 Two of the country's leading directors, Mikio Naruse and Yasujirō Ozu, did not make their first sound films until 1935 and 1936, respectively.As late as 1938, over a third of all movies produced in Japan were shot without dialogue.The enduring popularity of the silent medium in Japanese cinema owed in great part to the tradition of the "benshi", a live narrator who performed as accompaniment to a film screening.