Tokamachi Shochiku

The Shunkaiza Theater opened its doors with a total of 491 seats in 1902 and would later become an epicenter of one of the most devastating movie theater disasters in all of Japan.

On January 1, 1938, many female textile workers who were off work for the New Year flocked to the Shunkaiza Theater for a special showing of an unnamed movie. It was a success with 700 people attending the screening despite the theater having a capacity of 491 seats. During the screening at approximately 7:30 PM local time, the center roof of the theater suddenly collapsed, and about 200 people in the audience directly below were crushed by both the falling roofing and the snow.

A fire bell was rung by a resident to warn the townspeople and rescue operations were carried out by both police and fire in the pitch black darkness. The fire also led into a widespread power outage across the city but was restored by an hour later. It was a major disaster, killing 69 people and injuring 92 others, 27 in critical condition and 65 in stable condition, including those who died after being taken to the hospital.

At the time of the collapse, the theater was a two-story wooden building with a width of nine bays, a depth of 16 bays, and a floor area of ​​450m2, which served as both a special events theater and a movie theater. The interior of the building was a box-style seating arrangement with cushions laid out around a brazier. Of this, about 133m2 of the roof on the west side of the center collapsed, and just below it were the first-class and special seats.

The snow had accumulated to a permanent base by December 2, 1937, and subsequent snowfall had increased the depth to about 2m. However, the snow had been dug off the outer perimeter of the roof from the 30th, and by the day of the incident only snow remained in the center. According to records, the amount of snowfall in Tokamachi at the end of the previous year was 7.71ft, and the amount of snow on the roofs after the collapse was 6.82ft. Many of the victims' bodies had crushed skulls, severed limbs, and exposed intestines, and was believed that the damage was caused by hasty rescue efforts using shovels and other equipment, and some of the surviving families said that they had been killed by rescue teams.

Following the incident, Emperor Showa bestowed a grant of ¥5 for each deceased victim to the surviving families. In connection of the collapse, the original Shunkaiza was demolished and the Miyuki Kannon Shunkaido was built at the site of the site as a memorial for the victims, with donations from the townspeople. However, in recent years, it was demolished and replaced with a small park. Today, a stone monument bearing the inscription “Here was the Miyuki Kannon Hall” remains at the site of the entertainment hall.

This was immediately replaced with another movie theater that didn’t open its doors until the Spring 1941 called the Shungai Theatre. It was originally a two-story wooden building with a capacity of 562 seats, but on March 7, 1953, a fire broke out in the boiler room, completely burning down the house. Nobody was reportedly injured.

Exactly four months later in July 1953, a two-story reinforced concrete theater with 304 seats was rebuilt and opened under the name Tokamachi Shoei. Since the late-1950’s whenever moviegoers nationwide were at their peak, both the Tokamachi Shoei and the Tokamachi Eigeki nearby screened a grand total of 600 films a year, attracting 360,000 moviegoers.

In 1963, a small 100-seat Tokamachi Palace Theatre opened right next door to the Shoei, and as of 1965, the combined attendance of those three theaters were downgraded to 126,000 people, a decrease of about one-third compared to its peak seven years prior. The Shoei closed in 1968 when a newer movie theater opened nearby called the Tokamachi Shochiku.

The Tokamachi Shochiku opened on the first floor of the Tokamachi Entertainment Hall in Honcho 5-chome on December 30, 1968 as the successor to the Tokamachi Shoei, and adjacent to the Tokamachi Entertainment Hall was the Miyuki Kannon Shungai Hall, a memorial for the victims of the 1938 collapse, but (as explained above) the hall was later demolished and only the monument remains.

The Tokamachi Shochiku operated for decades, but it wasn’t until 1996 when the Muikamachi Cinema opened in the Jusco Muikamachi store, now known as the Aeon Muikamachi store. This immediately led the Tokamachi Shochiku to compete and was commissioned to operate it.

Unfortunately on October 23, 2004, the 6.8 magnitude Niigata Chuetsu earthquake struck Tokamachi City, resulting in 9 deaths across the city out of the 68 confirmed dead across Japan, with 16 direct deaths, and 52 disaster-related deaths. The Tokamachi Amusement Hall building was partially destroyed, making it impossible to continue business, and the hall was forced to close (effectively closing down). Only one person was killed when a wall collapsed on the north side of the hall.

With the lastly-operated 237-seat Tokamachi Shochiku gone, Tokamachi City was immediately left without a permanent first-run movie theater, but the owners of the Tokamachi Shochiku have continued to show movies on the move. The Tokamachi Amusement Hall was demolished in 2012, and the Tokamachi Industrial and Cultural Communication Center “Ikote” opened on the site in June 2015.

Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater.