Maple Leaf Viewing

Two of the great kabuki actors of the Meiji era, Ichikawa Danjūrō IX and Onoe Kikugorō V, perform the ogress-as-princess scene from Momijigari outdoors on a windy day in November 1899, and Danjūrō's fan blows out of his hand. He allowed one take, so the fan stayed in. Shibata Tsunekichi shot it as a record rather than a release, and it did not reach a paying audience until 1907. Six minutes, and the oldest Japanese film that survives. The fan is the one thing on screen nobody planned.