Film policy in Japan – an isolated species on the verge of extinction?

Abstract

This article examines changes of the place that film has occupied in the public policy of the Japanese government, including not only cultural policy per se, but also industrial and economic policy. After describing some of the distinctive features of the Japanese film market, this paper discusses the inadequate basis of the government’s cultural policy for film. Film in recent years has received some attention as an industry with export potential, particularly with the rise of ‘Cool Japan’, the policy of promoting Japanese culture abroad as a tool for economic and diplomatic aims. In the chequered history of economic growth strategies and nation branding of recent years, the film industry has had some good news but received no serious attention either as a sector with economic significance or as a form of national culture.

Keywords:

• film policy
• cultural policy
• Japan
• Cool Japan
• nation branding

Acknowledgements

I thank John Hill and two anomymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. Calculated by the author using data released by the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. http://www.eiren.org/statistics_e/index.html (in Japanese, accessed 4 June 2016).

2. Eiren (Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan) releases box office revenues of only those films that earned more than 1000 million yen that year, in addition to the gross box office.

3. Throughout the paper, US Dollar equivalents are provided to help the reader. The foreign exchange rate fluctuates, and for the purpose of the paper, it is set to be one USD to 120 yen and the figures for USD are rounded for convenience.

4. Interview conducted by the author in Tokyo, 22 January 2016. Kakeo was the editor-in-chief of a popular periodical on film criticism and trends (Kinema Junpo) and is now a professor at Josai Kokusai University. He has written a number of books on the film industry, including a study of its globalisation strategy (or the lack thereof) (Kakeo 2012) and has been invited as a commentator, speaker and moderator at seminars held during major international film festivals.

5. According to a survey conducted by Geidankyo (2015), staff working in the film industry (camera crew, sound engineers and other technicians for television, DVD/BD, animation and feature films for theatrical release) are typically men over age 50. The majority of those surveyed earn 3–6 million yen per year. The research conducted by JAnicA (2015), however, shows different results for workers in animated films. Anime staff are typically in their 20s and 30s, live alone, and earn on average 3.3 million yen per year. This is below the national average of about 4 million yen for workers in private businesses in 2013. Animation workers work on average 260 h per month, 94 more than the national average. Most film industry workers are freelancers or contract workers. Since they are unorganised, they are at a disadvantage when bargaining over wages and working conditions with their employers. In recent years, the harsh working conditions of animation workers have been widely reported in the national media as a social issue.

6. The term ‘production committee’ as an English translation seems to appear more often, but ‘production consortium’ more appropriately expresses what the entity entails and will be used throughout this paper.

7. http://column.gempartners.com/?p=9585. (In Japanese, accessed 13 March 2016). In the UK, young people between 15 and 24 years old would be about 30% of the film audience (BFI 2015, 4). However, in the US wider age groups are represented, in which the largest group aged 25–39 comprising only 21%. The age groups 18–24 and 12–17 are also active, representing 10 and 8% (MPAA 2015).

8. Cinema tickets are more or equally expensive in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Nordic countries.

9. Available statistics show that only 5% of the total revenue for Japanese popular cultural industries was earned from export in 2011, whereas for the US the ratio was 18% in 2008 (IP Strategy Headquarters 2014).

10. Otaku refers to those people, usually young males, who are obsessed with subculture and enthusiastically follow their chosen hobbies or franchises. In Japan it is believed that they are typically introverted and lack social skills.

11. Japan annually received only six to eight million foreign visitors until 2012, but this number has doubled by 2014. The total number of ‘international tourist arrivals’ is still 17 million per year, 27th in the world, but this is one of the few sectors of the economy whose rapid expansion can realistically be seen soon.