Owned and constructed by the Japanese motion picture company Yoshizawa Shōten (headed by Ken'ichi Kawaura) in the Tokyo district Asakusa,[2] the park was designed to mimic the original Luna Park that was built in Brooklyn, New York in 1903.
[4][5] Luna Park was incinerated under suspicious circumstances[6] at roughly the same time that two theaters owned by Yoshizawa Shōten also succumbed to fire in Osaka.
The Japanese film industry was being besieged by inroads by a consortium of their American counterparts.
Kawaura, tiring of the travails of working with Yoshizawa Shōten, sold the company to Shōkichi Umeya (owner of M. Pathe) for the equivalent of $375,000 USD.
[8] Kawaura then decided to build a new Luna Park, not in Tokyo but in Osaka instead.