Aoikan


The Aoikan was a movie theater located in the Tameike section of Akasaka in Tokyo, Japan. It existed from the mid–1910s as a high-class foreign film theater, featuring benshi such as Musei Tokugawa.
After the Great Kanto earthquake, it re-opened in October 1924 with a brand-new, modern design created by prominent avant-garde artists. Seisaku Yoshikawa was in charge of the architectural design, Yasuji Ogishima did the sculptural reliefs on the front of the building, and Tomoyoshi Murayama designed the interior decorations.
Murayama also did the cover illustrations for the theater's pamphlets in the first few years.
Film scholars such as Kenji Iwamoto have noted this theater's significance in Japanese cinematic modernism of the 1920s and 1930s.