Every wooden projector (or furo) required two lenses, and each magic-lantern plate ( tane-ita) was painted onto the thinnest possible glass. The materials deployed in magic-lantern shows were fragile in the extreme. From the first appearance of magic-lantern shows or phantasmagoria in 1803 as utsushi-e (‘reflected pictures’) in the Edo (Tokyo) area, they were known in the Osaka region as nishiki kage-e (‘brocade shadow pictures’), but in Shimane simply as kage ninge (‘shadow puppets’).
The term in Japanese for a magic-lantern show varies from place to place, reflecting the itinerant nature of such performances. Finding the European metal lanterns too weighty and unwieldy, Japanese practitioners made their own from more portable paulownia wood, which in turn made it easier for Japanese performances to incorporate motion (Koyama-Richard 2010: 54). Eventually, the technology of the magic lantern reached the isolated island nation of Japan, where the use of local materials and ingenuity transformed it from a simple picture show into something far more dynamic.
0 kommentar(er)
