For those of you in the US (and probably Canada), TCM is airing the 1935 short Modern Tokyo tomorrow (November 2) afternoon at about 1:45 PM ET, or just before the movie Tokyo Joe, check your cable/satellite box guide.

Modern Tokyo is a Technicolor travelogue produced and narrated by James A. FitzPatrick as part of the Traveltalks series for MGM, of which something like 200 were produced from the 1930s through the early 1950s. FitzPatrick went around the world before World War II and did go back to Europe a few times (Looking at London from 1946 shows quite a bit of the damage from the German bombing of London), spending the war years throughout the western hemisphere.

I mention Modern Tokyo because this being a Go forum, I know there are people otherwise interested in Japanese/Oriental cultures in general, and this is a fascinating little time capsule. FitzPatrick was apparently a travel agent before making all these shorts, so he relentlessly focuses on the good points of the places he's visiting, rather than an even-handed look. A lot of the shorts have scenes of people who were probably living in grinding poverty wearing the finest clothes and doing native dances, with patronizing voiceovers from Fitzpatrick.

In Modern Tokyo, FitzPatrick has good things to say about the people of Japan (a word he consistently and jarringly stresses on the first syllable), talking about the recovery from the 1923 Kanto earthquake, and showing some traditional aspects of Japanese culture, although Go isn't one of them. It's quaint, but I love the time-capsule nature of all these Traveltalks shorts.

For those of you outside North America, I'm sorry to say it doesn't seem to be on Youtube, and doesn't seem to be an extra on any DVD.