This October, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) held its 8th Entertainment and Creative Industrial Policy Seminar, during which it proposed five key principles of its new policy guidelines for the Japanese content industry, including video games, anime, manga, film and music. As reported by Otaku Soken, the new guidelines have been announced as part of the strategy to achieve the government’s goal of expanding the overseas market size for domestic content to 20 trillion yen by 2033. This comes only a month after the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) issued an “urgent message” calling on the government to provide immediate large-scale and long-term support for the country’s content industry.
The “Five key principles of the Entertainment and Creative Industries Policy” are listed as follows:
- Large-scale, long-term strategic support
- Support efforts to spread Japan-made content to the world
- No interference in the content of creative works
- Provide direct support
- Prioritize those willing to take a challenge
In light of recent events – especially aggressive content restrictions and global pressure from payment processing firms – the third principle of the policy has been attracting attention in particular. As explained by METI, the government’s goal is to invest in IPs, human resources, and digital technologies, as well as support international distribution networks and overseas investments into building fandoms. Consequently, the third principle was suggested to reassure creators that their freedom of expression will be protected, and that “government backing” does not imply that the content of their works will be meddled with in any way.
Furthermore, clause four of the policy proposal suggests that there will be more transparency behind the support process, meaning less reliance on intermediary companies and more of the support directly reaching those involved in the creation and popularization of content.
As for the reasons behind the new policy proposal, METI cites meager results in its previous efforts to expand the overseas market size for domestically produced content. While some of the measures did show results, METI suggests that they were still at a low level compared to other countries like South Korea. The Ministry commented they “weren’t able to expand the stock of tangible/intangible assets and raise labor productivity and wages to a satisfactory level” and are hoping that the new policy helps “Japanese-produced content conquer the world.”
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