch you! The point of that is that (even without that!) there's a copy of almost anything anywhere on computers! We've gotten too use to that. It's only in the 60's that a colonial town (destroyed) near where I live has been discovered. And, MOST incriminating of all, I could get every one in my school to agree that the people arguing against this are just crazies 65.184.179.81 (talk) 22:47, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: HOAX?

message: It is patently absurd that fan sites which have repeated the hoax, are cited as sources, even though they are simply repeating the hoax, and (as always) offering NO PROOF WHATSOEVER! I suppose every conspiracy theory, or crank web site is true then! These "sources" are not sources! They simply repeat the hoax! That is all!
- unsigned edit by 
:Dude! Since the special effects director was the same for Gojira/This (I think, check me on that), then he could have suggested REUSING the poster! Many films have only recently appeared, the plot could easily have been so simple that there wasn't much more to it, the models of the buildings are examples of the fact that it was EXTREMELY CHEAP! They probably went broke on the SUIT! The fact that Toho almost went BANKRUPT on Gojira shows that, especially in 1938, NO ONE KNEW HOW TO DO THIS STUFF! What you're saying is the equivilant of saying that the sole reason Bill Gates started Microsoft was to make money by taking over the market - wait, that's true... But you get the point! The image being so small, well - The book image could be TINY!!! No matter HOW good technology, there STILL is just SO much you can do to make an image look good. Do you know how many Kong parodies there are!? Well, this is outright INFRINGEMENT!!! Which is PROBABLY why the studio didn't MAKE anything else! AND, seeming as (also by the picture) it was SO cheap, the actors were PROBABLY people they got off the street! Also, (see below) if so many films were destroyed, then there IS nothing to SHOW they're other work. In addition, (also referring to below, I don't want to write another one of these!) the reason that it would be destroyed in the 30's is because that was simply an EXAMPLE of what kinds of films, such as 'My CD's keep getting scratched! Just look at this one here!' (True Story!) There were probably just as many destroyed in the '30's. Think of it! Before Godzilla (and for that matter, besides horribly-done monster movies the 50's couldn't replicate!) no one could really THINK of any Japanese films! This was probably more of a fan-film! I wouldn't be surprised if it was made on 16-mm! Which is probably the reason that the book was low quality pictures-ed-whatever! It was of a low quality print! And, about the repeating-hoaxes, no, they're NOT being called sources! Well, they are, but not the way that you're saying it. The way you're saying it, countless biographies should be taken off the shelves because they relied on a reliable witness. And, THOSE books can be treated as sources! All of the websites take one source (by extension) - this book! Someone who's read this, please translate the whole thing! You don't even have to scan it! Why, think of all of the Thomas Edison films that are lost! Hundreds were made, hardly any exist! The reason that the film has only surfaced in 2004 is because no one's really NONE much about it until then, because it's much harder to find something if you don't know WHAT it is; for example, finding treasure without a map is hard, but without even knowing it's treasure, just that there was SOMETHING SOMEWHERE, you wouldn't even be interested in it! And the person who found the book didn't even KNOW there was something in it! It's much harder to find something that existed before computers, because there wasn't as many records! I know someone (I don't nesecarily BELIEVE them, then I'd be one of you crazies arguing against it) who claims to of found someone whom THEY don't really believe who showed her a secrecy contract against him saying that cable boxes can watch you! The point of that is that (even without that!) there's a copy of almost anything anywhere on computers! We've gotten too use to that. It's only in the 60's that a colonial town (destroyed) near where I live has been discovered. And, MOST incriminating of all, I could get every one in my school to agree that the people arguing against this are just crazies 65.184.179.81 (talk) 22:47, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: FAKE REFERENCES

message: Based on comments here, I searched for the director's name ( 熊谷草弥 ).  The JMDB (Japan's IMDB) lists a 1938 movie as simply King Kong (キング•コング).  The entry is here.  The kanji for the actor names matches the English for most of the actors listed on the English IMDB site; and, clicking on any of them will show that they appeared in much more than just this one movie.  (Matsumoto Eizaburo, 松本栄三郎, for example, has 109 credits).  The listing without the Edo comment may also make sense, as the movie poster at the first link makes it look like 江戸に現れた　is more of a tag line than part of the proper title. Neier 11:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. People are reading far too much into the lack of information and poor quality of information. It's looking more and more as if the information exists, but hasn't been found or properly translated. For anyone who doesn't read Japanese (and I don't) even the appalling Babelfish translation demonstrates that the cast and crew have extensive credits, generally limited to the 1930s, showing the IMDb is not telling the full story. Some of the comments seem to lack cultural perspective too: what's so weird about a soy sauce shop or a charcoal shop? Gordonofcartoon 17:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent work, I knew the suggestion that most of the cast and crew names were made up was nonsense, all it shows is that IMDb don't list the actors' other films, because those films are lost, they are too obscure, or most likely because no one has added them to IMDb yet. Pufnstuf 00:30, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As Neier says, the JMDb also supports the likelihood that the film is just called King Kong and that the "Appears in Edo" bit was a subtitle on the poster that became mistakenly conflated. As it stands, that conclusion is original research, but that assumption might help focus the search for information. Gordonofcartoon 19:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese sources 

message: I have found some interesting details about the large scale loss/destruction of early Japanese films; 
Around 7000 films were produced in Japan in the 1920s alone. Today, the National Film Center (Tokyo) lists only around 70 titles before 1930 in their collection.
Through an unfortunate collusion of circumstances, most of Japan’s silent films — which endured into the 1930s, after the West had switched exclusively to sound — were destroyed...The "Why So Few Preserved Films" link, for example, tells a fascinating story about the bombing of the Daiei company's film storage vaults during World War II. That, along with Tokyo's celluloid-unfriendly climate (high humidity and high temperatures in the summer) and the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, conspired to destroy much of Japan’s early film history that began in the 1890s.
[Pre-War Japanese cinema films] are virtually impossible to see. With one of the lowest survival rates in the world, the embryonic development of the nation's cinema is a difficult area to chart and many important works of this period including early films by important directors including Daisuke Itoh, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi are now unfortunately considered to be irretrievably lost...Some were carelessly misplaced by the studios that produced them...more of the country's cinematic legacy went up in smoke either in the conflagration of the bombing raids during the Pacific War or in its immediate aftermath under the Allied Occupation where films that fell under a list of 13 forbidden subjects (the most serious offence being 'feudal loyalty') sketched up by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers' Civil Information and Education Section were banned outright. In Spring 1946, a match was put to all films deemed unnecessary to be kept for further analysis and a large chapter of cinematic history has been lost in the ashes forever.
Since the movies were shot on inflammable nitrate stock, which disintegrates over time, many simply crumbled away.
So, we now have the following facts;
* 99% of Japanese films produced in the 1920s are lost. 
* Early Japanese films have one of the lowest survival rates in the world.
* Most of Japan's silent films were destroyed, through;
** World War II bombing
** Deliberately burned during the Allied Occupation
** Celluloid-unfriendly climate
** Shot on low-quality stock which disintegrated
** 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake (obviously this one can be discounted re King Kong Appears in Edo)
Taking this into account, it's certainly possible that King Kong Appears in Edo was destroyed. I wonder if the people claiming the film is a hoax because no posters or reviews exist would be able to find posters or reviews of the hundreds of other lost films? Maybe those are all hoaxes as well? Pufnstuf 00:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how you can discredit the destruction of this film just because it was created in 1938, and not in the 1920's.  Both were before WWII, and, thus the same problems which contributed to the demise of the earlier films would befall most films up to 1945 as well.  And, I don't know if you saw it or if you are choosing to ignore it; but, the book cited in the AFD dates to 1979, which was well before the internet could have fueled this type of speculation.    The English translation is cited on that website; however, I should have access to the Japanese version early next week from the library, in order to get an exact quote.  Also, I'm curious on your thoughts about the linkage of the various actors to so many other movies of the era in the Japanese IMDB.  Are they all involved in these hoaxes as well? Neier 11:57, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the previous poster could be right, the reasons listed above couldn't mean a film created in 1938 was destroyed, because the Allied forces designed special bombs that would only destroy films made before 1930, and I heard the general who ordered the mass burning of films in 1946 was a big fan of guys-in-ape-suit movies, so I doubt he would have put this one on the fire. I thought everyone knew that? Seriously though, this movie is an interesting topic, but there seems to be some desperate clutching at straws going on by the editor(s) who reckon this is a fake movie. Magiclite 05:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More information about lost Japanese  films 

message: I have borrowed the Japanese book 大特撮 : 日本特撮映画史 from the local library.  This book is the source of the English translation mentioned in the previous AFD.  This book was published in 1978, and contains the following quote on page 173:
:「キング•コング」が日本の映画界に与えた影響は大きく、公開の同年早くも「和製キングコング」（松竹）なるサルマネ作品が登場し、また五年後の昭和十三年にも全勝映画から「キングコング•前後篇」が生まれている。
Roughly translating, "King Kong had a large effect on the Japanese movie industry, with one sarumane (lit. monkey imitation) movie Wasei King Kong being released by Shochiku in the same year, and five years later in 1938, the release of King Kong - Sengo hen (literally, the first/second volume) by Zenkatsu."
Minor translation errors that I may have inadvertently introduced aside, this 1978 source clearly states that Zenkatsu produced a King Kong film, or series of two films, in 1938.  As I mentioned above, "Appears in Edo" on the movie poster seems to be more of a tag line, and it does not appear in print in this source; but, the naming issue is another matter.  I came into this discussion to provide sources that the movie existed, and, I believe that mission is now accomplished. Neier 09:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Which now begs the question, what happened to the first of those two Kong films? This mystery would make Nancy Drew's head explode! I'm loving it! --HillbillyProfane (talk) 18:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese book in hand 

message: Image for the article? --Snek01 (talk) 00:32, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: Websites that are a dime a dozen. Can someone actually produce an intact physical a copy of the 1938 Kinema Jumpo with the alleged posted (Not a bunch of .jpegs) that can be authenticated? Otherwise, we have nothing but claims, alleged quotes and "I saw a book in 1978, that mentioned it". The poster may be 100%b authentic, but it may not be. A complete physical copy of the Kinema Jumpo with the ad in in it and a proper translation can end this, but so far there is ZERO proof that this film ever existed in the first place. ZERO!
(24.62.126.170 (talk) 02:08, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, don't be negative. Nobody really cares anymore. It's a lost film, we will never know what it was like, so get over it.  - Another n00b (talk) 16:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Books without Titles