Showa-kan Film Archives Preserves a Vital Piece of World History

Faces from a poster advertising Japan's new Showa-kan Museum

Every Friday, during production of the film archives for the Showa-kan Museum in Tokyo, Hiroko Kiriishi would take her seat in one of Colorlab's screening rooms and get down to business. Each week, another twenty-five thousand feet of black and white 35mm film flickers by her eyes as she meticulously scrutinizes the quality of the images.

What she watches are crystal clear pictures of her homeland, Japan, immediately after the devastation of World War II. Children in a park. A doctor in the street with a wooden tray of glass eyeballs strapped around his shoulders, casually distributing them. Defeated soldiers returning from war. Her job is to oversee the transfer of these treasures from America's National Archives to Japan's Showakan Museum. Her job is to know every foot of this film.

The Showa-kan Museum in Tokyo

Amazed at her ability to sit through and mentally process so much footage, the Colorlab project manager quietly set up a test for Kiriishi. Among the hours of film, he inserted a small section that she had screened some 18 months previously. As the footage passed by, Kiriishi put up her hand for them to stop... "why are you showing me this again," she asked, then laughed as the joke was revealed.

According to Colorlab president Russ Suniewick, it is this attention to detail that has made the project of preserving a critical moment in world history such a success.

"What Hiroko and the government of Japan have done essentially is to preserve this moment in history from being lost forever," he explains. "Sure this footage is technically available in the National Archives to the US public, but it is buried and just not accessible. A professional researcher like Hiroko is the only way the general public of Japan will ever see these images."

Kiriishi explains that for Japan, these images will satisfy a growing hunger for history.

"The older generation has not wanted to talk about the war," she says. "But now the younger generation wants to know what happened. I think the film archive we are putting together will appeal to these young people."

Preserving a Fading Past

Colorlab President Russ Suniewick discusses the archive project with Hiroko Kiriishi

The first thing one notices when viewing the nearly 60 year-old footage is the amazing quality of the images. What is being screened at Colorlab is not only half a century old but also generations from the original film. Colorlab takes a B/W 35mm dupe negative, makes a fully timed B/W fine grain master, another dupe neg, and finally a 35mm B/W positive screening print for the museum. These images are as sharp and clear as the day they were photographed. This, says Suniewick, is thanks to the incredible infallibility of black and white film.

"This is one of the last wars that will really be preserved. In recent conflicts, video tape began being used instead of film. In ten years, the tape is possibly compromised by age to the point of not being able to be played back. There seems to be no practical way to stop it from degrading. But with film, we have been able to preserve the past nearly perfectly."

And because of the high quality of the images, Kiriishi says, so much more information is transferred through the film.

"You can see from the people's faces and the way they reacted to the cameramen that they truly appreciated the presence of the Americans. They were glad the war was over and appreciated the help the Americans were giving them. The footage tells this story"

As the exhibit opens in Japan this year, the world will have the opportunity to see 450,000' of these carefully gleaned pieces of world history.

"As someone who loves the medium of film," says Suniewick. "I have been excited to see to it that some of its best usages are preserved and presented to the world."