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Sounds of silent movies

IMADA Kentaro

This article has two purposes. One is to determine, from documentation, audience's
visual and auditory reaction to silent movies. In contrast to talkies, with its apparent
combining of sounds with image, silent movies have their own peculiar characteristics.
Above all, what is important is that people who saw silent movies made a connection
between the sounds and the image. The other aim is to clarify the kind of musical
accompaniment that was used for silent movies. This study, which makes use of the verbal
testimonies and practices of ONO Masao, offers valuable information about the
combination of sounds and image of silent movies.
Silent movies such as cinematograph and vitascope were first shown in Japan in 1897.
The earliest documentation concerning the use of sounds for silent movies appears in 1897
in connection with the Kyogoku-za in Kyoto. It is presumed that the music used to
accompany the screen image, given the condition of music at that time, was probably
military music or a civilian band. According to documentation, there was no relationship
between the content of the screen and the music performed. The music was merely a type
of western style ornamentation. A narrator would explain the content-though this was only
to point out the important parts of the movie to facilitate comprehension. The sounds of
western music and the voice of the narrator were not seen as being sounds of the screen for
the audience. Clearly, in common with these were the new strange and untraditional sounds
which possessed an enlightening nuance. These sounds were means to enhance
understanding of the film as a narrative.
In 1899, when the dancing of geisha was portrayed on the screen, there was musical
accompaniment by a nagauta group of musicians. In other words, there was an attempt to
reproduce the music which would have heard by the geisha. It is uncertain whether the
timing of the sound matched perfectly that of the screen. But at least, the sounds of nagauta
approached the content of the film and would have been regarded by the audience as
causing realistic feeling. A more extreme example was the portrayal of news film depicting
a fire in London. Although the content was a fire in London, a traditional Japanese bell
used to announce fires in Japan was used here. In so doing, this succeeded in creating a
feeling of actually being present at the incident. Sounds and voice used in silent movies
were not strict reproductions of the sounds of that portrayed on the screen but rather
attempts to create sounds familiar to the audience so as to elicit the appropriate emotion.
Using this historical information, I examine the actual combining of the image with
sounds by ONO Masao through his use of wayo-gasso, literally "Japanese Western
ensemble". Firstly, there is the term wayo-gasso music combination which is derived from
the joint use of Japanese musical instruments and western musical instruments. Apart from
the scores for percussion instruments, western score notation was used. However the
repertoire was divided into two groups, one being the music derived from musical
accompaniment in kabuki and the other, music from western classical works. When
choosing music from the repertoire of the kabuki to match the screen, music making a

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symbolized connection with kabuki, that is, music in the kabuki manner would be used. On
the other hand, choosing music from the western music repertoire meant only a very
general impression and connection were made with the screen image. Moreover, there was
a separate repertoire of music making use of both western and Japanese music instruments
for chanbara (sword fighting) scenes which were peculiar to jidaigeki (period films) at that
time. In this respect, this combination of Japanese/western music instruments could respond
to any scene portrayed.
Viewed this way, western style sounds and traditional sounds gradually emerged for the
accompaniment of silent movies from very different context. This was not only
superficially different, but different in the manner and the inevitability of combining the
image with sounds. The reason for this is that movies could only record reality by
separating the screen image from the sound. When audiences saw imported films, they
were unable to imagine the sounds on the screen and, conversely, when they saw Japanese
films, if they could not hear the sounds on the screen it was difficult to evoke a sense of
reality. In order to bury this wide gulf between the image and sound, wayo-gasso and the
narrator absorbed a system of expression which was familiar to the audience as well as a
newly introduced, enlightened sound system. This was unified through the use of this
combination of Japanese and western music. These were reworked and edited until they
could be used equally for the cinema screen. In this great desire to produce sound for the
screen, a completely new dynamic process could be seen in which the initiative in public
entertainment moved from preexisting performing entertainments to the cinema.

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