The content meeting at the intellectual-property headquarters has started

 ■The content meeting at the intellectual-property headquarters has started

The content meeting in the IP headquarters committee has started. I am serving as chairman.

The topic this time is the overseas expansion of content. We are reviewing government policy.

Since the IP headquarters were founded in 2003, the policies have thickened, and the export value of content has more than doubled. We can make the evaluation that results are showing.

 The export value of content:

In the past five years (2011 to 2016; 2010 to 2015 for broadcasting)

Film has gone from 6.9 billion yen to 19.5 billion yen (2.8 times)

Anime has gone from 266.9 billion yen to 767.6 billion yen (2.9 times)

Games have gone from 293 billion yen to 1066.7 billion yen (3.6 times)

Broadcasting has gone from 6.6 billion yen to 28.9 billion yen (4.4 times)

 However, in the $555 billion global market for content, the sales of Japanese content are only $14.1 billion, or 2.5% of the global market.

The sales of Japanese manga are 27% of the global comic market, and the figure for games is 15%; however, the figure for film is 1.1%, and the figures for broadcasting and music are both 0.4%. These industries have remained domestic.

Our strategy is to see this as room for growth, and stimulate expansion outside.

Because it has focused its efforts on exporting broadcast content and has achieved its goals for overseas sales three years in advance, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications decided in a cabinet decision in June this year to set the new confident goal of increasing sales to 50 billion yen by 2020.

At the same time, simple but important administrative work such as the preparation and spread of guidelines to optimize production transactions for broadcast content with regard to antitrust and subcontracting laws is also happening.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has spent 31 billion yen in five years on projects to support localization, such as subtitles and dubbing, which has led to a 200-billion-yen increase in overseas sales.

On the other hand, with regard to fundraising methods represented by the production committee, reviews of investment methods such as financing and fund establishment, as well as new methods such as international co-production, are proceeding.

As the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are aiming to promote overseas expansion through financial support, they are taking measures to stimulate structural change, such as transaction optimization and fundraising diversification.

More attention tends to be put on the former, but the latter is more of a core measure from a long-term administrative perspective, and is an important policy.

These enhancements to policies are being sought.

Committee members made the following points in succession.

・The concept of the Cool Japan policy needs to be reconsidered, including its naming.

・We should not consider each genre separately, but should expand all genres together.

・In a world where platform providers are making large movements, rather than evaluating the measures for each genre (games, anime, etc.) separately, we should consolidate the changes in the world as data and act proactively

・With regard to manga and anime, transmission is becoming a larger business in the U.S., China, and South Korea. Japan does not have prominent platform providers.

・We are too focused on purity. Japanese whiskey is well-rated around the world. Rather than only selling sake, we should have the idea that “although it’s from Japan, it’s whiskey”. Being able to watch top musicals from Europe or the U.S., or being able to see a Van Gogh work in an art museum, have high value for people in Asia.