Recent Situation around Film Exhibition
Before we examine the situation of Japanese film exhibition in 2016, we look at the history of Japanesefilm exhibition in the 1950s and particularly since 2000.
The 1950s was a period of film’s “golden age” all over the world. In Japan, with postwar restoration
progressing, and control over imported films eliminated, the five major film studios were able toestablish their production systems in Japan and release a number of films every week, and people
rushed to the movie houses.
Immediately after WWII, only 1,220 movie houses survived the war, however, their number rapidly
increased and by 1958, more than 7,000 were entertaining their customers. Japanese film attendance
was highest in 1958, with 1,127,450,000.
In this same year, television broadcasting started, and it quickly spread all over Japan, aided by thebroadcasting of the Crown Prince’s wedding in 1959 and the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. At the same time,the movie house attendance shrank. By 1968, movie attendance decreased to 313,398,000, less than one
third of that of 1958; and by 1978, to 166,040,000, one seventh of that of 1958. Since then, its size hasremained relatively steady (166,630,000 in 2015; and 180,180,000 in 2016).
The smallest attendance was recorded in 1996 with 119,570,000 when the number of the movie houses
also decreased to less than 1,800 (and 1,800 screens). However, the first multi-screen theaters opened
in 1993 and this brought a drastic change to the Japanese film exhibition.
Graph: Film Attendance (multiply by 1,000) (1956-2016)

Graph: Number of Screens (1956-2016) (red: multi-screen theaters)

Reference: “Japanese Film Industry Statistics” by the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (hereafter: Eiren)■ The Number of Screens Increases While the Number of Movie Theaters Decreases
Multi-screen theaters gradually increased and in the 2000s, they became a majority. Until then, thenumber of the movie houses was roughly equal to the number of screens, but since 2000, the number ofscreens became a different category from the number of film exhibition facilities, which is called“number of theaters” or “number of sites.”
The number of screens has increased every year, from 1,734 in 1993 to 3,437 in 2015(note 1). In these20 years, its number nearly doubled. Every January, the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan(Eiren) releases its film-related statistics and when it reports that “the number of screens has been
increasing every year,” many people misinterpret this to mean that the number of movie houses has
been increasing. These two are different elements.
The number of the movie houses decreased from 1,400 in 1993 to about 800 in 2003, and further to 580
in 2015. In these 20 years, about 800 theaters were closed, and the number of the movie houses
decreased by more than 50%.
Meanwhile, the number of multi-screen theaters increased immensely, the conventional and adult film
theaters decreased dramatically, and mini- and repertory theaters kept roughly the same number ofmovie houses. (Note 2) The percentage of multi-screen theaters increased annually, and in 2016, 3,045
out of 3,472 screens were from multi-screen theaters, which was 88%. The increase of screens due tothe increase of multi-screen theaters results in the decease of the movie houses (sites). The movie
houses are mostly found in and around big cities, while the number of towns with no movie houses has
been increasing.
Graph and Chart (left): Number of Movie Theaters (Sites) in each category
Graph and Chart (right): Number of screens in each category

Notes: 1. The number of movie theaters and screens are taken from “Film Exhibition Activity Almanac 2004” (published by Japan
Community Cinema Center, hereafater: JCCC) and others. These numbers are slightly different from those taken from Eiren’s record,
because their time frames are different. 2: In this report, a mini-theater is defined as a “small-scaled movie theater programming single
films for the period more than six months” and a repertory theater as a “movie theater programming classic films and new films after thefirst-run theater release.”

Movie Theater Map in 1993

Movie Theater Map in 2015

■ The Areas With No Theaters Have Increased
We can see the concrete situation in which the number of screens has been increasing while the numberof theaters has been decreasing. In 1993, theaters were spreading out, including in middle-sized andsmall cities, whereas in 2015, theater locations are concentrated in big cities, while the areas with notheaters increased dramatically.
－Movie Theater Map in Middle-sized and Small Cities
The areas with no theaters have been growing, particularly in middle-sized and small cities. The
population of Tokushima Prefecture is 756,000 and that of Tokushima City is 259,000 in 2015. In 1993,
there were 12 movie theaters in Tokushima City, and in the inland areas, there were a few operations
including the Sadamitsu Theater (opened in 1932), Wakimachi Theater, and Cinema Collection. Twenty
years later in 2015, the number of theaters in Tokushima Prefecture decreased from 15 to 2, both inTokushima City. Tokushima City may become a prefectural capital city with no movie theaters.

The population of Akita Prefecture is 1,023,000 now. In 1993, Akita City and 9 other surrounding cities,
towns and villages had a total of 18 theaters and 21 screens. It was a prefecture well served by movietheaters. In 2015, the number of movie theaters decreased to 6 in a total of 4 cities of Akita, Daisen,
Ohdate and Noshiro. The areas with no theaters have been spreading. In Akita City, Cinemabare, which
was operated as a repertory theater, was closed in February 2017.
－Movie Theaters Concentrating Around Big Cities
We will compare the situation of Saitama Prefecture in 2005 and 2015. Saitama Prefecture is north ofTokyo, and the people who live there commute to Tokyo to work. Saitama has had a steady increase inpopulation between 2005 and 2015. Saitama Prefecture current population is 7,267,000, and Saitama
City is 1,264,000. In 2005, there were a total of 22 conventional and multi-screen theaters. By 2015, thenumber of multi-screen theaters had doubled, while only one conventional theater survived. The
number of theaters increased from 22 to 25, and that of screen increased from 117 to 209, almost
doubled.

While theaters were closed in middle-sized and small cities, towns and villages, more and more multiscreen theaters increased in and around big cities, therefore, the number of screens increased. The
cultural gap between big cities and small-sized cities has been growing, and the way people view film
and film culture is changing. In big cities, people can enjoy films on a big screen, but in middle-sized andsmall cities, movie houses are located few and far between, and people are losing the opportunity towatch films on a big screen.

Movie Theater maps of Tokushima Prefecture in 1993 and 2015

Movie Theater Maps of Akita Prefecture in 1993 and 2015

Movie Theater Maps of Saitama Prefecture in 2005 and 2015

■ Digitalization and New Sites for Screening
Another important change during the last 20 years is digitalization. Since the late 2000s, the screening
by DCP (Digital Cinema Packages, including multiple data files for projection on the screen using digital
cinema servers) has spread. By 2013, the change from film projections to digital projections incommercial theaters throughout Japan was nearly 100%.

－Local and Community Movie Theaters
Digitalization requiring a large-scale investment in facilities drove local existing theaters to close. On theother hand, in order to cope with the problem of dying city business centers in local areas, a variety oflocal revival projects were undertaken. There has been a new grass-roots movement by the town
creation councils, non-profit organizations, and the people who had never been engaged in film
exhibition, launching projects to revive or set up a new type of movie theater as a center for communityand business area revivals. These new theaters are on the same line of the number of mini-theaterswhich opened in local cities in the 1990s, and were established under the concept of “community,”“creating towns,” and “revival of the local areas” responding to the changes in film exhibition.
■ Digitalization of Film Exhibition and Public Exhibition
The non-commercial film exhibitions have a long history as the commercial film exhibitions do. These
include the screenings at the National Film Center, museums and other public organizations, film
festivals using local public auditoriums and traveling film operations, independent film screenings
conducted by cine-clubs and film circles in many local areas.
In 1970, the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, opened. In the 1980s,
other public facilities opened including Hiroshima City Cinematographic and Audio-Visual Library (in1982), Kyoto Cultural Museum (in 1988), Kawasaki City Museum (in 1988) and Fukuoka City Museum(in 1993). These facilities are specialized in film collection and exhibition. Further, other museums andcultural organizations which opened in and after the 1990s are engaged in film exhibition regularly,including Museum of Art, Kochi, Kanazwa 21st Century Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum ofPhotography, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media and Sendai Mediatheque.
Currently, more than 140 film festivals of various sizes are operated continuously in Japan, and there arealso a variety of film exhibitions including commercial screenings operated by commercial entities using
public auditoriums and screenings operated by the local governments and cine clubs. These screenings
are widely attended.
Digitalization in public film exhibition has just started and the screening environment in this sphere will
dramatically change towards 2020.

－New Film Exhibitors
In addition to the existing public film exhibitors, several new types of film exhibitors came to the scene.
Digitalization in film exhibition is driving this movement.
Before digitalization, film distributors basically provided the public film exhibitors a copy of thecommercially released medium, the medium of film. As DCP exhibition became dominant, Blu-rays andDVDs began to be provided to the public exhibitions outside the sphere of commercial exhibitions. A
new business handing distributions for independent and public screenings appeared. When heavy
movie projectors and professional technique were no longer required, film exhibition became easier andwas opened to wider sectors.
The way of watching moving images has been diversified. In the 1950s, watching a film meant that you
went to see it at theaters. Even after films began to be broadcast on television, movie houses remained
primary sources for film appreciation. However, since the mid-1980s, video rental business spread allover Japan, and in the 1990s, it was taken over by DVDs. In the mid-2000s, Blu-ray was added as a newformat and the quality of film watching experience at home was largely upgraded. In addition, when
online film streaming services like Hulu and Netflix started, it became common to watch films on PC,tablets and smartphones.

Diversification and individualization of the environment surrounding the habit of watching films spread
rapidly, and the essence of film “communal” experience, and the meaning of the movie theater (forscreenings) as the place to share the experience of watching films has been reconsidered. In the middleof this situation, new film exhibitors began to appear.
The common element seen in these new exhibitors is the tendency to prepare hooks other than the film
itself, so people who are not necessarily film fans can also participate. These exhibitors try out manythings to bring people in. In order to make the experience of watching films special, exhibitors haveincorporated various efforts, such as setting up a café cinema, combining the film program with otherprograms such as art, music and food, hosting outdoors screenings, inviting guests for Q&A, etc. The newtype of traveling screenings featuring an “event” has been also increasing. Beyond the moving image on
the screen, these organizers are trying to make the location of their screening special, as an organic
space, and enlarging the range of their participants, so that a casual community will be created aroundfilm.
The appearance of these new types of film exhibition corresponds to the heightened consciousness forcreating communities and community designs after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. The film
exhibitors seem to have regained the lost movie houses in a new form.
■ The Rapid Increase of Film Productions and Releases
Digitalization also brings a large change in the number of film productions and releases. Innovation infilm medium, thanks to the arrival of digital technique, lowers a film production cost, and therefore, thenumber of productions and releases has dramatically increased. There have been more universities andprofessional schools teaching film, and public policy supporting film production has been established,increasing this increase. The number of released films in 2014 was roughly doubled to 1184 in 10 years,
from 622 in 2003.
The number of screens in Japan also increased by 1,000 to 3,437 in 2015, from 2681 in 2003. Multiscreen theaters need many films to fill their screening rooms. These elements invited the phenomenonof increasing number of the releases of not only Japanese films but foreign films as well. However, theaudience size has not been increasing during these 10 years, resulting in the decrease of attendance andthe income per film.
The majority of the Japanese films is made by independent filmmakers with low budgets, and these areusually shown in mini-theaters in metropolitan areas. These mini-theaters often screened a variety offilms at one time, but now they have to screen even more films. Thus, many of these films are shown
only once a day for a given week. A huge number of independently made films are not screened at all,although the number of film festivals is increasing and introducing these films in competitions. It is achallenge to discover new talent in this situation.

■ The Environment of Exhibition in 35mm or 16mm Film
Lastly, we would like to see what is going on with the situation of exhibition in 35mm or 16mm film. DCP
replaced the conventional screening at theaters releasing new commercial films, and as a result, many
35mm projectors were removed from these theaters, and the opportunity to screen moving imagery infilm has been rapidly decreasing. In the middle of this, the problem has arisen how to secure the places
to experience watching movies in the form of film as the original medium. Only a tiny part among thehuge body of films produced during one hundred year history of film has been digitalized. If thescreening film materials, projectors and projectionists disappear, this huge amount of films will not beable to be seen on a big screen. This is a problem of the film culture. Still, there are a number of movie
houses keeping their projectors but they are hardly used, and keeping the few existing projectors inworking condition becomes more difficult.
The local governments, museums, film archives, film and other libraries, and local culturaladministrations should take up this problem. Currently, there are less than 20 public facilities
presenting film program regularly in Japan. Curators and researchers specialized in film are employed atless facilities. The importance of film, particularly of film exhibition, is not fully recognized. It is more soin the local cultural policies, as the cultural and artistic evaluation of film is lower than that of other arts.
It is an urgent matter to collect and preserve the local moving images, and establish the system to screen
the rich film heritage in the original form.

Graph: The Number of Released films (2001-2016)

from Eiren’s “Japanese Film Industry Statistics”