Piccadilly 1-2-3-4

The Aloha Theatre opened its doors on July 2, 1957 with John Wayne in “The Searchers”, and its neighbor, the Shochiku Central Theatre, opened that same day. The Aloha Theatre is one of the more popular houses in Nagoya and housed a grand total of 1,100 Aichi Woodworking stadium-styled seats with a 27x60ft screen, featuring an American roadshow film policy. Its brother, the Shochiku Central Theatre, screens Shochiku films with a capacity of 500 Aichi Woodworking seats.

Both theaters are located on the 6th and 7th floors of the North Building of the Nagoya Mitsui Building and were both located right next to the Toyota building, where three other theaters, the Grand, the Roxy, and the News, are located as an adjacent. One of the most popular films screened at the Aloha was Charlton Heston in “Ben-Hur” in 1960, which attracted over 240,000 moviegoers. Also in 1960, on July 30, 1960, the Aloha Theater was renamed Theatre Nagoya, and was later renamed Cinerama Nagoya during the mid-1960’s. At that time, the Shochiku Central Theater was renamed Nagoya Central Theater.

On May 21, 1988, the Central Nippon Kogyo chain renamed both theaters “Piccadilly 1” and “Piccadilly 2”. A third screen called “Piccadilly 3” opened in 1995, followed by “Piccadilly 4” the following year in 1996. Screen 1 retained as the largest auditorium in Nagoya at the time, housing 600 seats. Screen 2 housed 289 seats, while Screens 3 and 4 housed 70 seats each (69 and 71).

Unfortunately, because of the building’s aging, final closure came for the four Piccadillies on March 31, 2010. As a tribute, classics such as “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Roman Holiday” were screened for its final four days of operation.

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