Since I will be taking the students in my Summer Session course to see Kabuki, I traveled to the Ginza yesterday to buy tickets. I decided to take a shot of one of the more peculiar movie theaters in Tokyo--at least location-wise--the Ginza Shine Patosu (Cine Pathos). It is just down the street from the Kabuki-za, but it is literally under that street. It used to be a rep house, but is now a three-screen theater that shows an odd mix of the commercial and the artistic. Sokurov's The Sun opened here (I have a piece on that film in the official book), and this is where I saw Matsumoto Hitoshi's Dai Nihonjin. The first film may fit this underground space, given how much of it takes place in an air raid bunker, but the second is rather insistent upon rising above the ground, even if in somewhat parodic a manner.
Below is the photo I took. To the left is Harumi-dori (the Kabuki-za is a couple hundred meters further on). To the right is the entrance to a tunnel that goes under the road and comes out the other side. In that tunnel is the theater plus a couple of eating establishments. You can check out another introduction to this theater on the Cinema Street site.
