Shochiku ( Japanese 松竹 Shё: tiku ) is a Japanese film company [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] .
| Shochiku 松竹 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type of | Public company |
| Exchange listing | |
| Base | November 8, 1920 in Tokyo , Japan |
| Location | Tokyo , Chuo City, Tsukiji 4-1-1 |
| Industry | film industry |
| Turnover | 8.8 billion yen (2014) |
| Number of employees | 1227 (2014) |
| Site | shochiku.co.jp |
Famous directors such as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa worked at the film studio, and Takashi Miike (director of " Screen Tests " and "Iti-Killers") from more modern ones.
History
The Shochiku Kinema Company was founded in 1920 by Matsujiro Shirai after he went to Hollywood. It was founded as a subsidiary of the theater company Shochiku and with its financial support [1] . (Shochiku Theater Company was founded by Takejiro Otani and specialized in kabuki. [2] In 1914, she bought the famous Kabuki theater, Kabuki-dza , which she now owns.)
The film studio from the very beginning was founded with the idea to start working on the Hollywood film production system and modernize Japanese cinema. In addition to the film studio, the Shochiku theater company founded an acting school, which was invited to run (as a director) by Kaoru Osanay , the leader of the Singeka [6] , a radical pro-Western movement in Japanese theater and cinema [2] . The company even thought that around its film studio there would be a whole city (like Hollywood). But the ideas turned out to be too radical for the Japanese society, which was not ready for changes (both spectators and distributors) [6] .
Shochiku Kinema quickly (already in the early 1920s) became one of the leading [5] and most profitable film studios in Japan [2] , becoming the main rival of Nikkatsu studio [9] . By the end of the 1920s, together with Nikkatsu, they owned more than two-thirds of Japanese cinemas, which allowed them to control the movie market and successfully compete with Hollywood - in their cinemas they could scroll their own films along with widespread Hollywood productions around the world. (Although it should be noted that, due to cultural and linguistic barriers, Japanese viewers generally did not perceive Hollywood films as easily as, for example, in Europe.) [2]
One of the revolutionary changes initiated by Shochiku Kinema was the appearance of female actresses in Japanese films. When in 1920, then still just educated, she became the first Japanese film studio to start using female actresses instead of onnagat (onnagata is a male actor dressed as a woman), it shocked the Japanese film industry [2] [5] .
Towards the end of the 1930s, the Shochiku Kinema Company, as the authors of The New History of Japanese Cinema wrote, created a “cinematic style that gave the [Japanese] film audience a glimpse of the visual concept of modernism, later equated to“ Americanism ”adopted by the [film company] with aim to satisfy the requirements of a rapidly changing society ” [1] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 Isolde Standish. A New History of Japanese Cinema . - Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006-05-08. - P. 37–. - ISBN 978-1-4411-6154-3 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 Colette Balmain. Introduction to Japanese Horror Film . - Edinburgh University Press, 2008-10-14. - P. 13–. - ISBN 978-0-7486-3059-2 .
- ↑ Catherine Russell. Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited . - Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011-06-16. - P. 11–. - ISBN 978-1-4411-4461-4 .
- ↑ Kenneth Henshall. Historical Dictionary of Japan to 1945 . - Scarecrow Press, 2013-11-07. - P. 111–. - ISBN 978-0-8108-7872-3 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 Samuel L. Leiter. Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theater . - Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014-10-30. - P. 431–. - ISBN 978-1-4422-3911-1 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema . - Duke University Press, 2000. - P. 211–. - ISBN 0-8223-2519-5 .
- ↑ Donald Kirihara. Style and Tradition in Four Films by Kenji Mizoguchi . - University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1989.
- ↑ Being & becoming, the cinemas of Asia . - Macmillan, 2002. - ISBN 978-0-333-93820-1 .
- ↑ 1 2 Barry Keith Grant. Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film: Independent Film - Road movies . - Schirmer Reference, 2007. - ISBN 978-0-02-865794-3 .
- ↑ Film and the First World War . - Amsterdam University Press, 1995. - ISBN 978-90-5356-064-8 .
Links
- shochiku.com - official site of Shochiku Co., Ltd.
- The World and Its Peoples: Japan: Japan; Korea - Greystone Press, 1964.
- Far Eastern Economic Review . - 1984-01.
- Tina Grant. International Directory of Company Histories . - St. James Press, 2006 .-- ISBN 978-1-55862-549-5 .