The is a long-standing

movie theater A movie theater (American English) or cinema (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), also known as a movie house, cinema hall, picture house, picture theater, the movies, the pictures, or simply theater, is a business ...

located on the east side of

Shinjuku Station is a major railway station in Tokyo, Japan, that serves as the main connecting hub for rail traffic between central/eastern Tokyo (the Special wards of Tokyo, special wards) and Western Tokyo on the inter-city rail, commuter rail, and rapid tr ...

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Originally started as the Musashinokan in May 1920, it quickly became Tokyo's premiere independent high-class theater showing foreign films. The theater program featured top-level film criticism and a committee of the managers and

film critics Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findin ...

such as Akira Iwasaki helped program the films shown there. It was also famous in the silent era for the erudite

benshi were Japanese performers who provided live narrator, narration for silent films (both Japanese films and Western world, Western films). ''Benshi'' are sometimes called or . Role The earliest films available for public display were produced by W ...

narration of

Musei Tokugawa was a Japanese ''benshi'', actor, raconteur, essayist, and radio and television personality. Career Musei (as he was called) first came to prominence as a ''benshi'', a narrator of films during the silent era in Japan. He was celebrated for h ...

. It also occasionally showed Japanese films such as

Teinosuke Kinugasa was a Japanese filmmaker and actor. His best-known films include the Silent film, silent Experimental film, avant-garde films ''A Page of Madness'' and ''Crossroads (1928 film), Crossroads'' and the Academy Awards, Academy Award-winning historic ...

's ''

A Page of Madness is a 1926 Japanese Silent film, silent Experimental film, experimental Horror film, horror film directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Lost film, Lost for 45 years until it was rediscovered by Kinugasa in his storehouse in 1971, the film is the produc ...

''. When it was rebuilt in 1968 as part of a multi-purpose building, occupying the seventh floor, it changed its name to the Shinjuku Musashinokan. Its owner, Musashino Kōgyō, also started other theaters using the name, such as the Ōi Musashinokan and the Nakano Musashinokan. The Shinjuku Musashinokan still operates as a theater showing films on three screens.

References

External links

Shinjuku Musashinokan
Official page

The Musashinokan pamphlet in the 1920s (in Japanese) Cinemas in Tokyo Theatres completed in 1920 1920 establishments in Japan Buildings and structures in Shinjuku {{Japan-theat-struct-stub