Dreaming of America

While Japanese animated films have often been studied from a historical point of view, with a focus on the graphic evolution of this type of cinema, very little research has concentrated on the economic and technical dimensions in the history of their production. This article considers the beginnings of the industrial production of cartoons in Japan in the post-WWII period, in relation to two hypotheses: the programmatic discourse of Japanese producers in the 1960s, in particular their explicitly competitive stance regarding US studios, especially Disney; and an analytical perspective on the production model established during that period, based on the study of archived documents. This is applied here to a case that is both exemplary and particular: the Tôei Dôga studio, founded in 1956 as the animation department of the Tôei, one of the Japanese post-war majors. Aiming to be “the Disney of the East”, as the company’s director Hiroshi Ôkawa put it, the Tôei Dôga contributed significantly to shaping the present cartoon industry in Japan.