Denkikan

Coordinates: 35°42′47.25″N 139°47′35.86″E / 35.713125°N 139.7932944°E / 35.713125; 139.7932944

The Denkikan (電気館^?) was the first dedicated movie theater in Japan. Originally a hall built in Asakusa's Rokku theater district to present spectacles featuring electricity ("denki" in Japanese), it was converted into a movie theater in October 1903 by Yoshizawa Shōten, the most successful of the film companies at the time. Featuring benshi such as Saburo Somei,^[1] it quickly became the symbol of the new phenomenon of the motion pictures and many cinemas around Japan were later created that borrowed the name "Denkikan."^[2] It later became a Nikkatsu theater and then a Shochiku theater before finally closing in 1976. A historically accurate model of the theater is currently on display at the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Tokyo. It is also cited in Kaizo Hayashi's film To Sleep so as to Dream.^[3]

Notes

1. ^ Tanaka, Jun'ichirō (1975) (in Japanese). Nihon eiga hattatsushi. 1. Chūō Kōron. pp. 110. 
2. ^ See, for instance, the home page of the Kumamoto Denkikan.
3. ^ "Asakusa Rokku eigakangai no ōgon jidai" (in Japanese). http://e-arashima.net/denki_kan.html. Retrieved 4 April 2010.