TOHO Cinemas Shibuya

The original Shibuya Toho Theater opened its doors on November 1, 1936 with Irene Dunne in “Showboat”. The theatre first went under the name “Toyoko Theatre” located on the 4th floor of the Shibuya Toho Hall.

Throughout its history, the theatre had a few updates. On September 1, 1944, it was renamed “Shibuya Toho Theatre”. A couple of more auditoriums were added (doesn’t mean that it was an early conversion, its that more theatres were added next to the “Toho”). There was the “Shibuya Cultural Theatre” on November 17, 1952 on the 1st floor, and the “Shibuya Toho Kaikan” on December 26, 1956 on the bottom floor.

Eventually becoming a triplex all-in-one, the Scala-Toho-Cultural Theatre is one of the most popular movie houses in all of Tokyo running American first-run box-office smashes throughout the years such as the Star Wars and Star Trek franchise, “Annie”, “Ghostbusters”, “The Terminator”, “Back To The Future”, and “Top Gun”, as well as Disney classics such as “Robin Hood” (plus “Winnie The Pooh And Tigger Too” which was the featurette to “Robin Hood” in Japan despite it being the featurette for “The Island at the Top of the World” in North America and England), “The Black Hole”, and “The Black Cauldron”, including the re-releases of “Cinderella”, “Alice In Wonderland”, “101 Dalmatians”, “Pinocchio” and “Dumbo”.

The Shibuya Toho auditorium is the largest with 1,026 seats. Initially, the Toho auditorium was mainly a Japanese film house but in March 1976, it flipped its format towards American films.

The other two auditoriums were the Shibuya Scala which has a capacity of 494 seats, and the Shibuya Cultural which has 204 seats. Both auditoriums ran mostly American films including some Japanese films being added.

Sadly the theatre closed on February 26, 1989 with “Die Hard” at Screen 1, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” at Screen 2, and “They Live” at Screen 3.

A short time later, a brand new four-screen movie theatre was added in the same facility. The 4-screen Shibuto Cine Tower opened its doors on July 6, 1991 with “Home Alone” at Screen 1 (606 seats), “Backdraft” at Screen 2 (790 seats), and “Kindergarten Cop” at Screens 3 and 4 (342 and 248).

In 2011, the Shibuto Cine Tower went through a major renovation. In February of that same year, Screens 1 and 2 closed for renovation, reopening on July 15, 2011. The auditoriums for both screens were divided, and the theatre reopened under the name “TOHO Cinemas Shibuya” on July 15, 2011 with 4 screens located where both Screens 1 and 2 were originally located. A short time later, Screens 3 and 4 did the same thing, and reopened under the auditorium names “Screens 5 and 6” on November 30 of that same year. On that same day, all theatres were upgraded to digital.

Nowadays, the theatre has a total of 6-screens and a seating capacity of 1,212, with two wheelchairs in each auditorium. Screen 3 was the largest with 297 while the remaining screens have ranging capacities of 115-234.

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