By Mark Schilling
The Japanese exhibition business has changed radically since Warner Mycal opened
Japan's first true multiplex in 1993. In the decade since, theatre operators, including
foreign-backed players such as Warner Mycal, AMC and Virgin, have added nearly 1,000
screens, mostly on multiplex sites. By the end of the 2003, the total had reached 2,681, in
a country with a population of 127 million..
That same year these screens recorded 162,347,000 admissions -- which meant that
Japanese went to the theatre in 2003 an average of 1.28 times. The total box office was
Y203,259 million yen ($1,954 million), of which Japanese films accounted for 33%,
foreign films, 67%. The total number of films released was 622, with 287 Japanese, 335
foreign.
Japan's biggest exhibitor is Toho, which acquired Virgin's eight sites and 81 screens in
March of this year, raising its total to 365 screens. In the spring of 2005 Toho Cinemas,
which operates Toho's twelve sites around the country, will open its thirteenth, a
nine-screen multiplex in the Chofu, a Tokyo suburb.
Toho's strongest rival, Shochiku, also operates a multiplex chain, while Warner Mycal,
the industry pioneer, manages a total of 45 sites, in every region of the country.
Projection and sound technology is still mainly imported, though Sony and other Japanese
electronics giants have made in-roads in what is still a highly specialized, largely
American-dominated business.
In December 2000 Imax Corporation sold the first commerical DLP cinema projector for
commercial use in Japan to T-Joy, a multiplex operator backed by Toei. A year later, in
July 2001, exhibition major Toho and telecom NTT West tested a system for sending the
Hayao Miyazaki animation Spirited Away to a Toho theatre via an NTT fibre-optic line.
Then in July 2002 nine Japanese theatres, including those operated by Toei and Toho,
digitally projected Star War Episode 2 Attack of the Clones -- the first such nationwide
screening of a major motion picture. In August 2003 Digital Projection International,
together with joint-venture partner NEC Viewtechnology and distributor Toshiba Denko,
conducted the first-ever test of its cC25 projection system in Japan, at Tokyo's Togeki
Theatre.
Despite these and other advances, the vision of transmitting films digitally via satellite
and cable to theatres across the country remains just that -- a vision. Costs remains high,
while Warner Mycal and other multplex operators struggle to wring profits in a
no-longer-booming market.
But there are multiplexes -- and there are multiplexes. Japanese has its share of
nondescript sites attached to supermarkets (or, in some cases, perched on top of them,
like the kiddy playlands of yore) -- but it also has theatres that push the design envelope
in ways distinctly, lavishly, even bizarrely Japanese.
The site that has pushed it the farthest -- and has been reaping the largest rewards, is
located in Roppongi Hills, an business and entertainment complex in the Tokyo
sub-center of Roppongi -- a sort of Soho for the international set.
From its list of offices, shops, restaurants, cinemas and one hotel (The Grand Hyatt -- not
the one in Lost In Translation), Roppongi Hills may sound similar to other such
complexes in major urban centres. But owner Mori Building and its partners have created
a warren of glass, steel and stone that is uniquely maddening in its complexity, imposing
in its grandeur -- and Japanese in its preference for the curved passageway and secret
hideaway over the grid and the grand public space. There is nothing else like it in Tokyo
-- or the rest of the world for that matter.
Visitors come, immediately get lost -- and come again -- a total of 26 million in the first
six months since Roppongi Hills opened in April of 2003. (By contrast Tokyo Disneyland
and DisneySea attracted 25 million for the entire year.) Many are filing into Virgin Toho
Cinemas -- a nine-screen cineplex operated by Toho Cinemas (following Toho's purchase
of all eight Virgin multiplexes in Japan in March of 2003). Up a long flight of stone steps
above the main Roppongi Hills walkway, the complex looks, with its towering glass
front, revolving door and long open ticket counter, like an airport terminal building.
The resemblance is not coincidental: The theatre is divided into two "zones" designed to
mimic Economy and First Class. The latter, the Premiere Zone, includes a lounge
exclusively for Premier ticket buyers (who have paid Y3,000 a pop versus the Y1,800
standard adult admission), a Premier Garden that is a mix of English and Japanese styles
and a Premier Screen with 80 reclining seats, each twice as spacious as the average.
Everyone, including the hoi polloi who patronize the other eight screens, ranging from
164 to 650 seats, can qualify for a Cine Mileage Mastercard. Card holders accumulate
"mileage" points (one minute of screen time = one point) that can be exchanged for
screenings, cinema goods and "upgrades" to Premiere. Also, everyone, Cine Mileage
members or no, can order tickets over the Internet (including a site for mobiles) and pick
them up from a bank of machines in the lobby -- no need to stand in line.
The projection technology, as might be expected, is state-of-the-art, including THX, DTS
digital, SR-D and SR-D EX systems in all nine theatres and Sony's SDDS system in one.
This, the largest in the complex, also boats the largest screen in Japan, -- 8.4 metres high
and 20.2 curved metres wide. There are two projection rooms -- one for the six screens on
the first floor and one for the three screens on the second, both equipped with DLP
projectors.
Various architectural touches, including an eerily underlit, glassed-in "walkway of light"
that bridges the escalator and upper-level theatres, add to the futuristic feel. If Stanley
Kubrick had a shot a cinema scene in 200l -- A Space Odyssey this would have been his
ideal set. The current millennium has yet to see its first Monolith, but Virgin Toho
Cinemas Roppongi Hills is its biggest multiplexed break with the 20th century past.
