The Golden Bat is Here (紙芝居昭和史 黄金バットがやって来る) [Lost 1972 Film] : Toho Studios : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
A 1972 Toho “comedy” film, long considered lost, that depicts the rise and fall of the kamishibai (paper theatre) storytellers that were popular throughout Japan. Unfortunately, kamishibai was done in by the advent of television, although a few practitioners still keep the art form alive to this day.
The story of Golden Bat, arguably kamishibai’s biggest star, is interwoven amongst the tale of the men who wandered the streets entertaining children.
This film was previously considered lost, in that no copies seemed to exist outside of Toho’s vaults. For whatever reason, the film has never been released on home video.
Luckily, last month (February, 2025) Maxwell Breese released a copy he found on the Lost Media Wiki site, and now we can all watch it ourselves.
It helps if you’re fluent in Japanese, though, as the film is not dubbed or subtitled.
Here’s a quick snippet featuring my man, Golden Bat, as he originally appeared, battling his arch nemesis Nazo:
https://youtu.be/mPhpdQGy36E?si=w4BR774WgPhLJcAf
I am Muhammad. I am a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip. I am 25 years old. I work as an international chef and work in the International Committee of the International Red Cross. I prepare food for foreign delegations that come to the Gaza Strip to provide aid in all forms.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-my-family-we-are-being-killed-get-us-out-of
On this day, 12 June 2009, cleaning workers at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London working for the subcontractor ISS were called to an emergency “staff meeting,” which was actually an ambush by immigration officers. The cleaners, mostly members of public sector union UNISON, had been organising for some time for better pay and conditions, and had recently successfully achieved union recognition and the London living wage. At the bogus meeting, 40 UK Border Agency officials detained the workers, then handcuffed and took away nine of them, including one worker who was six months pregnant. Workers believe the raid was in retaliation for their organising activity. Some of the workers, like Rosa Perez from Nicaragua, were deported without even being given the required 72 hours notice. One union member was flown to Colombia just 48 hours after her arrest, in the same clothes, with just £0.75 in her pocket and dumped in Bogotá, hundreds of miles from her home town. Another of the workers reportedly suffered a heart attack during the ordeal and was denied medical attention – and not even given water. Despite the deportations, the other workers kept up their fight and after various strikes and occupations by students, in 2017 they achieved their goal of being taken back in-house to be employed directly by the university. For this and hundreds of other stories, get hold of our book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/working-class-history-everyday-acts-resistance-rebellion-book https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=642784657894753&set=a.602588028581083&type=3
full disclosure I orig wanted to make part 2 of the wolf hall brat edit (feat Thomas More as Lorde) but I scrapped it cos i didn't really have enough footage BUT the overwhelmingly lovely response from you guys to part 1 has enabled me I fear. Watch this space
Mecha Sonic from Scrapnik Island
there’s just some fics... they never leave u bro. i’ll be sitting on the toilet four years later thinking about the 94k enemies to lovers fic that captured my soul
choking on water is the worst because how do you stop choking? drink something? well ive got some bad news for you
full disclosure I orig wanted to make part 2 of the wolf hall brat edit (feat Thomas More as Lorde) but I scrapped it cos i didn't really have enough footage BUT the overwhelmingly lovely response from you guys to part 1 has enabled me I fear. Watch this space
Bam! Right in the kisser.
Do you have any Fun Facts today? Maybe something literary?
You know what? I think I can manage that. Everyone knows about the friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. But there's another guy who gets skipped out on, and was super-influential on Lewis.
Today You Learned about Roger Lancelyn Green!
Our boy Robert here was an undergraduate at Oxford when he met Jack Lewis, who was his teacher. After graduating and becoming an Oxford scholar in his own right, he remained very good friends with Lewis and a member of the Inklings. He actually traveled with Lewis and his wife, Joy, on vacation to Greece, shortly before Joy's death in 1960.
If you read histories of the Inklings, you may notice that Tolkien didn't seem to like drafts of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that much. Well, Lewis's friend Lancelyn Green did, and encouraged him to keep working and eventually publish it.
[Wikipedia also says he came up with the title 'Chronicles of Narnia', but there's no citation on that sentence, so take it with a grain of salt.]
Roger has his own literary career, too. He wrote several books for children, retelling myths and folklore, from Greek myths, to Norse myths, to Arthurian stories. And these books are all still widely available! He's also the author of several literary biographies of people like Andrew Lang (compiler of fairy tale books), Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland), J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan), and of course, C.S. Lewis himself.
It's actually pretty cool that we have a biography of C.S. Lewis by a guy who was close friends with him, I think!
Also, he was the father of literature scholar Richard Lancelyn Green, but that guy, I think, deserves his own Fun Fact for another time.