The Morning Sun Shines(1929)

The Morning Sun Shines is a hybrid fiction-documentary film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and Seiichi Ina that blends drama with documentary realism. The narrative follows a newspaper reporter while interspersing authentic footage of the printing and production process. Made during an era when cinema was still experimenting with form, the film captures both the human story of journalism and the mechanical world behind it. Only 25 minutes of the original footage survives today, making it a fragmented but fascinating artifact of early Japanese cinema and the medium's evolving relationship with documentary techniques.