Daiei Film Co. Ltd. (Kyūjitai: 大映映畫株式會社Shinjitai: 大映映画株式会社Daiei Eiga Kabushiki Kaisha) was a Japanese film studio. Founded in 1942 as Dai Nippon Film Co., Ltd., it was one of the major studios during the postwar Golden Age of Japanese cinema, producing not only artistic masterpieces, such as Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953), but also launching several film series, such as Gamera, Zatoichi and Yokai Monsters, and making the three Daimajin films (1966). It declared bankruptcy in 1971 and was acquired by Kadokawa Pictures.
History
Origin
Daiei Film was the product of government efforts to reorganize the film industry during World War II in order to rationalize use of resources and increase control over the medium. Against a government plan to combine all the film studios into two companies, Masaichi Nagata, an executive at Shinkō Kinema, pressed hard for an alternative plan to create three studios.[1] His efforts won out and Shinkō Kinema, Daito Eiga, and the production arm of Nikkatsu (the Nikkatsu theaters did not take part in the merger) were merged in 1942 to form the Dai Nippon Eiga Seisaku Kabushiki Kaisha, or Daiei for short.[1] The novelist Kan Kikuchi served as the first president, with Nagata continuing as an executive. Daiei's studios were located in Chofu, Tokyo and in Uzumasa in Kyoto.
Like some other Japanese film studios, Daiei had its own professional baseball team in the 1950s, the Daiei Stars, which later became the Daiei Unions. These teams eventually became the Chiba Lotte Marines.
Bankruptcy and afterward
Suffering from Nagata's profligacy and an industry-wide decline in attendance, Daiei tried to stay alive by teaming up with Nikkatsu to create Dainichi Eihai, but eventually declared bankruptcy in December 1971. Art director Yoshinobu Nishioka and some of the studio's other employees founded Eizo Kyoto Production.[8] Other members of the union, however, succeeded in getting Yasuyoshi Tokuma, the president of the publishing house Tokuma Shoten, to revive the company in 1974.[1] The company continued as a producer, making only a small number of films, some of which were big budget spectaculars like the international co-production The Go Masters (1982), a new Gamera trilogy (1995, 1996 and 1999), art house hits like Shall We Dance? (1996), and genre films like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse or Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive films.
Following the passing of Yasuyoshi Tokuma, Daiei Film Co. was sold to the Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co. In November 2002, Chairman Maihiko Kadokawa announced that Daiei Film Co. would merge with the company's own film division, Kadokawa Pictures, to form Kadokawa-Daiei Film Co. Ltd.[9] In 2004, it dropped the name Daiei and is now known simply as Kadokowa Pictures.
