Nippon Theatre

The 552-seat Nippon Theatre opened its doors on September 29, 1954 with Richard Burton in “The Robe”, as the chain master of Toho in Hokkaido, which has always maintained the top position in annual audience numbers and box office results throughout its history. It boasts a large CinemaScope screen compatible with 70mm films, and was widely known for its second floor seats (commonly known as “fixed seats”), which require an additional fee to enter, and its large hand-painted signboard.

The Nippon Theatre is one of the most popular movie houses in all of both Sapporo and Hokkaido, which ran a ton of American first-run box-office smashes throughout the years.

A lot of the films that screened at the Nippon Theatre include “The Robe” (their opening feature), “Ben-Hur”, “Lawrence Of Arabia”, “Cleopatra”, “Help!”, ‘Doctor Zhivago", “2001: A Space Odyssey” (ran there twice, once in 1968 and again in 1978), “Fiddler On The Roof”, “The Poseidon Adventure” (both films), “Earthquake” (Earthquake became the first film at the Nippon Theatre to gross out ¥100,000,000, which is $660,855 in United States money), all Godfather films, “The Towering Inferno”, “King Kong” (the 1976 version), most Star Wars films (except “Episode III - Revenge Of The Sin”), most 007 series (including “A View To A Kill”, “License To Kill”, and “Goldeneye”), “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”, “Grease”, “Apocalypse Now” (ran there twice, first in 1980 and again in 2002), “Once Upon A Time In America”, the first three Indiana Jones films, “Ghostbusters”, all three Back To The Future films, the first three Rambo films, “Commando”, “Top Gun”, “Three Amigos”, all Robocop films, the first two Predator films, all Terminator films (the second film “Terminator 2” became the second biggest hit in the Nippon Theatre’s history), “Platoon”, “The Untouchables”, “Full Metal Jacket”, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Die Hard”, “Ghost”, “Backdraft”, “Cliffhanger”, all Jurassic Park films, “The Lion King”, “Forrest Gump”, “Twister”, “Independence Day”, “Titanic” (Titanic became the biggest hit in the Nippon Theatre’s history, which attracted over 200,000 moviegoers in its six-month run, beating out “Terminator 2”), “Godzilla” (the American version), “Saving Private Ryan”, “The Green Mile”, and several X-Men films.

Unfortunately due to the deterioration of the building and the multiplex boom across Hokkaido, the Nippon Theatre ad a special one-week event screening classic movies as a tribute, including “River Of No Return” and “Ben-Hur”. This lasted until the Nippon Theatre closed for the final time on August 31, 2003 with one last showing of its biggest hit movie in the Nippon Theatre’s history, “Titanic”.

On December 3, 2004, the Sapporo Toho Building was built on the site, and features a monument that gives the special tribute to the Nippon Theatre which has the years on when it opened and closed (1954-2003).

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