Emergence of the Censorship:

The Police and Moving Pictures in the Taisho Era

Abstract

  In 1917 the Metropolitan Police Board enforced "Regulations of the Moving Picture Exhibitions" in Tokyo. But these regulations are very strange in our point of view. Because they didn't attach importance to the censorship which is usually a means of repression by the police. Why didn't they so?

  First because the exhibition of moving pictures still retained the quality of a live preformance. For example, it was accompanied by a lecturer (benshi)'s performance and a live music performnce. This fact made it nonsense for the police to censor films. For a film changed its meaning at every projection. So the police disciplined lecturers and inhibited the chained play (which is a special form of exhibition combining play with movies) instead of censoring films.

  Second because spectators in that era made an indecent atmosphere in a movie theater. So they didn't devote themselves to a film. They also entertained an indecent atomospher. This made it nonsence for the police to censor films, too. For spectators received an excessive meaning from this atomosphere.

  So the censorship can have an effect only after modernizing the communication in movie theaters. This was impossible in that era.