90-YO Disney Short Film About Oswald The Lucky Rabbit Once Feared 'Lost' Surfaces In Japan

A short animated film that was created by Walt Disney in 1928 but feared lost has just been discovered in Japan.?

According to reports, the two-minute short features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a precursor to Mickey Mouse.?Titled “Neck ‘n’ Neck” when the film was released in the US, a handful of copies reached Japan, reports the Telegraph UK.?

One was purchased by a high school student named Yasushi Watanabe from a toy wholesalers’ market in the city of Osaka.

Watanabe, now 84 years old, didn’t realise he had a lost Disney short film in his possession until he read David Bossert’s 2017 book “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons.”?

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The original “Neck ’n’ Neck” is five minutes long, it shortened to two minutes for home movie projectors and sold to the public in the form of a 16-mm film.

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Walt Disney created 26 short films that starred Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but only 19 have survived.

“I’ve been a Disney fan for many years and I’m happy that I have been able to play a role in this discovery”, Yasushi Watanabe said in an interview.?

Watanabe’s film is currently housed at the Kobe Planet Film Archive, a movie library.

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