A Trip through Japan with the YWCA (ca. 1919)

Here is an online Benjamin Brodsky film made under the sponsorship of the YWCA. It has an unusual focus on women, in addition to the usual travelogue material.

From the website:

Brodsky traveled the world before settling up a nickelodeon in San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake and fire. After expanding business to other West Coast cities, he decided to try his hand in China, where he became one of the founders of the Chinese film industry. Brodsky is credited with producing films by Shanghai and Hong Kong directors as early as 1909 and is said to have controlled some 80 theaters. By 1916, he was in the United States promoting his 10-reel epic travelogue A Trip through China, a chronicle of his decade in the country. The film opened in New York City the following May, accompanied by lecturer Harry Dean. Ever restless, the entrepreneur moved to Japan by 1917, where he again appears to have had some behind-the-scenes role in early film circles. There he produced, under the sponsorship of the Imperial Japanese Railroad, a second travel feature, Beautiful Japan (1918). Like A Trip through China, the two-hour film was usually shown in the United States with a lecturer, often Brodsky himself, who enlivened screenings with tales from his adventures.

A Trip through Japan with the YWCA is a documentary introducing outsiders to the scenic wonders and peoples of the far-off country. But the film also had a charitable purpose. Although reusing footage from Beautiful Japan—most noticeably the scenes with the Ainu of Hokkaido—it also interjects new material more central to the sponsor, about the role of women in Japan and their special needs. Included are shots of women in traditional occupations as well as fleeting images of workers outside a textile factory. “The death toll of tuberculosis in Japanese factories,” reads one intertitle, “claims 70,000 girls yearly. More attention is now being given to sanitation.” The fragment ends abruptly with a shot of a Buddhist prayer wheel in Nikko. It is unclear how much of the film is missing.