was a Japanese

film studio A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the production ...

active in the early years of cinema in Japan.

Background

Fukuhōdō was founded in 1910 when Kenzō Tabata built a chain of modern, concrete

movie theater A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

s in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. To supply these eight theaters, Tabata started a production arm, with a studio located in Nippori. The company also enjoyed a huge success importing the French film '' Zigomar'', which "had a major impact on Japanese film culture".

Merger

Fukuhōdō was one of Japan's major motion picture companies until 1912, when it merged with Yoshizawa Shōten, Yokota Shōkai, and

M. Pathe was a Japanese film studio active in the early years of cinema in Japan. Background M. Pathe was founded in 1906 by Shōkichi Umeya, a businessman who had distributed films first in Malaysia and Singapore and then in Japan. He took the name "M. ...

to form

Nikkatsu is a Japanese entertainment company known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio, founded in 1912 during the silent film era. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literal ...

. Some employees of Fukuhōdō who did not take part in the merger, such as Kisaburō Kobayashi, later formed Tenkatsu, exploiting the

Kinemacolor Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson and, more directly, Ed ...

color motion picture system that was acquired before the merger but which was hidden from Nikkatsu. The National Film Center of the

National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo The in Tokyo, Japan, is the foremost museum collecting and exhibiting modern Japanese art. This Tokyo museum is also known by the English acronym MOMAT (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). The museum is known for its collection of 20th-cent ...

is now located where the first Fukuhōdō theater, the Daiichi Fukuhōkan, was in Kyōbashi.

References

Japanese film studios {{film-studio-stub