is a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese movie studio

Movie studio

A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...

 and production company for kabuki

Kabuki

is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

. It also produces and distributes anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 films. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu

was a prominent Japanese film director and script writer. He is known for his distinctive technical style, developed during the silent era. Marriage and family, especially the relationships between the generations, are among the most persistent themes in his body of work...

, Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His film Ugetsu won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Mizoguchi is renowned for his mastery of the long take and mise-en-scène...

, Mikio Naruse

Mikio Naruse

was a Japanese filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer who directed some 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967.Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook...

, Keisuke Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita

was a Japanese film director.Although lesser known internationally than his fellow filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa , Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu , Keisuke Kinoshita was nonetheless a household figure at home beloved by audience and critics alike, especially in the forties through the sixties...

 and Yōji Yamada

Yoji Yamada

is a Japanese film director best known for his Otoko wa Tsurai yo series of films and his Samurai Trilogy ....

. Shochiku has also produced films by highly regarded independent and "loner" directors such as Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike

is a highly prolific and controversial Japanese filmmaker. He has directed over seventy theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. In the years 2001 and 2002 alone, Miike is credited with directing fifteen productions...

, Takeshi Kitano

Takeshi Kitano

is a Japanese filmmaker, comedian, singer, actor, film editor, presenter, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, and one-time video game designer who has received critical acclaim, both in his native Japan and abroad, for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. The famed Japanese film critic...

, Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa

was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...

 and Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

ese New Wave

Cinema of Taiwan

The history of Chinese-language cinema has three separate threads of development: Cinema of Hong Kong, Cinema of Mainland China and Cinema of Taiwan . Taiwanese cinema grew up outside of the Hong Kong mainstream and the censorship of the People's Republic of China.Taiwanese cinema is deeply rooted...

 director Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is an award-winning film director and a leading figure of Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement.-Biography:...

.
The company was founded in 1895 by brothers Takejirō Otani and Matsujirō Shirai as a kabuki production company, and named in 1902 after the combined characters of take (bamboo) and matsu (pine) from their names, reflecting the traditional three symbols of happiness, bamboo, pine, and plum. The name was initially read as the kunyomi matsutake, but changed in 1937 to the onyomi shochiku.

Shochiku grew quickly, expanding its business to many other Japanese live theatric styles, like Noh

Noh

, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...

 and Bunraku

Bunraku

, also known as Ningyō jōruri , is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theater, founded in Osaka in 1684.Three kinds of performers take part in a bunraku performance:* Ningyōtsukai or Ningyōzukai—puppeteers* Tayū—the chanters* Shamisen players...

. The company began making films in 1920 and was the first film studio to abandon the use of female impersonators and sought to model itself and its films after Hollywood standards, bringing such things as the star system

Star system (film)

The star system was the method of creating, promoting and exploiting movie stars in Classical Hollywood cinema. Studios would select promising young actors and glamorise and create personas for them, often inventing new names and even new backgrounds...

 and the sound stage

Sound stage

In common usage, a sound stage is a soundproof, hangar-like structure, building, or room, used for the production of theatrical filmmaking and television production, usually located on a secure movie studio property.-Overview:...

 to Japan. By the early 1930s, Shochiku had begun to specialise in the shomin-geki

Shomingeki

Shomin-geki is a genre of realist film and television or theater plays in Japan which focuses on the lives of common working class people....

 genre in which Ozu and Naruse worked.

In 1936, Shochiku closed its studio in Kamata

Kamata, Ota, Tokyo

is a neighborhood in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan.Features include the Kamata Station, Kamata High School, and the headquarters of Toyoko Inn....

, Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 and relocated to nearby Ofuna

Ofuna Station

is a railway station in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan, operated by East Japan Railway Company .-Lines:Ōfuna Station is served by the Tōkaidō Main Line, Shōnan-Shinjuku Line, Negishi Line , Yokosuka Line as well as the Shonan Monorail....

; this studio remaining in operation for 64 years. At the beginning of the 1960s, the studio was involved in the Japanese New Wave (Nuberu bagu) and launched the career of Nagisa Oshima

Nagisa Oshima

is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. After graduating from Kyoto University he was hired by Shochiku Ltd. and quickly progressed to directing his own movies, making his debut feature A Town of Love and Hope in 1959....

 among others, though Oshima soon went independent; the films of Oshima and other film makers were not financially successful and the company changed its policies.

In 2000 the Ofuna site was sold off to Kamakura Women's College

Kamakura Women's University

is a private women's college in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.The predecessor of the school, a women's vocational school, was founded in 1943. It was chartered as a women's college in 1959. The present name was adopted in 1989. The school specializes in home economics and child...

 as a result of financial difficulties. These were caused by Shochiku's popular, long-running Otoko wa Tsurai yo

Otoko wa Tsurai yo

Otoko wa tsurai yo is a Japanese film series starring Kiyoshi Atsumi as "Tora-san" , a kind-hearted vagabond who is always unlucky in love. The series itself is often referred to as "Tora-san" by its fans...

series of films (1969-95) coming to an end after the death in 1996 of its star Kiyoshi Atsumi

Kiyoshi Atsumi

Kiyoshi Atsumi , born Yasuo Tadokoro , was a Japanese film actor....

, as well as the 1998 closure of Kamakura Cinema World, the studio's short-lived theme park.

Shochiku has also served as a distributor of theatrical anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

. Major titles have included the Cardcaptor Sakura

Cardcaptor Sakura

, abbreviated as CCS and also known as Cardcaptors, is a Japanese shōjo manga series written and illustrated by the manga artist group Clamp. The manga was originally serialized monthly in Nakayoshi from the May 1996 until the June 2000 issue, and later published in 12 tankōbon volumes by Kodansha...

films, Origin: Spirits of the Past, Piano no Mori

Piano no Mori

is an ongoing manga by Makoto Isshiki, about Shuhei Amamiya, who transfers to Moriwaki Elementary filled with hope and ambition about his new life...

, Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell (film)

"See You Everyday" is different from the rest of the soundtrack, being a pop song sung in Cantonese by Fang Ka Wing. It can be faintly heard playing in the marketplace scene, when Batou is hunting the ghost-hacked puppet....

, Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa

Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa

is a 2005 Japanese animated film directed by Seiji Mizushima and written by Sho Aikawa, and acts as a continuation of the first Fullmetal Alchemist television series...

, Sword of the Stranger

Sword of the Stranger

is a 2007 Japanese anime feature film directed by Masahiro Andō and produced by Bones. The film follows Kotaro, a young boy who is hunted by the Ming from China for mysterious reasons. Among the Ming is a fearsome Western fighter named Luo-Lang, whose only desire is to find a worthy opponent...

, and Jungle Emperor Leo

Jungle Emperor Leo

Jungle Emperor Leo, known in Japan as is a 1997 animated movie focusing on the last half of Osamu Tezuka's epic manga, Jungle Taitei...

.

It currently maintains a film studio and backlot

Backlot

A backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio, containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions, or space for temporary set construction....

 in Kyoto, Japan.