Japan’s first robot buddy cop movie, a silent film released in 1919, was shown only once, to an assembly of wealthy land owners in Tokyo. When the film ended, the audience demand for affordable giant robots to work their fields and control the peasants was so insistent, emperor Hirohito had the only copy of the film impounded and destroyed to prevent the idea from capturing the public’s imagination.
Today, this photo is all that remains of the film’s existence. Even the title of the movie has been lost to history.
