Theater Targeting Foreign Visitors to Open in Tokyo Friday

Tokyo, July 6 (Jiji Press)--Studio Alta Co. will open a new theater in the Yurakucho district in central Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Friday, aiming to attract visitors from abroad ahead of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in the Japanese capital. The launch of the facility, Alternative Theatre, reflects many travel agencies' call for promoting night entertainment events in the country. The theater will put on vigorous performances that use as few words as possible and center on sword fighting and dance. "We'll offer entertainment transcending national borders and language barriers," Kazutoshi Tanuma, chief executive officer of Studio Alta, a unit of department store operator Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd. <3099>, told a ceremony held at the theater on Thursday. Attending the ceremony, Masami Ishikawa, mayor of Chiyoda Ward, expressed his hopes that the theater will attract many foreign visitors during the 2020 games. Studio Alta wants the theater to attract 140,000 visitors in fiscal 2017 and 200,000 in the following year. The new theater, located on the seventh floor of the Yurakucho Mullion commercial complex, has 462 seats, including 52 standing spaces. The theater will feature a nonverbal samurai entertainment show called Alata until the end of September. The admission fee is 8,000 yen per person. The theater will have multilingual staff members. END