Shintoho

One of a number of Shintoho logos

Shintoho Company, Limited (新東宝株式会社,   Shin Tōhō Kabushikikaisha, lit New Toho Co., Ltd.), also formatted as Shin Toho, was a short-lived Japanese film studio. It was founded by defectors from Toho in 1947 and was financed by Daiei. In 1961, Shintoho declared bankruptcy and a successor was founded the same year, named Shintoho Pictures, which went on to specialize in pink films.

Shintoho is considered to be one of the six major film studios active during the 1950s' "Golden Age of Japanese Cinema", which also included Toho, Daiei, Nikkatsu, Shochiku, and Toei.

History

Founded in 1947 as an offshoot of Toho after the major company had become struck with labor turmoil, Shintoho began its relatively short existence producing such films as Stray Dog, which was later distributed by Toho, and The Life of Oharu. However, the company found itself to be outflanked by other much larger studios and appointed Mitsugu Okura as its new top executive in 1955 to guide the company toward better things. Under the guidance of Okura, Shintoho began producing such works as the critically acclaimed nine-film Super Giant series, war films, a slew of pink films, and a number of films centered around the supernatural, among a handful of others.

In May of 1961, Shintoho declared bankruptcy and two new companies were formed to take its place. Mitsugu Okura, Shintoho's former president, created the Okura Eiga studio after purchasing Shintoho's production facilities in Tokyo. Also at this time Koichi Goto, a former Shintoho employee, purchased the rights to the Shintoho name and, three years later, established Shintoho Pictures. In 1972, this new company relocated from Osaka to Tokyo and absorbed another piece of the original Shintoho, as well as receiving a new name: "Shintoho Eiga". Shintoho Eiga also later went on to distribute a number of Shintoho's films and Kiyoshi Komori, a former director for Shintoho, began directing pink films for Shintoho Eiga in 1964 until his retirement in the 1970s.

Selected productions

• Super Giant (1957)
• Super Giant Continues (1957)
• Super Giant: The Mysterious Spacemen's Demonic Castle (1957)
• Super Giant: Earth on the Verge of Destruction (1957)
• Super Giant: The Artificial Satellite and the Destruction of Humanity (1957)
• Super Giant: The Spaceship and the Clash of the Artificial Satellite (1958)
• Super Giant: The Space Mutant Appears (1958)
• Super Giant Continues: The Devil's Incarnation (1959)
• Super Giant Continues: The Poison Moth Kingdom (1959)

Selected distributions

• Fearful Attack of the Flying Saucers (1956) [produced by Kokumotsu Films]
• Hammer Kit (1962) [Shintoho Kogyo; produced by Shinei Productions]

References

This is a list of references for Shintoho. 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]

Bibliography

• Balmain, Colette (14 October 2008). Introduction to Japanese Horror Film. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0748-62475-1.
• Baskett, Michael (2008). The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan (hardcover ed.). University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3163-9.
• Ryfle, Steve; Godziszewski, Ed (3 October 2017). Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa (ebook ed.). Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819577412.

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