Intellectual Property Headquarters New Round for Overseas/Infrastructure

　Intellectual Property Headquarters Content Meeting @ Kasumigaseki. This is a new round for foreign development and infrastructure establishment.

Explanation of the government’s initiative.

　Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Section Chief Toyoshima: Objective is to triple the foreign sales of broadcast content by 2018 from 2010 levels. Sales were on target in 2014, having doubled to ¥14.4 billion. Promote the maintenance of overseas broadcast quotas and co-production of content. Recently have begun to see the participation of local stations.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chief Secretary Takamizu: Offer Japanese dramas and animated shows for free through the operations of the International Cooperation Fund. So far have provided 192 programs to broadcasters in 48 countries.

Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Section Chief Hirai: Support localization and promotion of content. 405 companies, representing 36% of all JLOP users, have expanded abroad for the first time using this structure. Businesses that were inwardly focused are in the process of spreading abroad.

Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry 2: The Cool Japan organization has invested in 18 cases so far. Provision of money for high-risk/high-return investments. As METI’s operation for the development of content overseas approaches its tenth year, it underwent an administrative evaluation review and received a positive evaluation.

Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry 3: As means for the reinforcement of infrastructure, the establishment and standardization of digital creation environments for anime, holding DCEXPO/Innovative Technologies etc.

Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry 4: Revise subcontracting guidelines for the anime production industry in July. Aim for measures such as documentation of contracts and public awareness of best practices.

(An important policy towards the improvement of production working environments, which are considered poor. This is certainly the task of this administration.)

Well then, hereafter is the discussion. I’ll pick out several items.

○ Cool Japan is proceeding forward from the stage of selling content abroad. This is the period for developing policies that will take us to the next phase and for hammering out a message, with an eye towards what comes after 2020.

○ A key point is to continue business after becoming independent of subsidies.

○ Exports of video games have dropped sharply from ¥700 billion in 2007 to ¥90 billion in 2014. The structure of the industry is also changing. It is unclear how long the government’s policies will continue and it is important to brace for a time when they will no longer be in effect.

○ The infrastructure of industry groups is also frail and is becoming dependent upon the national supplementary budget. A major policy for the mid-to-long term is necessary. The effectiveness of policies coordinating with government agencies is important, but interdepartmental cooperation within agencies is also not functioning.

○ Liaison conferences etc. must be established linking government agencies. It would also be good if industry groups could be optimized and reorganized via mergers etc.

○ It is becoming difficult to convey the appeal of the content industry to students in the intellectual property educational setting at universities. An important theme is how to position content within education at schools.

○ It would be good to create a message and content, such as anime that depict the near future of content, that demonstrate the future of content and the content industry.

○ Companies that are good at producing documentation are the ones that make money. But the people we want to give our money to are different. Japanese content relies on the creativity of individuals. It is extremely difficult to discover these individuals. It’s important to create a space for the purpose of discovering new creators. The CJ organization should have a mechanism for recruiting works and reviewing the open net.

○ Nobel Prize-winners are all good at writing up documents. Those who are bad at it get forgotten.

○ Let’s make an appeal towards 2020.