Shizuoka Orion Theatre

The 1,100-seat Shizuoka Orion Theatre opened its doors as an American movie house operated by the Shizuoka Corporation on December 31, 1951 with Gary Cooper in “Dallas”. The nearly International Theatre previously screened American features in the area until its opening of the Orion Theatre.

The theater building itself was made of reinforced concrete unlike most theaters in the area. In December 1955, the Orion Theatre celebrated its fourth anniversary by handing out lottery tickets to all attendees of the play Daddy Long Legs (1955, USA), with the chance to win a washing machine or an electric gramophone. On Christmas Day of the same year, the Kinseiken, a coffee shop with its main store in front of Shizuoka Station, opened a branch in the Orion Theatre’s coffee room.

In 1959, star film director Alfred Hitchcock visited Japan, and on the Tokyo-Osaka express train that stopped at Shizuoka Station, he posed for photos and signed autographs with Shizuoka movie promoters. He was the one who immediately screened five of his films at the Orion Theatre, including “To Catch A Thief”, “Vertigo”, “North By Northwest”, “Pyscho”, and “The Birds”.

The building that housed Orion Theater was a three-story entertainment complex that also housed restaurants, coffee shops, clubs, beauty salons, and offices in addition to the 1,100-seat movie theater. An additional fee was charged for the special “Royal Box” seats on the second floor of the Orion in 1960.

In June of the same year, Shizuoka would later open the Shizuoka Shochiku Theater and the Yurakucho Theater, followed by the Shizuoka Daiei Theater in December of the same year, and the Shizuoka Yurakucho Theater in December 1961. Together with the Orion Theater, Shizuoka opened four other theaters with a span of less than three years. This brought the total of movie theaters in Shizuoka City to 27 movie theaters as of 1962. The original Orion Theater was one of the largest theaters in Japan in terms of both capacity and screen size, and was called the “best theater in the Tokai region.” On weekends, audiences would queue, and snack vendors would walk around the seats. The original Orion Theater was a symbol of Nanamacho, and Takashi Saito, who served as sales director at Shizuoka Katsuyo, said, “It was the pride of the town of Shizuoka.”

Unfortunately after almost 20 years of operation, the original Orion Theatre closed for the final time on October 19, 1971, screening Steve McQueen in “Le Mans” as its last movie due to relocation.

In the 1960s, the film industry was in decline, and Daiei went bankrupt in December 1971. Three months earlier in September 1971, the Shizuoka Daiei nearby closed and the Shizuoka Shochiku Theater took over the site, and the Orion Theater immediately moved to the site of the older Shizuoka Shochiku Theater and opened as the second Orion Theater. The new Orion Theater opened in late-1971, although its opening date was not confirmed yet, the newer Orion opened with William Holden in “Wild Rovers”. Throughout much of mid-1974, the 1973 smash classic “The Exorcist” (which came to the Orion on July 20, 1974) broke the record for the largest audience attendance ever at the theater.

Despite the move, the huge 12mx19m mural on the front of the building that was completed in 1957 during the Shizuoka Shochiku era was still used. The mural was modeled after Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte.” It was produced between both 1956 and 1957 before the completion of the Shizuoka Kaikan, using 1.65 million Mino ware tiles produced in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture. Each piece was produced in Tajimi, and was then transported to the schoolyard of Shizuoka Prefectural Shizuoka High School, assembled, and installed on the wall until the building’s completion.

The Orion’s screen is one of the largest of its kind in a permanent theater in all of Japan, measuring 17 meters wide and 8 meters high. The Orion once went through renovation which include seating upgrades, and reopened on March 10, 1990. By centimeters, the seats are 53cm wide which is 5cm wider than the previous upgrade. The width is 120-130cm which is also more than 20cm wider than the previous upgrade as well. In 1992, the electric poles on Nanabura-cho Street were buried underground and monuments such as traffic cameras were installed, and the theater once given the nickname “Nanabura Cinema Street”. The second Orion Theatre featured a spacious waiting room and a curved staircase, creating an extraordinary and luxurious space, and the lobby was decorated with a chandelier and featured a painting of “Flowers and People” by Shizuoka-born sculptor Soichi Sugimoto. Numerous oil and watercolor paintings were displayed in the lobby and corridors. A curved staircase led to the special seats on the second floor, the wall of which featured “Beginning of Autumn” by Japanese painter Eisetsu Shiratori. The stairway has around 30 steps between the reception desk and the seats at Orion, but before 1998, theater staff members have to carry wheelchair users up the stairs. In December of the same year, like other cinemas in Shizuoka, a wheelchair-accessible stairlift was installed. A large mural was painted on the front of the building with the words “LIVE TODAY” written on it. In the auditorium also featured a large stage that could accommodate performances and stage greetings, and located in backstage features both dressing rooms and bathrooms.

A second renovation later took place in 2003 and reopened on June 6 of that same year. It officially became the first theater in the Shizuoka Prefecture to introduce premium seats. The seats are then upgraded measuring 60cm wider with deeper backrests. The number of seats was reduced from 619 to 590 giving more legroom for moviegoers, and the mosaics on the exterior walls were also restored.

As of 2010, there were five movie theaters remaining with 13 screens in total across Nanamacho, and Shizuoka Katsu General Manager Sato Senjin said in a statement that “Nanamacho is the only place in Japan where a movie district remains on this scale.” However, in the 1990s and 2000s, multiplexes in the same facility began to spread throughout Japan, and Shizuoka Katsu also made plans to consolidate its theaters in Nanamacho and build a multi-screener.

As of that result, the Orion Theater had an amazing six-decade run with the most popular films that were screened in the city. The Orion Theatre took the final bow, closing on October 5, 2011 with the 1954 Japanese film “Twenty Four Eyes” which was attended by 285 people. Applause and shouts of “Thank You” rang through the theater, ending almost 60 years of service. This left the movie district with only one theater in the area, the five-screen Shizuoka Toho Kaikan.

Shortly after its closure, the Shichibura Cinema Street Prosperity Association worked to preserve the huge mural. Although the association was unable to save the entire mural, they created a monument measuring 2mx2m from part of the mural. The Shizuoka City Urban Development Corporation and other related companies launched a project called the “Atosaki 7 Project” to revitalize the area, with the aim of “looking back on the remains of the film culture and thinking about its future.”

In October 2012, as part of the project, an outdoor screening event called “Starry Sky Cinema Week” was held, during which classic films such as Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” and “The Gold Rush” were projected on the wall of the building at the former site of the Orion Theater at night. A monument made from the mural was installed on the ground at the former site of the Orion Theater, but was temporarily removed when construction of the new Shizuoka City Waterworks Bureau building began in December 2013. In February 2016, the Shizuoka City Waterworks Bureau building was completed on the former site of the Orion Theater, and the 2x2m monument was installed on the wall of the main entrance.

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