Japan's Cinemas & Movie Culture

About this book

The films are famous worldwide. The places where Japan watches them are not - until now. Japan once counted more than seven thousand cinemas, kept live narrators beside the silent screen a generation after the talkies arrived, buys printed pamphlets in the lobby and keeps them like opera programmes, and still defends hundreds of small single screens in towns the multiplex maps forgot. This guide walks the whole landscape in 200 entries: Tokyo's flagship multiplexes and repertory houses, the great cinema cities, the classic halls and surviving single screens of the regions, the studio towns and film festivals that make the movies, and the culture of moviegoing itself - its manners, its pamphlets, its cheer screenings and its famous quiet. Every entry tells you what the place is, what it shows, who keeps it alive, and how to visit.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan.