Eric Pasquier

Other entertainment includes live character shows in the Noh theatre and a Ninja show, in which a female ninja in sparkly silver tights performs gymnastics to an accompaniment of screams and shrieks. This show is particularly popular with western audiences – and has been even more so since the phenomenal success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000.

 

There are also frequent stunt and special effects shows. The best is found by wandering down winding paths towards a clearing of medieval surroundings. Chairs are lined up in front of a small cluster of rocks with a creek running through it and you’re invited to sit down. As you watch, smoke begins to seep from the rocks, the creeks begin to rage and the ground shakes and splits apart, spewing mist and smoke into the sky. As a finale, an animatronics sea monster with a gigantic horned head rises up, to gasps and applause from the audience.

 

For the kids, there’s plenty of interactive entertainment, such as fan or porcelain painting. Or enter the costume studio, where you can dress up in a kimono or other traditional costume and have your picture or video taken.

 

During recent years, more and more rides and attractions have been added to Toei Movieland to compete with the growing number of amusement parks that are springing up all over the country and to help justify its admission fee of ¥2,200 (just under 19 euros) for adults, half price for kids.

 

A recent addition for 2002 is a haunted house. Although it costs an extra ¥500 (4 euros) to get in, this is a superior kind of attraction – no plastic skeletons and nylon spiders’ webs here. This is a proper display dedicated to Japanese history. You walk through rooms filled with relics of Japanese folklore, such as zombies, skeletons, ghosts and a myriad of monsters. On the way, of course, various ghouls and nasty things leap out at you, so that the air becomes thick with schoolgirl shrieking and nervous giggles. The final room is definitely not recommended if you’re really, really jumpy. You find yourself at an apparent dead end with no visible entrance or exit – just a silent, immobile suit of samurai armour that waits and waits and waits...

 

Toei Movieland isn’t just an amusement park. A vast collection of items and accessories relating to the history of the Japanese film industry are on display in the Museum of Japanese Film, the symbolic heart of Toei Movieland. A section of the museum called ‘Eiga no Dendo’, meaning ‘The Sanctuary of Film’, celebrates the memory of all those who contributed to the development of Japanese cinema: directors, producers, screenwriters and actors. Here you can retrace the beginnings of the careers of actors such as the internationally renowned Takakura Ken who starred in Black Rain and discover which directors began their careers at Toei, such as Shohei Imamura, the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes 1997 with The Eel and Akira Kurosawa, best known for The Seven Samurai (1954).

 

Kyoto’s close relationship with cinema began over a century ago, when Inahata Katsutaro, from Kyoto, received a grant to study film in Paris, where the Lumiere brothers were bringing cinematography to Europeans. Inahata met Auguste Lumiere, and obtained the right to promote cinematography throughout Asia.

 

Inahata believed that cinema was the best medium for introducing contemporary European culture into Japan. His first cinematographic presentation took place in Kyoto in February 1897, and was an enormous success.

 

After Inahata left the film business, a man called Yokota Einosuke took over, as the first promoter of the Japanese film industry. Yokota bought many films from the French film company Pathe, and as the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 broke out, he completely monopolised the importation of the latest newsreel-type coverage from the front, while continuing to distribute new films throughout Japan.

 

After the war, Yokota tried to promote advertising films in Japan. He gave this assignment to Makino Shozo, the young director of the Senbonza Theater in Nishijin. This was to be the beginning of Japanese film production proper.

 

Proud of the large number of films either produced by Makino Productions or imported from the French company Pathe, Yokota Einosuke opened his first cinema in Tokyo, a second in Osaka, and finally a third in Kyoto, in February 1908. Historical re-enactments, love stories and ‘chivalry films’ in costumes from the Edo era were huge hits, and formed the basis of the Japanese film industry’s success for the first half of the century.

 

At the time of the Japanese film industry’s development, the three main studios of Kyoto – Shochiku, Daiei and Toei – produced half of the country’s films. Kyoto became the Hollywood of Japan. The film stars that could be seen around town gave the city an aura of glamour. Powdered beauties and young newcomers with the frightful regard of the samurai warrior could be seen in their sumptuous costumes on their way from one studio to another. At night, their prestigious silhouettes attracted crowds in the most fashionable of the city’s haunts.

 

It is this golden age of the production houses which is celebrated at Toei Movieland. Although many film companies faced financial difficulties in the 1950s, Toei survived thanks mainly to the production of period dramas and propaganda films against the evils of the Japanese military regime in World War II.

 

Although Universal Studios recently opened not far from Kyoto, with enormous crowds flooding the place, visitors come to Toei Movieland to imagine what Kyoto was really like in times gone by.

 

Copyright © Eric Pasquier

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