This article analyzes the management of spectators’ perception in late nineteenthcentury Japan, through an examination of two types of lantern shows and their different spectators.

In Japan, magic lanterns (gentō) began to be used as an educational tool during lectures in elementary schools in the late 1880s. During these educational lantern shows (Kyōiku gentōkai), the devices, the lecturer’s explanation and the instructions were managed in such a way that the students were encouraged to concentrate on the projected images in silence.

However, during Sino-Japanese War lantern shows (Nisshin sensō Gentōkai), which were held between 1894 and 1895, the spectators clapped their hands, shouted banzai, sang military songs, and even played music instruments. In addition, the role of the benshi in the Sino-Japanese War lantern shows was different to that of the lecturer who merely gave instructions using slides and textbooks in the educational lantern shows. Indeed, the benshi’s skill in narrating and performing had a direct effect on the spectators’ emotions and reaction. Moreover, auditory stimuli such as music, songs, and narration all helped to keep their attention during the shows.

These two types of lantern shows were completely different in terms of the spectators’reaction. However, they were similar in that they were both organized to produce a homogeneous reaction by managing the spectators’ perception.

This article examines the representation of the double in relation to issues surrounding horror cinema, and explores the possibility for a new form of the double through an analysis of Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Doppelgänger (2002).

To date, in horror film studies, the binary continues to be a core problem. Because horror films are generally rooted in exclusive differentiation, they have been examined mainly in terms of gender or race. The double is not free from such a binary relation either. Representations of the double in film can be divided into two types―juxtaposition and replacement- but in either case, the uncanniness of a double is determined relatively on the basis of an original in the same image or in preceding images. But does the possibility of freedom from such bases exist?

In this respect, Doppelgänger is a particularly exceptional film. In it, juxtaposition and replacement are regarded as the intermittent relation of images, and one person is caught in the intermittence. As a result, the body is directly able to produce difference. Through the examination of the transformations of the double as well as the composition of images, this article reveals that the film illustrates the possibility for a baseless double, and considers it in terms of its potentiality for cinema.

When we watch films from early cinema that were produced before 1906 or 1907, we are surprised that colors were added to some of them. Moreover, some people notice that these colors tend to vibrate. How, then, should the colors in early films and their vibrations be understood?

The color of early films has been explained through the perspective of a few particular terms: primarily "aesthetic," "metaphor," "reproduction," and "attraction." However, it is no exaggeration to say that among the studies using these words, the discussion of color in early cinema has hardly produced a good solution for the vibrations. The solution is incomplete and vibrations are given the same value as other similar colors. From previous studies, we can understand some relationships between color and sensitivity, between color and meaning, and between color and culture or society. But they have not included the critical issue of the body. In order to understand the vibration of color, it is necessary to clarify this issue.

Therefore, this essay references previous discussions of color in early cinema in order to consider the vibration of color through the perspective of the body.