Overview 1951 to 1955

(1) Toho's rising and Shin-toho's falling
Toho showed rapid recovery from 1951. This year, Toho's leader (Iwao Mori, one of the founding members of Toho) and the most important supporter (Ichizo Kobayashi, also a founding member and an influential person of Japanese business world), who had been purged in 1946 for having been cooperative with the government during the war, came back. They showed a strong leadership or provided generous financial aid, by which internal conflicts were settled and Toho's distribution network was strengthened.
In addition, important directors (e,g,. Kurosawa and Naruse) and producers, who had left and worked outside Toho, came back to Toho.  

In contrast, Shin-toho's financial situation worsened. Although Shin-toho output a series of productions of high quality, they did not yield profit mainly because Shin-toho failed to enhance its distribution network.
In 1951, Toho presented a proposition of merger of Toho and Shin-toho (absorption of Shin-toho into Toho), which Shin-toho rejected.
In 1955, after replacement of president had been repeated, Shin-toho changed its policy drastically in order to survive. Shin-toho began to output productions of extremely low budget, which are characterized by sexual and violent content. Thus, Shin-toho's productions disappeared from Top_10_Movies list from 1955 on. 

(2) Nikkatsu's resumption of production
Nikkatsu, which had parted with its production section to Daiei in 1941, had good business, since the end of war, as an movie exhibition company dealing with foreign movies. Thus, around 1951, Nikkatsu began to make a plan to resume movie production business. In resuming production business, Nikkatsu already had a distribution network (movie theaters). However, Nikkatsu had no human resource for movie production (actors, directors, producers, and technical stuffs).

After having failed to take over Shin-toho as Nikkatsu's production unit, Nikkatsu decided to recruit necessary human resource from other companies. Especially, from Shôchiku, many talented and experienced assistant directors moved to Nikkatsu, where they were promoted to a director and would support Nikkatsu in the following decade.
Such mass recruiting by Nikkatsu naturally enraged other companies, but Nikkatsu did what it needed to do.

(3) Toei's Great Progress
Before 1951, Toei suffered from financial difficulties. Toei's productions were inferior to those of other companies in quality and quantity. Thus, Toei could not get exhibitors' trust and, accordingly, could not enhance its distribution network.

In 1951, GHQ changed its policy so that restrictions on Jidaigeki (Samurai) movies were eased. This change profited Toei, which had most popular Jidaigeki stars under contract. Audiences and exhibitors who had longed for Jidaigeki welcomed Toei Jidaigeki movies. Toei's financial conditions improved rapidly.

In 1954, such financial improvement enabled Toei to start an aggressive strategy to enhance its distribution network. It was "double feature" distribution; distributing two features every week to the exhibitors (movie theaters) under contract with Toei. Other companies followed Toei.Years of excessive productions would come.

(4) Excessive Competition?
As described above, in this period, Nikkatsu resumed movie production, and Shin-toho, which should have been absorbed into Toho or Nikkatsu, stayed in the industry. Thus, in 1954, six major movie companies competed for share (at the beginning of 1950, the number of major companies were four, including Shin-toho which was, then, substantially a Toho's secondary production unit).

Such competition, which appears to be excessive, was made possible by the rapid growth of the market (the total box office of Japanese movies in 1955 was approx. three times larger than that in 1950, and the number of movie theaters in 1955 was approx. two times larger than that in 1950). However, there is a limit for everything.

(5) Independent companies
In this period, the major companies could not provide required number of productions by itself. Thus, the major companies compensated the shortage of productions by purchasing those produced by independent companies. Most of such independent companies were established by those who had been purged from the major companies as radical communists.

The most distinguished directors of the independent productions in this period were Satuo Yamamoto and Tadashi Imai (these names are found in Top_10_Movies list frequently).

As the demand for independent production increased, a distribution company devoted to independent productions was established, which could not compete with major companies and was short-lived.