Today I am in Switzerland, at the Locarno Film Festival, which has dedicated an entire strand of programming to Japanese animation. Specifically I am going to be talking onstage with film archivist Akira Tochigi about a subject close to my heart – the modern renaissance in pre-war anime and the problems of restoring old cartoons.

Ever since the last surviving copy of Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors was uncovered in a warehouse in the 1980s, there have been periodic rediscoveries. Digital technolo