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[/floatl]There's a new documentary recounting the story of the old Moulin Rouge in Shinjuku. The theatre was located near the south exit of Shinjuku Station, a street away from the building which now houses Tower Records. If you go to Shinjuku 3-36-16 today, you'll find a no trace of the old theatre but one of the buildings is called the Shinjuku Kokusai Gekijo which hints at the history there. The Moulin Rouge was open from 1931 to 1951 which is a relatively short life compared with other important venues. It was influential in bringing more western influences to theatre with bills of regular light comedy and musical revues. At the time, there used to be a saying "Today, the Imperial Theatre, tomorrow Mitsukoshi" to describe a traditional society schedule. The counterpart for the fashionable set became "Today, the Moulin Rouge, tomorrow Isetan", when the latter store opened in Shinjuku in 1933.
One of the first stars of the Moulin Rouge was Machiko Ashita (below).
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[/floatr]She became the campaign girl for Calpis a couple of years after her debut and has sometimes been dubbed Japan's first idol. There have always been stars in the entertainment world but Ashita's image and career was a forerunner of the way the business runs even today. The documentary uses her as the main focus of the story. She's still alive, in her 90s, and attended some initial screenings in Tokyo (right).The Moulin Rouge was placed under the management of Shochiku during wartime and its usual fare had to go. New laws forbade the use of foreign languages in stage which put a stop to the cosmopolitan air the theatre had cultivated. Shochiku gave it up after the war and it was taken over by the later founder of the Humax Cinema group. He brought in strip shows before eventually closing the venue in 1951 to concentrate on his new generation of entertainment businesses.
