Echoes of silent cinema: the benshi’s lingering voice, modernity, and the soundscape of nostalgia

This article examines how benshi performance was transformed and recirculated through radio, SP records, and other forms of entertainment during the transition to sound. I argue that the continued presence of the benshi alongside their nostalgic representation complicates a linear narrative of media replacement: even as benshi remained active, they were increasingly presented and marketed as figures of a disappearing cinematic past. Nostalgia therefore emerged not simply after the disappearance of silent cinema but during its ongoing transformation, shaping how older media practices were remembered, represented, and commercially recirculated. Through the benshi, this article demonstrates how old and new media practices, as well as different temporalities of cinematic experience, continued to coexist within the changing media culture of prewar Japan.