Local theaters down, not out in Japan

Groups attempt to fight back against suburban multiplexes.

Sat, Sep 26, 2009

Daily Yomiuri/Asia News Network

By Yoshikazu Suzuki

For many regional cities, the local movie theater has become a thing of the past. But recently there have been moves by many local areas to bring old theaters back to life and hopefully help boost the communities.

Multiplexes housing five or more movie screens have been popping up in cities and suburbs across the country in recent years, helping cause an uneven distribution of movie screens across the country.

According to the 2008 yearbook of movie screenings published by the Japan Community Cinema Center, there were 3,176 screens--excluding adult movie theaters--in 2007, an increase of 350 over the previous survey taken in 2005.

However, 80 percent of these screens were at multiplexes, and the number of movie theaters had actually fallen by 122 to 667.

In 1993, when the nation's first multiplex opened in Kanagawa Prefecture, there were 1,734 movie theaters.

Multiplexes attached to suburban shopping malls, which themselves have accelerated the hollowing out of downtown shopping streets, has spurred the shutdown of conventional movie theaters.

This is particularly conspicuous in Shikoku. In Tokushima Prefecture, five theaters closed between 2005 and 2007, leaving one multiplex in the Tokushima surburbs as the only place in the prefecture where movies can be seen on the big screen. In Kochi Prefecture, there is one multiplex and one theater each in Kochi, which means anyone in the rest of the prefecture who wants to see a movie must head to the city to see it.

In Tokushima there was about one theater screen per 100,000 people in 2007, the highest ratio in the nation. Two years before it was one per 60,000.

In the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya metropolitan areas, the people-to-screen ratio has been shrinking due to the growth of multiplexes, and currently sits at about 30,000 to 40,000 people per screen.

Yuko Iwasaki, secretary general of the JCCC, is worried about these trends. "In local areas, theaters are concentrated in prefectural capitals with the result being that there are no movie theaters elsewhere," Iwasaki said. "It might be that someday there will emerge generations of people who don't watch movies in theaters."

These problems were discussed at the National Conference of Community Cinemas 2009, which was held on Sept. 4-5 in Kawasaki. Community cinemas is a general term that encompasses local movie theaters that show a variety of famous movies, including classics, nonprofit cultural facilities and other supporting organizations.

About 250 people participated in the conference, including those associated with so-called mini-theaters, which show more independent films not found at multiplexes, and movie theaters operated by nonprofit organizations. Discussions included ways of running movie theaters through the initiative of citizens.

At Kawasaki Art Center, which opened in the spring of 2007, there is a theater owned by the municipal government and operated privately. The staff of the Kawasaki Shinyuri Film Festival, which will be held for the 15th year this autumn, plays a central role in the theater's management.

In central Maebashi, which has many shops that sit empty, Cinema Maebashi will open at the end of next month to take the place of a movie theater that has closed. Cinema Maebashi will be run by the local citizens group Maebashi Geijutsu Shukan.

Takada Nikkatsu, a theater in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, was built in the late Meiji era (1868-1912) and has been designated by the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry as a cultural heritage site from the era of industrial modernization. But the facility has succumbed to the ravages of time, and ways to bring it back to life were brought up at the Kawasaki conference. Kenzo Horikoshi, executive director of the JCCC and a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts, called for government assistance to help the Takada Nikkatsu at panel talks including officials from the Cultural Affairs Agency and METI.

"Reviving the movie theater in the town's center is related to the issue of how to preserve the local community," Horikoshi said. "I want the government to think about providing financial assistance after designating the theater as a cultural foundation."

In response to such regional moves, METI has begun assistance measures under the pretext of "promoting the digitalization of screening systems." Revamping regional movie theaters that can attract large crowds will have a ripple effect, helping reinvigorate local shopping streets, one analyst said.

The business map for movie theaters has drastically changed. The gap has widened not only between major urban and local areas but also between capital cities and other municipalities.

Such being the case, it is all the more important for the private and public sectors to cooperate in promoting the health of community cinemas.