Overview 1946 to 1950

1946-1950 : a period of recovery and confusion

(1) Shortage in Production
Japanese movie industry showed a rapid recovery from damages of war in its exhibition section. The number of movie theaters and movie audiences increased rapidly. In contrast, the recovery of its production section was slow, mainly due to shortage of workers and partly due to the censorship by GHQ. The censorship often rejected projects presented by the movie companies.

The movie companies compensated the shortage of supply by distributing movies produced in 1930s. In many cases, these re-released titles were re-edited into a shorter version in order to increase the number of screening per day, or in response to the indications of the censorship.
In such re-edition, it is reasonable to produce a dupe negative to be re-edited, from a preserved positive. However, in Japan, a preserved negative (in many cases, only one negative) was directly re-edited, and, incredibly, fragments, which were cut off from the negative during the re-edition, were abandoned. Thus, many titles, which had been produced in 1930s and fortunately survived the war, lost their original form in an unrecoverable manner.

(2) Toho's Crisis
From 1946, Toho suffered from a severe labor dispute with its radical labor union. Though the labor dispute was settled in 1948, Toho could not recover from its damage until 1951.
In 1947, actors, directors and members of the production and distribution sections of Toho, who had opposed to the policy of the union and left Toho, established Shin-toho, a production company.
At this time, Shin-toho was substantially a secondary production section of Toho, which compensate the shortage of Toho's productions, which was caused by the labor dispute. Shin-toho's productions were distributed by Toho.
In addition, principal directors including Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse and more left Toho. They directed their productions in Shin-toho and other companies until around 1951. 

When the labor dispute was settled, it was most reasonable for Toho and Shin-toho to merge again. However, they could not. Soon after the establishment of Shin-toho, internal conflicts occurred in Toho, regarding to how to reconstruct the production section and how to co-operate with Shin-toho (some argued that the production section should be eliminated and Toho should focus on distribution and exhibition of movies). On the other hand, Shin-toho began to seek to break up with Toho and distribute its productions through its own distribution network.
Finally,Toho decided to break up with Shin-toho and rebuild its production section by itself, and Shin-toho decided to establish its own distribution network.
This decision brought difficulties to both Toho and Shin-toho.

(3) Toei
In the Top_10_Movies list of 1950, two titles are found distributed by Toei (Tokyo Eiga Haikyû), "Shikko yuyo" (4) produced by Ôizumi Eiga and "Nanairo no hana" (10) produced by Tôyoko Eiga. These three companies (distribution company and production companies) would merge, in 1951, into Toei, one of the major Japanese movie companies.