This is an original, exceptionally rare Japanese two-sheet theatrical display poster, printed for the 1966—Shōwa 41—Japanese re-release of William Wyler’s monumental Western The Big Country, released in Japan as 大いなる西部 — Ōinaru Seibu.
The film itself was produced in 1958 and first opened in Japanese cinemas on 25 December 1958. This poster, however, is not from that initial Japanese release. It belongs to the film’s major 1966 theatrical revival campaign, mounted eight years later and promoted in Tokyo from 14 May 1966.
The lower-right corner retains the original Eirin approval mark and number 41182, while the lower black border reads:
松竹映配／提供
This translates as:
“Presented by Shochiku Eihai.”
That credit is decisive in establishing the later date. Shochiku’s corporate history records the establishment of Shochiku Eihai Co., Ltd. in 1962 as an importer and distributor of foreign films. It therefore could not have appeared on a poster issued for the 1958 Japanese opening.
Format, dimensions and rarity
This poster is not a standard Japanese B0, and it is considerably larger than a conventional STB tatekan in both width and height.
It consists of two separate, matching sheets, designed to be positioned one above the other:
Upper sheet: approximately 76 × 91 cm
Lower sheet: approximately 76 × 91 cm
Complete assembled size: approximately 76 × 181–182 cm
Imperial equivalent: approximately 30 × 71.5 in
The slight variation in total height depends upon whether the sheets are measured edge-to-edge or with the narrow overlap that may have been used when originally mounted.
A conventional Japanese tatekan or STB consists of two B2 sheets arranged vertically. The National Film Archive of Japan defines the standard tatekan as an upper and lower pair of Japanese B2 posters. This would normally produce a display of approximately 51.5 × 145.6 cm.
The present poster is therefore approximately:
50 per cent wider than a standard STB
25 per cent taller than a standard STB
Nearly 85 per cent greater in total printed area than a standard STB
Nor does it correspond to B0, which measures approximately 103 × 145.6 cm. This poster is around 36 cm taller than B0, although it is narrower and slightly smaller in total paper area. Its defining characteristic is not simply size, but its extraordinary six-foot, pillar-like vertical proportion. Standard B-series terminology does not adequately describe it.
The measurements also align remarkably closely with traditional Japanese shaku-based dimensions:
76 cm: approximately 2 shaku 5 sun
91 cm: approximately 3 shaku
181.8 cm: exactly 6 shaku
Each panel is therefore approximately 2.5 shaku wide by 3 shaku high, while the complete poster forms a display approximately 2.5 shaku × 6 shaku. Traditional Japanese board and architectural dimensions frequently use a six-shaku height of approximately 1,818 mm.
The most accurate descriptive classification is consequently:
A special large-format two-sheet tatekan, or
A “six-shaku” large standing cinema display
The expression dai-tatekan—literally “large standing signboard”—is also useful as a descriptive collecting term.
At nearly 1.82 metres tall, the assembled poster is approximately human height. It was almost certainly intended for a prominent cinema entrance, foyer, frontage, pillar or dedicated wooden standing board, where its intense colour and enormous portraits could be read from a distance.
The two-sheet construction made an image of this scale easier to transport and install, but substantially reduced its chances of long-term survival. Either panel could be separated, discarded or damaged after the engagement; the sheets were vulnerable to tearing where they met; and examples were frequently pasted to backing boards or repeatedly repaired for display.
The survival of both original, correctly corresponding panels is therefore especially important. This posters ultra rarity rests upon its non-standard six-shaku dimensions, specialised theatrical purpose, 1966 revival attribution and survival as a complete two-sheet set.
Film background
Directed by William Wyler, The Big Country is one of the defining epic Westerns of the 1950s: a visually immense production that simultaneously questions the traditional Western equation of aggression with courage.
Wyler returned to the genre approximately eighteen years after directing The Westerner. The film was adapted from Donald Hamilton’s story Ambush at Blanco Canyon, originally serialised in The Saturday Evening Post, with the credited screenplay by James R. Webb, Sy Bartlett and Robert Wilder. Wyler and the film’s principal star, Gregory Peck, served as producers.
Gregory Peck stars as James McKay, a wealthy Maryland shipping magnate and former sea captain who travels west to marry Patricia Terrill, played by Carroll Baker. McKay arrives in a society in which courage is expected to be demonstrated publicly—through riding, fighting, gunplay and retaliation.
His reserve is repeatedly mistaken for cowardice. He declines to retaliate against drunken harassment, initially refuses to ride the notorious horse Old Thunder for an audience, and attempts to avoid becoming involved in the increasingly violent feud between Patricia’s father, Major Henry Terrill, and the neighbouring Hannassey family.
At the centre of the conflict is Big Muddy, land containing the only dependable water supply available to both ranching families. The property belongs to schoolteacher Julie Maragon, portrayed by Jean Simmons, who refuses to permit either side to monopolise it.
Charlton Heston plays Steve Leech, the physically imposing foreman of the Terrill ranch. Leech embodies the conventional frontier code against which McKay is judged, and the two men’s relationship provides one of the film’s central dramatic contrasts.
Their famous bare-knuckle fight takes place before dawn and away from any audience. By removing the spectators for whom masculine courage is normally performed, Wyler turns the sequence into something deliberately exhausting and faintly absurd: two capable men battering one another without proving anything of lasting importance.
The film’s ensemble also includes Burl Ives as Rufus Hannassey, Charles Bickford as Major Terrill, Chuck Connors as Buck Hannassey and Alfonso Bedoya as Ramón.
Ives won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Rufus Hannassey, while Jerome Moross’s celebrated score received an Academy Award nomination. The film received two Oscar nominations in total, winning one.
Photographed by Franz Planer in Technicolor and Technirama, the film repeatedly uses distant compositions and immense landscapes to make the characters’ supposedly all-consuming rivalry appear small. The scale of the land is not merely decorative: it forms an essential part of Wyler’s examination of pride, ownership and performative masculinity.
The film runs approximately 165–166 minutes. The poster’s dramatic claim that Wyler tells the story over “three hours” is therefore promotional rounding rather than a precise running time.
The 1966 Japanese re-release campaign
The poster’s later date is reflected not only in the distributor and Eirin information, but also in the unusual hierarchy of its star billing.
On this poster, Charlton Heston’s name appears before Gregory Peck’s in the Japanese cast list, despite Peck being the narrative lead and co-producer of the film.
A specialist archive documenting the matching 1966 revival handbill specifically draws attention to this billing order, noting that Heston was then at the height of his popularity in Japan. The same source records the campaign’s 14 May 1966 opening at the Togeki, Shinjuku Piccadilly and Shibuya Tokyu, with the Asakusa Daishōkan following one week later.
This is a fascinating example of a re-release campaign repositioning an older film for a new audience. The 1958 production remains centred upon Gregory Peck’s James McKay, but the 1966 Japanese marketing gives Charlton Heston unusually prominent visual and typographic status, reflecting the international stature he had acquired by the mid-1960s.
The result is not simply a later printing of the first-release poster. It is a distinctly conceived 1966 campaign design, with its own typography, promotional quotations, distributor identity and star hierarchy.
Poster design
Printed across two specially proportioned sheets, this spectacular Japanese revival design combines monumental photographic portraiture, blazing orange colour, forceful Japanese typography and striking modernist abstraction.
The upper sheet
The upper panel is dominated by enormous opposing portraits of Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston.
Peck appears at the left in profile as James McKay, wearing the refined clothing associated with his Eastern background. His expression is controlled and thoughtful, and his face is turned towards Heston’s portrait.
At the right, Charlton Heston appears as Steve Leech beneath a broad cowboy hat, his red neckerchief introducing one of the few deep colour accents within the portrait montage. He looks upwards and away from Peck, creating a visual tension between the two men without showing them in direct physical confrontation.
The contrast immediately conveys their competing ideas of strength:
McKay: restrained, inwardly assured and unwilling to perform courage for others.
Leech: visibly rugged, physically authoritative and deeply embedded in the traditions of the Western ranch.
Although Peck remains the film’s protagonist, Heston is given almost equal visual weight—and receives first billing in the cast list below. This unusual balance is one of the clearest signs of the design’s 1966 revival-era marketing strategy.
Between the two portraits is a horizontal row of small monochrome supporting-character images, introducing the film’s large ensemble and breaking up the intense orange field.
Immediately above the portraits appears:
総天然色／テクニラマ
This translates as:
“Full Natural Colour / Technirama”
The terminology promotes the production’s colour and widescreen process as major attractions, entirely appropriate for a film in which the immensity of the landscape is central to both spectacle and meaning.
Beneath the supporting portraits is:
巨匠ウィリアム・ワイラー監督
This may be translated as:
“Directed by the master William Wyler.”
The use of 巨匠 — kyoshō, meaning “master” or “maestro,” positions Wyler’s name as a prestige attraction in its own right. The film is presented not merely as a star-driven Western, but as a representative work by one of Hollywood’s major directors.
The Japanese title 大いなる西部 dominates the centre of the complete composition.
Printed in immense ivory-white characters, the title extends almost completely across the poster. At approximately 76 cm wide, the typography would have been immediately legible from across a cinema foyer or street entrance.
The title may be translated literally as “The Great West” or “The Magnificent West.” Its size gives it an almost architectural role, providing a powerful horizontal counterweight to the exceptionally tall format.
The lower sheet
The lower panel changes dramatically in character. Rather than continuing the densely arranged photographic montage, it opens into a broad field of saturated orange and yellow, evoking heat, dust, sunlight and the apparent infinity of the Western landscape.
Across its upper portion appears:
テキサスの荒野に愛欲と物欲に狂奔する人間像を堂々3時間に亘って描く巨匠ワイラーの代表傑作！
This may be translated approximately as:
“A representative masterpiece by the great Wyler, boldly portraying over three hours people driven to frenzy by passion and material greed in the Texas wilderness!”
The copy is unusually perceptive for theatrical advertising. Rather than selling the film solely through gunfights, horses and frontier adventure, it identifies desire, greed and human rivalry as the forces propelling the story.
Beneath it, the large blue proclamation reads:
西部劇60年の歴史に輝く 壮大凄絶の大叙事詩！
This may be translated as:
“A vast and fiercely dramatic grand epic, shining in the sixty-year history of the Western!”
The endorsement is credited on the poster to Japanese film critic Jūzaburō Futaba — 双葉十三郎. Its retrospective reference to the history of the Western is particularly well suited to a 1966 revival campaign presenting an established modern classic to a new theatrical audience.
At the left, the cast is billed in the following order:
Charlton Heston
Gregory Peck
Carroll Baker
Chuck Connors
Jean Simmons
Charles Bickford
Burl Ives
The sheet also credits cinematographer Franz Planer and composer Jerome Moross, acknowledging two of the creative figures most responsible for the film’s expansive visual and musical identity.
The sun and concentric-circle design
The visual centre of the lower panel is an enormous yellow disc surrounded by loosely brushed concentric rings.
Inside the disc appears the original English treatment:
WILLIAM WYLER’S PRODUCTION
THE BIG COUNTRY
IN TECHNICOLOR AND TECHNIRAMA
The circle can be read simultaneously as a blazing sun, a target, a ripple or an abstract emblem of the disputed land and water. The roughly brushed rings introduce movement into the otherwise broad, open orange field.
At the lower right, two isolated figures reproduce the film’s celebrated confrontation between McKay and Leech. Against the vast orange field and enormous circular form, the fighting men appear deliberately small.
This is particularly effective in relation to the film’s themes: what the characters regard as a crucial test of masculine pride is visually reduced to two minor human figures exhausting themselves beneath an immense Western sky.
Along the bottom horizon, a procession of mounted riders appears in black silhouette. Their scale further reinforces the central idea embodied by the English title: the country itself is so large that even its most powerful inhabitants become small within it.
The black lower border retains the important period distribution wording:
松竹映配／提供
It also includes a contemporary soundtrack promotion naming Japanese record distributors, while the lower-right corner carries the original Eirin mark and number 41182.
These elements are integral to the poster’s historical identity as a 1966 Japanese revival printing and should be preserved fully during any future framing or conservation.
When the two sheets are assembled, the composition moves from monumental human faces at the top to open landscape and tiny silhouettes below. The portraits, title, campaign copy, blazing sun and distant riders unfold vertically across approximately six feet of paper.
The unusual dimensions are therefore not incidental. The extreme vertical format is fundamental to the design, progressively reducing its characters from enormous stars to minor figures within the landscape.
Condition
This complete two-sheet poster is in very good condition overall, particularly considering its enormous scale, original theatrical use and age.
Both original panels remain present and correctly matched. The extraordinary orange and yellow colour fields retain very strong saturation, while the portraits of Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, the immense Japanese title and the central English logo remain clear, complete and highly impactful.
As expected for a large-format Japanese theatrical display of this period, the sheets were folded for distribution and storage. Both retain multiple horizontal and vertical fold lines, together with general fold memory and handling creases.
There is wear at several fold intersections, including localised separation.
The white borders exhibit small tears, nicks, former display holes or pinholes.. A more noticeable vertical tear enters from the lower white margin into the orange image field, with a small adjacent puncture.
The reverse retains archival tape reinforcement across part of the horizontal meeting area and along sections of the folds.
Importantly, the complete composition survives, and the principal condition issues do not substantially interrupt either lead portrait, the main Japanese title, the central sun motif or the essential campaign typography.
Once linen backed or professionally framed, this poster will display exceptionally well. The enormous six-shaku height, blazing orange palette, monumental portraits and bold modernist structure will dominate a substantial wall, while the existing fold and margin wear will become considerably less visually prominent.
Please refer to the detailed photographs of the two fronts, both reverses and the individual condition areas, as this is the exact complete two-sheet poster that is for sale.
This is the first time that we have had this ultra-rare 1966 Japanese six-shaku theatrical display in our gallery.
It is over 60 years old.
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
Code: JA14
