Short answers, pulled from the story.
Katsudō Shashin means moving picture or activity photo and refers to a three-second loop showing a young boy in a sailor suit writing kanji characters on a blackboard. The title remains a provisional label for an unknown creator's work since no name appears on the strip itself.
Historians estimate creation between 1905 and 1912 based on available clues from projector manufacturing dates within the collection. Frederick S. Litten suggests dates prior to 1905 or after 1912 are unlikely, though no definitive record confirms exact year of manufacture.
Natsuki Matsumoto received a call from a secondhand dealer in Kyoto during December 2004 regarding a collection of old projectors and films from an elderly family. Matsumoto traveled to inspect the items the following month and identified the specific fragment known later as the Matsumoto piece.
Artists used a kappa-ban device to impress red and black images onto celluloid loops by pressing ink through cut-out shapes onto film strips. Each frame required manual application of color using this mechanical method which resulted in stenciled images lacking fluidity compared to later photographic animation techniques.
Western animation projectors arrived in Japan during 1896 and 1897 with German toy manufacturers like Gebrüder Bing selling cinematographs at Nuremberg festivals by 1898. Japanese theaters began showing foreign animated works around 1912 when Émile Cohl's The Nipper's Transformations premiered in Tokyo on the 15th of April 1912.