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NEWS: Exports of 'Cool Japan' Anime, Dramas Jump 30%

^
Agreed. I'm sure there's still plenty of media left out there that Japan has yet to share internationally.

Mr. Oshawott wrote:

^ Agreed. I'm sure there's still plenty of media left out there that Japan has yet to share internationally.

It's weird to me being able to watch Japanese movies with English subtitles on Singapore Airlines flights to and from Japan that are neither released on blu-ray / DVD anywhere with English subtitles nor shown on television or in cinemas in any English speaking country with English subtitles (not even at Japanese film festivals).

I think it's less "Japan" not offering but "The West" not demanding.

...

To my knowledge there still isn't an American release for Only Yesterday or Ocean Waves, AKA I can hear the sea, but you can't blame Ghibli or Japan for that.

Somebody from another thread showed me an article from Variety, I thought of reposting the link here and it match my observation about the problem with Japanese film industry. I think Takeshi Kitano could be on to something here.

Mark Shilling of Variety wrote:

The way that films are made in Japan may be to blame. Most commercial films are produced by TV networks and other media companies in a system of “production committees” (or seisaku iinkai) in which partners share investment, PR and other chores in return for a share of the profits. Six or eight partners, ranging from video distributors to radio broadcasters and advertising agencies, is common. And 12 partners is not uncommon. “A lot of these so-called producers (on the production committee) are not film people and don’t know how to read a script,” adds Inoue. “In a film you can say a lot without words, but these guys don’t get that. And when they say ‘I don’t understand,’ someone has to add explanations to the script. The film becomes longer — and more boring.” Another reason for the bloat in Japanese commercial films, says Inoue, is their origin in material from other media, including door-stopper bestsellers and long-running comics. “The publishers have too much power,” he explains. “They demand faithfulness (to the original material) and no one tries to fight them.” It didn’t always used to be this way, he adds. “Directors used to have fierce battles with creators (of original material), but that’s no longer the case. Everyone is just trying to get along.” Japanese audiences, typically a patient group, will show up for long-winded, defanged pics, but foreign audiences are less tolerant. “These self-censored films have never been accepted by the overseas market,” says Takamatsu. “The free creativity seen in films by Miike, Kitano, Sono and others has produced better results overseas.”

EDIT: One more thing I saw on the Variety article:

Quote:

While some argue that with such a big domestic market, the Japanese biz can afford to regard foreign sales as simply the mint after the banquet, Takashi Nishimura, who as managing director of UniJapan is responsible for promoting Japanese film abroad thinks differently. “(The Japanese film industry feels) a sense of crisis that the domestic market is no longer enough,” Nishimura said last year at the Intl. Film Festival of India in Goa. “But Japanese films are made only for Japanese.”

So that explains why Japanese films are not being picked up and distributed internationally (and failing at impression at international film festivals like Zac stated), and that explain why Korean and Chinese films are gaining more traction globally then Japanese films.

Now I know why Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was edited into Warriors of the Wind and Corman's company shortened Galaxy Express 999 movie. The Americans are just trying to make the Japanese movies watchable. Too bad that Miyazaki didn't let Harvey Sweinstein to cut Princess Mononoke. It would have been a great success. Damn you, nationalistic Japanese pride and galapagos syndrome!

I'm just wondering, what do you gain out of Japan caring about marketing films overseas? Do you actually care or is it just some pissing contest at this point?

It comes down to design philosophy. Western movies are developed to generate money and attract in the widest audience with the lowest common denominator. While a lot of Japanese movies often appeal to specific niches that are very good at satisfying a smaller, but loyal, group of customers. Why then, as a consumer who spends a lot of time watching movies would you ever choose the lowest common denominator instead of something targetted specifically at you with differential appeal? It makes no sense from a consumer standpoint. Seeing that quote of "they demand faithfulness (to the original material) and no one tries to fight them” being used as some kind of negative is staggaring, and just reeks of Hollywood suits. Faithfulness to source material is bad now? It may be limiting the appeal to fans of the source material, but again, how is that bad as a consumer? Part of the reason I love anime or manga movies and movies based on TV series like Garo, Kamen Rider are because they are actually faithful and are in continuity with the TV series usually.

Fedora-san wrote:

Also, mdo7, you might want to stop using Gangnam Style as if it's some achievement. You realize most Americans only like that song because they make fun of it, right? They find it hilarious and almost a mockery of Asian people. It's no different than William Hung's popularity back when American Idol aired him. Here's a fun little article about the subject. And also another interesting blog post about it, especially the Tiger JK incident. Makes a good point on why Psy of all people had a one hit wonder song in the US compared to Korea's other singers and the surrounding stereotypes and racism surrounding what whites expect Asians to be like. It's actually a bad thing Gangnam Style is so popular.

Actually Gangnam Style did a lot more positive then negative. accroding to Billboard. Actually K-pop is a lot bigger then you think. If it's not big then how did Girls Generation won the Youtube Music video award when no J-pop act was able to do it. Geez even Super Junior won MTV Italy award which something I never seen from J-pop. I would like to argue more but I'm not going to waste time over this.

Ryo Hazuki wrote:

The only point of the many baffling points I have the energy to address is to ask, why would Perfume sign with Cube, when they're already signed globally with Universal, which has branches all over the world (one of them being Universal Korea) and why would they perform in English, when they wanted to have some Japanese lyrics to their only English language song, Spending all my time?

As I said, it's a hypothetical situation, I don't expect this to become true. Don't take my "what if" as a true thing.