Content Promotion Measures with the Liberal Democratic Party - Part 1

 ■Content Promotion Measures with the Liberal Democratic Party - Part 1

I was invited by the Liberal Democratic Party Intellectual Property Investigation Committee to speak on the theme of “The Current State and Tasks for Content Promotion.”

Content policies, which began in the 1990s, saw an upsurge in the 2000s. In the past, they were focused on domestic matters and promoting industry, but they are now transitioning to an emphasis on global and online development based on the declining birth rate in Japan and the global advancement of IT. However, the domestic content market has been stagnant despite our hopes.

The Cool Japan Fund was established in 2013 for global development, demonstrating an enhancement of policy tools in terms of funding along with the J-LOP subsidy. There used to be no interest in expanding overseas in the content market, excluding games and anime, since the domestic market had been sufficient, but a lot of change has been seen during this administration.

The overseas market expanded by 26% in 5 years. It is expected to surpass 2 trillion yen by 2020.

In terms of video content, 500 businesses newly engaged in overseas expansion in 5 years, and overseas sales by companies supported by the government have increased by nearly 200 billion yen.

Looking at the 5 years starting around 2011, anime has grown by a factor of 2.9 times, and games have grown by a factor of 3.6 times.

Movies have grown by a factor of 2.8 times, although their scale is not large. TV and broadcasting have grown by a factor of 4.4 times. Overseas sales have increased.

This is a significant change, and it can be said that the policies have had an impact.

However, there is still room for growth, as Japanese content sales only account for 2.5% of the global market.

Moreover, since many foreign visitors come to Japan with hopes of experiencing pop culture, it is also important to enhance in-bound support (for example, offering multilingual support and increasing the number of pilgrimage tours) in addition to out-bound efforts.

It cannot be said that online development, which is the other pillar, has been a success.

Japan as a whole lost to the United States in IT support. The same holds true for content.

Although network transmission has increased from 9.5% in 2008 to 26.0%, there are wide discrepancies across genres, as the rates are 40% for manga, 15% for anime, 8% for music, and 4% for videos.

Businesses running pirated versions and online giants from overseas are becoming a threat in manga, anime, games, and music. Pirated versions are still a headache for manga.

Although anime had been a TV-oriented business, Netflix and Amazon are attempting to dominate the global video market.

Games had also been a TV-oriented business in Japan, but games have transitioned to an online business in the rest of the world. It has been decided that 5G radio waves would also be transmitted in Japan, but there is a possibility of a structural change, as Google is working on the transition to the cloud on 5G.

Japan is like the Galapagos Islands in terms of music, as CDs make up 70% of revenue, while the structure is completely different in the rest of the world, where subscription services already make up near 50% of revenue.

Although Netflix provides opportunities, such as the provision of funds for content creation and expansion of overseas channels, they take over the business foundation and could take all user data.

In response to this, there are individual measures across the genres.

For manga, there are antipiracy measures.

For anime, there are strategies that combine TV and the internet.

For games, there are measures to expand new industries, such as esports.

For music, there is the facilitation of copyright processing for online transmission.

At the same time, there is also a need to carry out measures that cut across genres, such as when demonstrating bargaining power with Apple or Google for all content, and expand business while working with other fields, such as fashion and food.