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Toho

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For the Japanese music institution, see Toho Gakuen School of Music.
For the computer game series, see Touhou Project.
File:DVD-VIDEO-2.jpg
The current logo of Toho (in the US.)

Toho Co., Ltd. (東宝株式会社, Tōhō Kabushiki-gaisha, TYO: 9602) is a large Japanese film studio. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Hankyu-Toho Group. In the West, it is best known as the producer of many daikaiju (monster) and tokusatsu (special effects) movies, the Choseishin tokusatsu superhero TV franchise, the films of Akira Kurosawa, and the anime films of Studio Ghibli. Its most famous and worldwide creation is Godzilla, known as the King of the Monsters. It has also been involved in the production of numerous anime titles. The name Toho literally translates as "eastern treasure".

History

Toho was founded by the Hankyu Railway in 1932 as the Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company (東京宝塚劇場株式会社, Tōkyō Takarazuka Gekijō Kabushiki-gaisha). It managed, 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.[1]

The Shintoho Company was so named "New Toho" because it broke off from Toho.

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

Major productions & distributions

Film

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Television

Tokusatsu

TV Anime

In more recent years and for a period, they have produced video games. One of their first video games was the 1990 NES game titled Circus Caper. Later, they followed with a series of games based on Godzilla. They also published games such as Super Aleste.

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Toho" Far East Film News December 25, 1963.
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