STUDIO TOHO

Toho was created by the founder of the Hankyu Railway, Ichizō Kobayashi, in 1932 as the Tokyo-Takarazuka Theater Company (株式会社東京宝塚劇場, Kabushiki gaisha Tōkyō Takarazuka Gekijō). It managed much of the kabuki in Tokyo and, among other properties, the eponymous 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. it is best known as...