Stepping Down as Chairperson of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters Committee - Part 1

 ■Stepping Down as Chairperson of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters Committee - Part 1

The Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters Committee underwent a renewal. I will continue to serve as a member of the committee, but I am stepping down as Chairperson. This comes after serving as the Chairperson for 10 years.

10 years ago, I wrote, “Although the cultural abilities (expressive abilities) that Japan excels in, along with technical abilities, are recognized around the world as “Cool Japan,” our latent potential on the industrial side are not being fully expressed, resulting in us not making the most of our soft power. I will form intellectual property strategies that will comprehensively utilize the combination of technical abilities (manufacturing abilities) and cultural abilities (expressive abilities).”

My principal objective was to transition the domestic emphasis and industrial development of the past into global emphasis and infrastructure preparation.

The 2 main pillars were 1. the Cool Japan Policy (overseas development) and 2. digital internet support (foundation preparation).

At the same time, this was also a strategy to shift the axis of content policies from digitalization to smartization.

The shift was from computers + the internet + content to smartphones + the cloud + social media (platforms).

I exerted myself toward these policies for the first half of my 10 years. In 2013, I decided on the “Intellectual Property Policy Vision” as the strategy for the next 10 years.

1. A promotion council was set up for the Cool Japan Policy to formulate foreign strategies.

I also served as the Chairperson of the “Pop Culture Subcommittee.”

In my proposal, I wrote “Everybody should ‘participate’ in transmitting information. This should not be led by the government and should involve everybody instead.” I denied the government taking a lead in a government council.

The Cool Japan Fund was established in 2013, and policy tools for funding were enhanced.

The overseas market grew by 26% over the last 5 years, 500 businesses working with video content made efforts to expand globally in 5 years, and overseas sales of companies supported by the government increased by nearly 200 billion yen.

Looking at the 5 years since 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.

2. Online support is not succeeding.

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

There are wide discrepancies in network transmission rates 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.

Pirated versions are a headache for manga.

Netflix is trying to corner the global market in anime.

Even in games, Google is working on transitioning to the cloud on 5G, presenting the possibility of a structural change.

CDs account for 70% of music in Japan, while the structure is completely different in the rest of the world, where subscription services already make up near 50% of revenue.

During this time, results were made in systematic preparation of a foundation, as the Intellectual Property Promotion Plan was used for systemization in many aspects, such as the revision of the Copyright Act to correspond to the online age and systemization of digital textbooks.