Tōhō

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Tōhō KK

logo
legal form Kabushiki-gaisha
ISIN JP3598600009
Seat Chiyoda , Tokyo Prefecture , JapanJapanJapan 
management Yoshishige Shimatani (President)
Website www.toho.co.jp

Tōhō KK ( Japanese 東宝 株式会社 , Tōhō Kabushiki kaisha ) is a Japanese film and theater production company and film rental company . The company, headquartered in Chiyoda, is a core company of the Hankyū Hanshin Tōhō Group .

In the West it is best known for its kaijū (monster films like Godzilla ) and for anime productions (for example by Studio Ghibli ). It played an important role in the film world by collaborating with famous directors such as Akira Kurosawa , Ozu Yasujirō , Mizoguchi Kenji , Masaki Kobayashi and Mikio Naruse .

history

Tōhō was founded in 1932 as Tōkyō Takarazuka Gekijō KK ( 東京 宝 塚 劇場 株式会社 ) by Kobayashi Ichizō , director of the private railway company Hankyū Dentetsu , which ran several theaters in and around Tokyo (such as the Imperial Garden Theater in Tokyo ). With almost 10 percent, Hankyu Real Estate KK is still the largest shareholder in Toho today.

With "Otome-gokoro - Sannin-shimai" (Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts), Tōhō's first film was released in 1935 and laid the foundation for Japan's most successful film production.

After the Second World War , the company built its own animation studio in Sōshigaya at the end of 1945, in which animators from closed studios gathered and new ones were trained. The studio was supposed to produce its own films as well as provide effects and captions for Tōhō's real films. The workforce quickly grew to several hundred, but they could hardly be employed meaningfully, so that the company was not profitable. In addition, there were labor disputes with the unions newly admitted under the American occupation. In April 1948, the majority of the employees were dismissed, which escalated into a brief occupation of the studio building. In the end, only a significantly reduced studio with 60 employees remained under Shimomura Kenji as the Educational Film Unit, which produced teaching and propaganda films and, above all, background work for real films. In 1952 it was finally dissolved completely. After that, Tōhō was only involved in the distribution of animated films, never again in the actual production.

Tōhō achieved fame mainly through his monster films, such as Godzilla , which appeared for the first time in 1954.

Objective

Tōhō's primary objective is to keep the production and distribution of films for cinemas and television with 55 percent of the profit. In addition, Tōhō Home Entertainment sells video and computer games and is active in several film-related industries. In addition to its primary objective, the company operates several cinemas and theaters and is increasingly investing in real estate, which makes up 32 percent of the profit share (as of 2007). In addition, Tōhō owns several shops, sports facilities, restaurants and market shares in the Japanese television station TBS .

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Stuart Galbraith IV: The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography . Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008, ISBN 978-0810860049 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tōhō: Company Overview , accessed September 19, 2019
  2. ↑ Jonathan Clements : Anime - A History . Palgrave Macmillan 2013. pp. 74-81. ISBN 978-1-84457-390-5 .