Japan Targets To Take Their Anime, Games Overseas Market To 20 Trillion Yen By 2033
In its strategy, it emphasized the intention to bolster content creation businesses, recognizing them as a “basic industry” for the nation.
Japan is planning hard and wide to expand its overseas reach, as the country aims to expand the overseas market size of anime, games, and other creative industries to 20 trillion yen ($129 billion) by 2033. This was announced by Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, at an intellectual property strategy meeting held at his office in Tokyo on June 4, 2024.
As it stands, the international sales of Japan’s content creation industry, particularly anime and games, have reached 4.7 trillion yen in 2022. So basically, the government plans to increase that number by 4 TIMES in the next 11 years, taking advantage of the rise in popularity of anime and Japanese games in other countries!
(Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida)
The government highlighted that the figure is on par with Japan’s steel exports and is nearing the value of its semiconductor industry. In its strategy, it emphasized the intention to bolster content creation businesses, recognizing them as a “basic industry” for the nation.
Plans include initiatives to identify and nurture new creative talent, tackle unfair trade practices that drive down wages in the sector, and enhance collaboration with international law enforcement to combat piracy websites and counterfeit goods.
Japan’s “Cool Japan” initiative, designed to promote its popular cultural content, has been active for years. However, the government recently announced that it’s time to update and reboot “Cool Japan,” leveraging the rising global interest in Japanese anime and games to attract more foreign fans.
As part of its intellectual property strategy, a key focus is on combating the piracy of anime and manga, which has caused significant financial losses for the creators of hit series like “One Piece” and “Jujutsu Kaisen.”
Lately, Japan’s fight against manga piracy has been pretty strong. In Feb 2024, they’ve arrested 2 Frenchmen who worked for the Japan Deal World LLC and were illegally sending scans of unpublished chapters of Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece, Blue Lock, and other popular shonen manga to a certain leaker on Twitter.
Following that, several leakers and scanlation websites like TCB and OP Scans are on the Japanese police’s radar.
In Jan, they shut down Tachiyomi, a popular manga reading app that used illegal sites as its sources, for copyright infringement.
The strategy also aims to tackle legal issues related to “AI voice actors,” where generative artificial intelligence is used to create synthetic voices based on real individuals.
Source: mainichi.jp
