Exotic Phantoms at Asakusa Sengoku Theatre - Thunderbolts and Arabian Nights, Tokyo, February 1975

Exotic Phantoms at Asakusa Sengoku Theatre - Thunderbolts and Arabian Nights, Tokyo, February 1975

The Sengoku Theatre was a movie theater in Asakusa, Tokyo, that supported the entertainment of the general public from the postwar period through the 1970s. Asakusa developed as an entertainment and movie district, and continued to attract a large audience from the postwar reconstruction period. The Sengoku Theatre lined up adult films and entertainment titles, and the magazine noted the names of such films as "Thunderbord" and "Arabian Nights" in its pages. Thunderbord was a war movie about the F105 fighter jet during the Cold War, and it reflected the unrest of reality against the backdrop of international affairs. Arabian Nights, on the other hand, was a fantastical film based on the tale of One Thousand and One Nights, projecting on the screen a longing for an exotic culture.

In the 1970s, Japanese society was undergoing rapid economic growth and transitioning into a mass consumer society, and the ways in which people spent their leisure time became more diverse. With the spread of television in the home, movie theaters needed to continue to offer more unique and exciting films, and the composition of war films and fantasy films side by side skillfully captured the audience's desire for both reality and dreaming. Due to the local nature of Asakusa, the cinema functioned as a place of cultural exchange, attracting workers, students, and tourists. The films screened at the Sengoku Theater were a microcosm of the popular culture of the 1970s, simultaneously reflecting the social unrest of the time and the dreams of a consumer society.