In the late spring of 1896, a fashionably dressed Japanese businessman sat spell-bound in the semi-dark screening room of Auguste and Louis Lumiere. The first image to appear on the screen was a view of the front door of the laboratory itself. Quite suddenly, the door opened and two girls emerged to wave and walk off with stuttering swiftness. Next came scenes of fountains in Paris, followed by a train slowly chugging into a station. As a man of science and industry, Inahata Shotaro repressed the impulse to investigate behind the white cloth on the wall. He had heard of this machine, the 'Cinematographe', and knew it was no hoax. Some years before, Inahata had had the good fortune to attend a technical school in Lyons with Auguste, the elder Lumiere brother. While studying the latest French developments in muslin weaving and dying, he had kept a close eye on other facets of French life and technology. Like many of the young men sent abroad by the Meiji government, he felt it his duty to watch for any innovation of possible service to his country. Now, on his second trip abroad, he was anxious to strike a deal with his old schoolmate as soon as the last images faded from the screen. 'I knew then and there that still photographs could not compare with the power of the Cinematographe to present living, breathing portraits of European culture to my countrymen back home." The Lumieres were pleased by this attitude. Like Inahata, they thought of their machine as a recording device to capture 'actualites' the shape, movements and rhythms of things as they really were. It was a tool for the diffusion of culture and scientific knowledge. Neither of the brothers shared a taste for the cafe-artist mentality which would soon give birth to the remarkable experiments of George Melies. Soon, when Melies was already making film a vehicle for voyages of fantasy, the Lumieres would be seriously considering the possibility of draping a vast screen on the Eiffel Tower to project images of gigantic proportions.
