Toho

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Toho Company, Limited
The Japanese Toho logo

Type Film/theater company
Status Active
Led by Yoshishige Shimatani
Founder(s) Ichizo Kobayashi
Founded August 12, 1932[note 1]
Head-
quarters
1-2-2 Yuraku, Chiyoda
Tokyo, Japan 100-8415
Also known as Toho Eiga Co., Ltd. (1937-1943)
Subsidiary companies
Preceded by
  • Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company
  • Photo Chemical Laboratory Co., Ltd.
  • JO Studio
  • Toho Film Distribution Co., Ltd.

Toho Company, Limited (東宝株式会社,   Tōhō Kabushiki Gaisha), officially stylized TOHO, is a major Japanese film studio. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. In the West, it is best known as the producer of many kaiju and tokusatsu movies, the films of Akira Kurosawa, and the anime films of Studio Ghibli, as well as the Pokémon movies.

The company's most famous creation, Godzilla, was co-created by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka.

History

The classic TohoScope logo, used for Toho's widescreen movies from 1957 to 1964, and once more in 2004's Godzilla Final Wars
The current Toho logo
Pencil-icon.gif Please help improve this article by contributing useful information or discussing ideas on its talk page.

Toho was founded by the Hankyu Railway in 1932 as the Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company. It managed much of the kabuki in Tokyo and, among other properties, the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater and the Imperial Garden Theater in Tokyo; Toho and Shochiku enjoyed a duopoly over theaters in Tokyo for many years.

After several successful film exports to the United States during the 1950s, Toho opened the La Brea Theatre in Los Angeles to show its own films without selling to a distributor. It was known as the Toho Theatre from the late 1960s until the 1970s.[1] Toho also had a theater in San Francisco and opened a theater in New York in 1963.[2]

An offshoot of Toho called Shintoho was established in 1947 due to labor turmoil at Toho. The company went on to produce a slew of films during its short lifespan and declared bankruptcy in 1961.[3]

They have contributed to the production of some American films, including Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan.

Selected productions

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

  • Gunhed (1989) [co-produced with the Gunhed Production Committee]

1990s

2000s

​2010s

2020s

Cancelled films

Main article: Category:Unmade Films.

Television

Selected distributions

Note: This section only lists movies not produced by Toho. All movies produced by Toho in the previous section were also distributed by the company.

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2010s

  • Gatchaman (2013) [produced by Nippon Television, Nikkatsu and Django Film]
  • Godzilla (2014) [produced by Legendary Pictures; distributed in Japan]
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) [produced by Legendary Pictures; distributed in Japan]

2020s

Selected staff

Producers

Directors

Writers

  • Akira Kurosawa
  • Hayao Miyazaki
  • Ikuma Dam
  • Ishiro Honda
  • Jun Fukuda
  • Kinji Fukasaku
  • Masaaki Tezuka
  • Nobuhiko Obayashi
  • Seishi Yokomizo
  • Shogo Tomiyama
  • Shusuke Kaneko
  • Takao Okawara
  • Tomoyuki Tanaka
  • Wataru Mimura

Composers

Special effects crew

Musical artists

  • Asami Abe
  • Masatoh Eve
  • U-Ya Asaoka

Editors

  • Akira Kurosawa
  • Nobuhiko Obayashi

Cinematographers

Sound department

  • Ichiro Minawa
  • Sadamasa Nishimoto
  • Hideyo Sasaki
  • Yuji Tan
  • Hiromi Ogawa
  • Akihiko Okase
  • Naoko Asari
  • Tatsuhiko Sasaki
  • Yoichi Nishimura
  • Kimiko Asakura
  • Haru Yamada
  • Toru Noguchi
  • Satoshi Motoyama

Gallery

See also

External links

Notes

  1. While Toho is officially said to have been founded on August 12, 1932, this is in fact the date on which its predecessor company Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company was founded. Toho Eiga Co., Ltd. was founded on August 26, 1937 through the merging of Tokyo-Takarazuka, Photo Chemical Laboratory, JO Studio, and Toho Film Distribution. Its name was changed to Toho Co., Ltd. on December 10, 1943.

References

This is a list of references for Toho. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

  1. "Toho La Brea Theatre in Los Angeles, CA". Cinema Treasures. Retrieved 20 January 2022.
  2. "Toho" Far East Film News December 25, 1963.
  3. "Nudes! Guns! Ghosts! The Sensational Cinema of Shintoho". The Cinematheque. Archived from the original on 6 August 2019.
  4. Kroll, Justin (20 January 2022). "Apple TV+ Lands Godzilla & Titans Series Based On Legendary's Monsterverse". Deadline.

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