Princess Iron Fan (1941 film)

Princess Iron Fan
Directed by
Produced by
Distributed byCinema Epoch
Release date
  • 19 November 1941 (1941-11-19) (China)
Running time
73 min
CountryChina

Princess Iron Fan (traditional Chinese: 鐵扇公主; simplified Chinese: 铁扇公主; pinyin: Tiě shàn gōngzhǔ), is the first Chinese animated feature film. It is also considered the first Asian animated feature film. The film is based on an episode of the 16th-century novel Journey to the West. It was directed in Shanghai under difficult conditions in the thick of World War II by Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming (the Wan brothers) and was released on November 19, 1941.

The film later became influential in the development of East Asian animation, including Japanese anime, Vietnamese animation, Korean animation and Chinese animation.[1][2]

  1. ^ "An Animated Wartime Encounter: Princess Iron Fan and the Chinese Connection in Early Japanese Animation". Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University. Archived from the original on 1 March 2019. Specifically, it focuses Princess Iron Fan (1941), the first animated feature film made in China and Asia, and how its wartime travel to Japan gave rise to the birth of animated feature films in wartime Japan. It also impacted Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), the so-called god of modern Japanese manga and anime whose works were shadowed by Princess Iron Fan from the beginning to the end of his career. Princess Iron Fan transformed the early history of Japanese animation, yet its national identity was changed by the journey.
  2. ^ "Princess Iron Fan". Far East Film Festival. China's first feature-length cartoon, the third in the world, exerted an incredible influence on the Asian animation market.... It also inspired the Japanese to make their own animated feature, indirectly pollinating the early anime industry. PRINCESS IRON FAN was cited as a major influence on Japan's greatest manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who entered the field after seeing it as a boy in 1943.