Shochiku
Japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki
Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Japanese: 松竹株式会社, Hepburn: Shōchiku Kabushiki gaisha) is a Japanese entertainment company. Founded in 1895, it initially managed kabuki theaters in Kyoto; in 1914, it also acquired ownership of the Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo. In 1920, Shochiku entered the film production industry and established the Kamata Film Studio. Currently, it is considered one of Japan's Big Four film studios and is the oldest among the Big Four. Shochiku is a member of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPPAJ).
It also produces and distributes anime films, in particular those produced by Sunrise, a division of Bandai Namco Filmworks (which has a long-time partnership—the company released most, if not all, anime films produced by Sunrise). Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada. It has also produced films by highly regarded independent and "loner" directors such as Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi and Taiwanese New Wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien.
History
As Shochiku Kinema
The company was founded in 1895 as a kabuki production company and later began producing films in 1920.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Shochiku” is japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Shochiku, Japanese and movie, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q122549. VIAF identifies the subject as 306402322. The Library of Congress control number is n85268047. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1914 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shochiku” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.