Film archives in Japan - Toho's work to preserve screen heritage

[G P Witteveen]

Today on JapanTimes.co.jp, for your interest. Most articles have a paywall, but this one is visible in whole at the moment. - Guven Witteveen

=-=-=-= see, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2026/07/24/toho-archive-film-restoration/

Inside Toho Archive’s mission to save Japan’s cinematic memory

[excerpt] Toho Archives’ mandate is broad: film maintenance, cleaning and repair; digitization of picture and sound; digital restoration and remastering; and long-term preservation planning, including for paper materials.

Restoration begins with a smell test. Safety film made from old triacetate, Miki explains, degrades by releasing acid into the air over time, a phenomenon known as “vinegar syndrome.”
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For more information, visit toho-arc.com. Maki Raineri assisted with this interview. Article by Sebastien Raineri

[Paula R. Curtis]

On the film + digitization front, it's worth adding to this that the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities has been working closely with various organizations in Japan and at UCLA to preserve and restore Japanese films (along with promoting film arts such as live narration https://artofthebenshi.org/). The lack of funds for restoring/preserving/digitizing/making discoverable these films is very concerning for global film studies. We still have a number of active programs on the film front, and we are also collaborating with Eric Faden (Penn State; https://kamifirumu.scholar.bucknell.edu/) on his work restoring Japanese paper film and digitizing them to make them available for screenings (and eventually online display). Japan Past & Present will eventually host a database of Japanese paper film developed by Eric. So some digital archive work related to Japanese film is on the horizon.

Cheers,

Paula 

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Dr. Paula R. Curtis

Operations Leader, Japan Past & Present
Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities

https://japanpastandpresent.org/

Academic Administrator

Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA

https://alc.ucla.edu/

Portfolio & Projects

http://prcurtis.com/