This early postwar (1946-1952) film was likely made by Japan’s NHK – the national film, TV and radio company. This newsreel centers on industry news, starting with cotton and silk production, continuing with chemical industries and shipping, and all the way to forestry, agriculture, fish catches and quotas. The film shows the footage of the “new” Japan hard at work to rebuild itself after the war, at a time when many factories were still not rebuilt and the nation was faced with the hard realities of defeat. Some real signs of progress are shown — the new Hiroshima Central Television station building for example. The film also shows the Japanese countryside, wintry Hokkaido coast with fishing boats and the town of Iwanai in Hokkaido.
0:09-0:27 Narrator citing the cloth type prices by quality of cloth – number of threads and so on. People working in a factory, filling bags of something. Longshoremen loading a barge. Narrator: “25 yen for 33 thread, cotton 85-thread rolls, 90-thread rayon cloth 1 roll 5 yen 95 sen.”
0:30-1:00 Narrator, talking about the cherry tree and mulberry tree leaves harvest, which are used to nourish the silkworms, to produce silk, while the footage shows processing of the silkworm cocoons and giant thread spinning machines to make silk thread and cloth. 1:05-1:30 Hiroshima central broadcasting building, then workers inside the shipping center and a chemical plant building, and loading a bullock-driven cart, while the narrator cites the amount of chemicals and other freight carried by the Hiroshima railroads of an unknown private company.
1:30-2:17 Workers in the fruit gardens putting fertilizer to the trees, harvesting fruit from gardens, farm workers plough the field with the hand-tractors, while the narrator explains on the use and sale of fertilizer for the private gardens and small private farms. Narrator: “Moreover, Hiroshima added new business. Special home-use fertilizer sales…”
2:18-3:07 Fishing boats going out to the wintry seas. Snow-covered mountains bordering the sea.
3:07 Fishermen.
3:24 People lining up to listen to the radio.
3:35 fish market Narrator talking about the fish catches and quotas.
3:46 Continued fishing port and fish market scene. Salesmen and fishermen cutting and filleting fish for sushi. The narrator continues talking about the fish catches. Card reads: Hokkaido, Iwanai town
4:06 Child, happily riding on his parent’s produce cart through the muddy road.
4:09 Iwanai men lift sacks of produce from a boat at the harbor in Iwanai.
4:09-4:27 People singing and working – filleting, cooking fish, transporting goods, by hand-driven and horse-driven sleds and carriages
4:27-5:08 People shoveling snow in front of a completely buried rural train station, near a hill, in the snowy countryside, a railroad semaphore stands in the foreground. Loading the snow into baskets carried on people back. Everyone’s wearing traditional straw overcoats to protect from the wet snow.
5:08-end of the film The train engineer blows the whistle to warn the snow shovelers of his approach. The train is a mechanized snowplow, thereto clean the completely buried railroad.
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