Toho


is a Japanese film, theater production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo and is one of the core companies of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside Japan, it is best known as the producer and distributor of many kaiju and tokusatsu films, the Chouseishin tokusatsu superhero television franchise, the films of Akira Kurosawa, and the anime films of Studio Ghibli, TMS Entertainment and OLM, Inc. Other famous directors, including Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masaki Kobayashi, and Mikio Naruse, also directed films for Toho.
Toho's most famous creation is Godzilla, who is featured in 32 of the company's films. Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla are described as Toho's Big Five because of the monsters' numerous appearances in all three eras of the franchise, as well as spin-offs. Toho has also been involved in the production of numerous anime titles. Its subdivisions are Toho-Towa Distribution, Toho Pictures Incorporated, Toho International Company Limited, Toho E. B. Company Limited, and Toho Music Corporation & Toho Costume Company Limited. The company is the largest shareholder of Fuji Media Holdings Inc.
Toho is one of the four members of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, and is the largest of Japan's Big Four film studios.

History

Toho was created by the founder of the Hankyu Railway, Ichizō Kobayashi, 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.
Toho and Shochiku competed with the influx of Hollywood films and boosted the film industry by focusing on new directors of the likes of Kurosawa Akira, Ichikawa Kon, Kinoshita Keisuke, Ishiro Honda, and Shindo Kaneto.
After several successful film exports to the United States during the 1950s through Henry G. Saperstein, Toho took over the La Brea Theatre in Los Angeles to show its own films without the need to sell them to a distributor. It was known as the Toho Theatre from the late 1960s until the 1970s. Toho also had a theater in San Francisco and opened a theater in New York City in 1963. The Shintoho Company, which existed until 1961, was named New Toho because it broke off from the original company. Toho has contributed to the production of some American films, including Sam Raimi's 1998 film, A Simple Plan.
In 2019, Toho invested ¥15.4 billion into their Los Angeles-based subsidiary Toho International Inc. as part of their "Toho Vision 2021 Medium-term Management Strategy", a strategy to increase content, platform, real-estate, beat JPY50 billion profits, and increase character businesses on Toho intellectual properties such as Godzilla. Hiroyasu Matsuoka was named the representative director of the US subsidiary.

Major productions and distributions

Film

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Upcoming

Television

''Tokusatsu''

In more recent years and for a period, they have produced video games. One of their first video game was the 1990 NES game titled Circus Caper. Later, they followed with a series of games based on Godzilla and a 1992 game called Serizawa Nobuo no Birdy Try. It also published games such as Super Aleste. They even worked with Bandai on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released in Japan in 1988 and in the United States in 1989.

Headquarters

Toho's headquarters, the Toho Hibiya Building, are in Yūrakuchō, Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company moved into its current headquarters in April 2005.