Meitetsu Toho Theater

The 1,022-seat Meitetsu Toho Theater opened its doors as a single-screener on June 3, 1967 with the rerelease of Clark Gable in “Gone With The Wind” presented in 70mm, costing an estimate 30 million yen, or $188,436 in USD. It was located on the 6th to 9th floors of the Meitetsu Bus Terminal building in front of Nagoya Station.

Though there’s not a lot of information about the theater during its early heyday, the Meitetsu Toho was one of the more popular theaters in Nagoya, which ran a lot of first-run American smashes throughout the years, including the “Star Wars”, “Alien”, “Back to the Future”, and “Jurassic Park” franchises (with the original movie being the most popular film at the theater), as well as “Titanic” (the second most popular film at the theater).

On July 11, 1998, the Meitetsu Toho became a twin for one smart reason, and the answer is Japan’s legendary monster. When “Godzilla” hit the screens in both Japan and America, Japanese theater managements begin to both panic and scramble, but they handled it well-enough before with “Titanic” earlier that year. There, at the Meitetsu Toho, a brilliant idea came from the management. On March 11, 1998, the theater closed for a major four-month renovation which resulted the main auditorium to strip into two, and downgrade its capacity to 686 seats, with Screen 1 housing 540 seats and Screen 2 housing 146 seats, and both featuring Surround EX and DTS supported SDDS 1. One of those reasons of its updated seating capacity is because of the change is tailored to needs, and both the foot space and seating width was expanded in line with the renovation.

Unfortunately, on February 24, 2006, the Meitetsu Toho closed for the final time because of the multiplex boom, as well as attendance issues. That night, Screen 2 held a special showing of “Titanic” as a tribute.

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