Japanese CNC?

[Aaron Gerow]

A couple note on these statistics:

>a list of Japanese movies released 
>during the year (with English and Japanese titles*)

This is only the list of film UniJapan focuses on. Their list for 2002, 
for instance, only has 40 films while their own statistics list 293 
Japanese films released in that year. UniJapan ignores pink films, much 
of V cinema and a lot of the other small independent work.

>According to UniJapan, imported films began to numerically dominate 
>domestically produced films in 1987 (there is no breakdown in box office 
>receipts) although it appears Japanese films have been gaining some ground 
>back since 1996. 

1975 is when receipts for foreign films topped that of Japanese 
films--the first time that happened in decades. It was then a see-saw 
battle for the next decade before foreign films gained permanent market 
dominance after the mid-1980s.

>I've read various theories on why American movies have become dominant in 
>various markets (UniJapan's figures on the Internet do not break down 
>countries of origin for imported films <I've requested their yearbook>) 
>ranging from the effects of comparative GDP, rates of growth in consumer 
>spending, the number of television channels in a country, etc. I also 
>recently did an informal survey of 30 Japanese of various ages between 18 
>and 80 and found that virtually none of them saw more Japanese films than 
>American films nor preferred Japanese films to American films.

One thing to remember is that this is not merely an issue of why Japanese 
watch more American films than Japanese films. It is also a question of 
how the American industry has succeeded in dominating markets worldwide. 
Some may argue its because they offer better films (or bang) for the buck 
than anyone else, but it also has to do a lot with "free trade" 
agreements and Hollywood's long-standing unfair manipulation of foreign 
markets (in some cases dumping films, in some cases forcing block 
booking, etc.). There are a lot of domestic reasons as well: the end of 
government restrictions on foreign films in the 1960s, the incompetence 
of some sectors of the Japanese industry, patterns of