Not far from Ofuna Station in Kamakura, a Japanese coastal city just south of Tokyo, stands the Shochiku-Ofuna Shopping Center, a run-of-the-mill shopping mall with an Ito-Yokado department store. However, observant cinephiles may find the name familiar; Shochiku is one of Japan's largest entertainment companies, active since 1895.

As it happens, the shopping complex stands on the site of the Shochiku studio's backlot, which was established in 1936. Formerly, the studio was located in Kamata, Tokyo, but when Japanese cinema started making talkies, the industrial district was deemed too noisy.

Ofuna was an ideal location. It was close to scenic towns such as Yokohama and Hakone, not to mention Kamakura, and yet not far from Tokyo. The company developed the surrounding neighborhood, determined to create Japan's own Tinseltown.

Notable films shot at the Shochiku-Ofuna lot include Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring (1949), Tokyo Story (1953), the first Japanese Technicolor film Carmen Comes Home (1951), and It's Tough Being a Man (1969), which started the longest-running film series in the world, running from 1969 to 1995.

The It's Tough Being a Man series was the company's biggest hit, but it began to have trouble financially following the lead actor Kiyoshi Atsumi's death in 1996. In 2000, with the completion of the film A Class to Remember IV: Fifteen (2000), the company decided to close down the studio and sold the land to the Kamakura Women's University for its new campus.

Today, not much remains of the legendary studio, but a few Easter eggs can be found. For example, there's a monument commemorating the completion of the backlot on the Sunaoshi River Promenade as well as a couple of bridges named after Shochiku. Nearby stands Sanso Inari Jinja, a shrine relocated in 1934 to make way for the studio's construction.

In December 2021, the shopping center–which is run by the Shochiku company–commemorated its past by decorating a smoking room with vintage pictures of the backlot, including a production still of It's Tough Being a Man.