“Yujiro Ishihara was my childhood…!”

When we ask the lady weavers about their memories of the movie theater, they mostly say something to that effect. Nishiura hosted not only those who struck gold with the fabric trade in Nishiura, but also tourists from outside the prefecture, and boasted as many as six movie theaters - a rarity for such a small neighborhood.

The Matsutake and Musashino Theaters, the Fuji International and Ginrei Cinemas, and the Fuji and Yoshida Theaters - they specialized in having a wide repertoire of films covering everything from Western and Japanese films to kids movies. Of course, they did not play them immediately, opting instead to play two or three films at a time slightly later than their theatrical releases

Everyone included one movie theater along their favorite routes through Nishiura. They played “night showings” starting at 10 pm, and they were always packed with, presumably, the many weavers who left work late.

Asking the locals about the theaters will always bring back one memory or another.

For kids, it was the place where they saw Yuzo Yamamoto’s “Roadside Stone”, Keisuke Kinoshita’s “Twenty-Four Eyes”, or the destination for field trips where they watched footage from the Olympics. It was the place where “Thunderbirds” rocked a generation of young boys; a place where girls primped themselves up to catch actor Yujiro Ishihara’s latest feature.

The men also recall the popsicles sold at the theaters. You can’t get them anymore, but they used to be made by freezing an artificial saccharin mixture of sweeteners that was excessively sweeter than regular sugar.

The first floor of the two-story Musashino Theater featured adult films, though sometimes they were played on the second floor as well. They played immediately after the general audience films finished, and boys secretly looked forward to that sudden pornographic shift.