[Mini Theater Revisited] No. 4 New Wave from Roppongi...Part 1 Cine Vivant Roppongi Part 1

Movie performances used to be controlled by major movie companies and performance companies, but this has changed since the 1980s. A different industry in a different world began to distribute and create theaters.

Particularly noticeable were the actions of the Seibu Group. He created a distribution company, Cine Saison, and also built several mini-theaters in Tokyo, including Roppongi, Shibuya, and Ginza. Cine Vivant Roppongi left a particularly big impact.

This theater was built in the basement of a culture building called WAVE, and it became a mini-theater that was popular among highbrow cineastes, showing films by European art directors that were generally considered difficult to understand, such as Godard and Tarkovsky.

As Japan headed toward a bubble economy, a luxurious and intellectual culture was touted, and the WAVE building itself symbolized this "age of knowledge."

*The following articles were serialized on the website operated by Geijutsu Shimbun between 2013 and 2014. This time, we have received permission from Sawako Omori and Geijutsu Shinbunsha Co., Ltd. to reprint this work.

Index

• Searching for the site of the legendary building WAVE
• A new space of sound and images was born.
• Seibu's new challenge, Cine Vivant Roppongi
• The artwork for the unique work “Koyaniskatti” is by Eiko Ishioka.

Searching for the site of the legendary building WAVE

I wonder how many people remember WAVE, a building that once stood in Roppongi, Tokyo. It opened on November 18, 1983. It was in business for 16 years until 1999. The address is 6-2-27 Roppongi.

March 2013, 14 years after the museum closed. I wanted to see where it used to be, so I walked around the area with my digital camera in hand, but the situation had changed and I couldn't pinpoint the site. Remembering that the document had written ``near the Azabu Police Station,'' I went into the police box, which still stands today, and asked them to look up the address.

"The address 27 is not on the current map. It seems that the area around No. 2 has been absorbed into Roppongi Hills."

Searching for disappeared 20th century ruins is not easy. Eventually, he notices a plate with "6-2-31" stamped on one of the buildings in Roppongi Hills. There's no doubt that it's close by, so I wander around and look through the viewfinder.

As I was taking pictures, groups of tourists that I could tell at a glance, elderly couples, and mothers with strollers all jumped in, giving me a sense of the changing times. This is a different demographic from the cutting-edge culture-loving young people around WAVE.

Roppongi Hills, a huge building complex that has become the symbol of Roppongi, stands on the site of WAVE, and has now become a new tourist destination.