TOHO Cinemas Yurakuza

The Toho Sukiyabashi Theater opened its doors on October 9, 1957 with Van Johnson in “Action Of The Tiger”. It started life as a foreign film premiere cinema operated directly by Toho and was a twin-screener, with the New Toho Theater on the 3rd floor and the Sukiyabashi Toho Theater on the basement floor.

The Sukiyabashi Toho Theater on the basement floor started life as a fine arts theater until April 20, 1962 when it became a movie house under the Daiei chain. When Daiei went bankrupted in 1971, it was converted into a foreign roadshow house on December 4 of that same year. This didn’t last long, and on May 5, 1972, the entire theater was renamed the “New Toho Cinema 1 & 2”.

Some notable films the theater ran over the years include “Annie Hall”, “Hannah And Her Sisters”, and “Field Of Dreams”. Unfortunately on March 25, 1995, Chanter Cine (now TOHO Cinemas Chandler) opened nearby and the second screen closed on June 30 of that same year. The former second screen became a beer hall. The remaining Cinema 1 became New Toho Cinema on October 17, 1998, dropping the number from its name three years and four months after Cinema 2 closed.

After finishing a one-week run of “Taxi NY”, the New Toho Cinema closed its doors for a three-month revonation beginning on January 8, 2005 and ending on April 9, 2005, and the theater reopened as the Yurakuza, named after the theater of the same name that used to stand next to Hibiya Theater. As in the New Toho days, it alternated between showing foreign and Japanese films. It took over the functions of the “Hibiya Movie” chain, one of the chain masters of Toho’s foreign film releases.

In 2006, the Hankyu Toho Group became the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group as a result of the merger of the Hankyu and Hanshin Groups, and Toho’s film exhibition division was reorganized, and on October 1, 2006, during its run of “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”, the management and operation of Yurakucho was transferred to Toho Cinemas and became part of Toho once again. It was renamed the TOHO Cinemas Yurakucho on February 10, 2009.

The TOHO Cinemas Yurakucho closed for the final time on February 27, 2015 with “Boyhood” and was due to the closure of the New Tokyo main building. As a result, one of the Toho chain masters in the Yurakucho and Hibiya areas were lost, but three years after the closure, on March 29, 2018, the Tokyo Midtown Hibiya which housed the TOHO Cinemas Hibiya opened nearby. It was demolished a short time afterward and the Hulic Square Tokyo building was built on its site, which took around two to three years to construct, ending in October 2018.

The role of chainmaster of New Toho Cinema was then taken over by the Yurakucho Subaruza but it gradually began screening more small-scale films until closure on October 20, 2019 when TOHO opened the Hibiya theater nearby.

Get Movie Tickets & Showtimes

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