TOHO Visual Entertainment

	Toho Co., Ltd. Products &; Licensing Department
	Toho Co., Ltd. Products &; Licensing Department
Type	Multimedia distributor/publisher
Status	Active
Led by	Keiji Ota
Head-; quarters	1-2-2 Yuraku, Chiyoda; Tokyo, Japan 100-8415
Also known as	Toho Video, DVD Toho
Part of	Toho Company, Limited
Preceded by	Products & Licensing Department; (映像事業部 Eizō Jigyōbu); Digital Content Sales Department;
Website	https://www.toho-a-park.com (inactive)

TOHO Visual Entertainment, formally the Toho Co., Ltd. Products & Licensing Department^[1] (東宝株式会社ライツ事業部, Tōhō Kabushiki Gaisha Raitsu Jigyōbu, lit. "Toho Co., Ltd. Rights Department"),^[2] is a division of Toho which primarily handles home video distribution and print publication. Presided over by Toho Managing Executive Officer and Chief Godzilla Officer Keiji Ota, it is also actively involved in the development of the Godzilla franchise. It formerly used the English names Toho Video for pre-DVD formats^[a] and DVD Toho for DVDs, sometimes concurrently.

History

The current Toho Products & Licensing Department was formed on April 1, 2023, through the merger of the original Products & Licensing Department (映像事業部, Eizō Jigyōbu, lit. "Visual Department")^[b] and the Digital Content Sales Department (デジタル・コンテンツ営業部, Dejitaru Kontentsu Eigyōbu).^[3]^[4]^[5] The former had been in existence since at least the early 1980s, having released countless Toho films on home video and published some books and video games. In recent decades, it had also been tasked with theatrically distributing Toho's animated films, which included all three entries in the GODZILLA anime trilogy. As of the merger, the Products & Licensing Department has ceased distributing films theatrically, but is still responsible for bringing them to home video, as well as releasing all manner of print publications, including films' theater programs.

In 2014, following the release of Legendary Pictures' Godzilla, Toho president (now chairman) Yoshishige Shimatani requested the creation of a "company-wide organization" for discussing Toho's future Godzilla-related operations. This resulted in the Products & Licensing Department gathering over 20 employees from across Toho's departments and subsidiaries to form the Godzilla Strategic Conference (ゴジラ戦略会議, Gojira Senryaku Kaigi), or GodziCon (ゴジコン, Gojikon) for short, that October. However, members do not work with the Conference full-time; as of November 2019, it was led by Akito Takahashi as director and Tetsuya Yoshikawa as project leader, and met on a monthly basis, with smaller sub-conferences held multiple times a week. The first project to come out of the Godzilla Strategic Conference's discussions was the Godzilla Head atop Hotel Gracery Shinjuku.^[6]

On October 1, 2019,^[6] the Products & Licensing Department established the Godzilla Room (ゴジラルーム, Gojira Rūmu), a team of executives who are tasked with maintaining and expanding the Godzilla brand. Led by Tetsuya Yoshikawa, it also inherited jurisdiction over the Godzilla Strategic Conference. As of May 2024, the Godzilla Room was composed of 14 employees, divided into four groups. These are the Strategy Group (戦略グループ, Senryaku Gurūpu), in charge of long-term business strategies, business development, and management of the Godzilla Store; the Planning and Production Group (企画制作グループ, Kikaku Seisaku Gurūpu), in charge of creating video content; the Licensing Group (ライセンスグループ, Raisensu Gurūpu), in charge of merchandise, collaborations, theme park attractions, etc.; and the MD Group (MDグループ, Emu Dī Gurūpu), in charge of developing in-house merchandise and increasing merchandise distribution.^[7]

Selected filmography