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1898-1981. Pseudonym of Zenjiro Yamamoto. Born in Chiba Prefecture, he began working part-time for Seitaro Kitayama's animation company Kitayama Eiga, while still a student of Japanese art. After the Great Kanto Earthquake and Kitayama's subsequent relocation to Osaka, Yamamoto stayed in Tokyo to found Yamamoto Manga Productions. His Mountain Where Old Women Are Abandoned (1923, Obasuteyama) was the earliest anime extant until the discovery of Seitaro Kitayama's Taro the Guardsman (1918)-the Naoki Matsumoto discovery of 2005 has yet to be satisfactorily dated. He labored for some time on Jar (not dated, Tsubo), an instructional film for Monbusho, the Ministry of Education, and moved into political advertisements and propaganda in the 1930s. His most notable propaganda work was Defeat of the Spies (1942, Spy Gekimetsu). Post-World War II, he assembled surviving animators in the Tokyo area to form Nippon Doga, a company eventually merged into Toei to form Toei Animation. Yamamoto consequently played an executive role in Japan's early features Panda and the Magic Serpent, Magic Boy, and Alakazam the Great (see Journey to the West).
