Opened: 1907. The L.A. city directory in 1908 lists the International Theatre Company and "G.B. Tahni" as being involved with it. Other tenants listed that year in what was then a three story building were a pool hall and the Rafu Shimpo Co., publishers of a daily Japanese newspaper. The location is in the middle of the block on the south side of the street between Los Angeles St. and San Pedro St.
In the 1910 photo they're offering "Advertising For a Wife" from Pathé, "The Affair of an Egg" from Biograph, "From Tyranny to Liberty" also from Biograph, and "The Usurer" from Edison. Thanks to Gerald Sato for finding the photo for a post on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page. Also see another post of the photo on the same page by Victor Brunswick.
The theatre, also known as the Bankoku-za, was the first venue catering to Japanese speaking theatregoers in Los Angeles. Bankoku means "all countries" in Japanese. It's unknown if the prints they were typically running had Japanese intertitles or if they were employing benshi for live Japanese narration.
Thanks to UCLA researchers Ashley Huendo and Sagarika Roychoudhury for researching the Japanese name of the theatre as part of their 2020 project documenting early foreign language theatres in L.A. See the listings they've assembled on Map Hub. A companion timeline is on Time Mapper. Also see the related UCLA site Architectural Reconstructions on Broadway.
A Mr. Y. Horiuchi gets the listing for this address under "moving picture theatres" in the 1911 city directory.
A c.1912 photo appearing in the 2010 Arcadia Publishing book "Los Angeles's Little Tokyo" by the Little Tokyo Historical Society. They credit the photo to Toyo Miyatake Studio. The page is included in the preview of the book on Google Books. The book names the theatre operators as Bungoro (also seen as Bungaro) "George" Tani and Tadayoshi Isoyama. "Iola's Promise" was a 1912 D.W. Griffith film from Biograph.
G. B. Tani is listed at this address in the 1913 city directory. It's in the 1914 city directory as the International Theatre. The directory that year also has a listing at this address for "G. B. Tain" under "motion picture theatres." In 1916 a bakery and a restaurant were also listed at 230 E. 1st. Upstairs, also using the 230 address, it was the Chicago House offering furnished rooms. There was a book and stationary store listed at 228 in 1916. 1917 was the last city directory listing for the International.
Closing: 1917 might have been the end of it. In the 1918 and 1920 city directories 230 E. 1st is listed as a dry goods firm called Miyako Co. In 1920 the Yat Wah Low restaurant gets a listing at 228 1/2. By 1923 the dry goods store was listed as G. Nozawa. The restaurant in 1923 at 228 was operated by one R. Kunita. The book "Los Angeles's Little Tokyo" notes that in 1926 the restaurant space became the San Kwo Low Chop
Suey restaurant which was a favorite of Charlie Chaplin and many other Hollywood stars. In 1928 the 230 end of the building was listed as a grocery store.
Status: The building survives. Well, part of it. It's now only a single story. The two upper floors were removed in 1985. The city gives it a construction date of 1910, but it appears it was around for maybe three years before that.
Until 2016 it was retail as the S. K. Uyeda store plus a restaurant, Japanese Kitchen, in the west storefront. In mid-2020 the retail space got remodeled for a new tenant. In 2024 it was housing a sales office for a Ato, nearby condo project, plus a coffee bar, The Latte Shop.
1973 - A photo by William Reagh that's in the Los Angeles Public Library collection. They note that at the time the upper floors were removed in 1985 they had contained banquet rooms and a kitchen.
2009 - A Google Maps view of the building.
2019 - The former theatre space at 230 E. 1st., here seen vacant. There's a restaurant at 228. Photo: Bill Counter
More information: Regarding the two main owners, Victor Brunswick offers this: "According to the 1940 Census Bungoro 'George' Tani was born in 1871. In 1940 he was living at 1524 W. 37th Street with his sons Fumio (born 1909) and Saburo (born 1912), Fumio's wife Kaneyo (born 1914) and daughter Yaeko (born 1938). There's no record of Tadayoshi Isoyama in the Census suggesting that he had either died or returned to Japan before 1940."
Darryl Kunitomi added: "Tadayoshi became a spy for the Emperor, he planned the attack on LA in 1942, aha, now we know the truth about the Great Fake LA Air Raid. Hail to the Emperor, we are flying over Tommy's Hamburger stand."
There's a page about the theatre on the Pacific Coast Architecture Database. Discussion of the theatre also appears in "The Last Silent Picture Show" by William M. Drew. It's on Google Books.
The second Japanese language house in town was the Pearl Theatre (also known as the Toyo-za). Both the Bankoku-za and the Yoyo-za are noted in the 1990 article "The Exhibition of Films for Japanese Americans in Los Angeles in the Silent Film Era" by Junko Ogihara that appeared on pages 81-87 of Film History, volume 4 number 2. It's a publication of Indiana University Press.
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