[2] They said it presented scenes from kabuki and shinpa theater as is, with little cinematic manipulation and without a screenplay written with cinema in mind.
Filmmakers were charged with shooting films with long takes and leaving the storytelling to the benshi in the theater instead of using devices such as close-ups and analytical editing to visually narrate a scene.
This is often considered the first "pure film," but filmmakers such as Eizō Tanaka, influenced by shingeki theater, also made their own innovations in the late 1910s at studios like Nikkatsu.
[4] The move towards "pure film" was aided by the appearance of new reformist studios such as Shochiku and Taikatsu around 1920.
By the mid-1920s, Japanese cinema exhibited more of the cinematic techniques pure film advocates called for, and onnagata were replaced by actresses.