Saru Kani Gassen (1927)

The 18th of the Athena Film Library educational movie series produced by Yokohama Cinema Shokai. A 35mm version and a 16mm version were released. The existing print is a 16mm Sakura Graph version released by Konishiroku Honten. This work is to be commemorated as Yasuji Murata's first animation film. The unique forms of the crabs and the mortar bear similarity to the images in Dainippon Yubenkai Kodansha's Monkey and the Crabs (猿蟹合戦, 1937), a picture book by Sengai Igawa. The existing film is likely to be a shortened version that omits the beginning scene where the lazy and greedy monkey tricks the crab into exchanging its rice ball for the monkey's persimmon seeds.