New Query Re Japanese Film Financing System(s)
Aaron Gerow
aaron.gerow
Tue Aug 30 12:51:06 EDT 2005
There are unfortunately not enough articles in English, probably
because industry research is rather rare in Japanese film studies. As
Markus mentioned, do look at Mark Schilling's work, not just in Screen
International, but also in the Contemporary Japanese Film book.
For a bit further back, the Anderson/Richie book, The Japanese Film,
had some good sections on the industry in previous periods. I have an
article on the industry in the 70s and 80s in the Ichikawa Kon book
edited by James Quandt.
But the most interesting stuff is coming out in Japanese because this
is really a transitional period for the film industry. The government
has long had complaints about certain monopolistic and inefficient
practices, and so looking at MITI and METI reports over the last decade
can sometimes be quite illuminating. There were also a number of books
published about the industry, with the most provocative being Murakami
and Ogawa's Nihon eiga sangyo saizensen (Murakami is now head of one of
Japan's most influential investment funds and thus is a major player in
the "new economy" in Japan). Then in the last few years, METI and the
Agency for Cultural Affairs have been making a number of proposals
about "reviving" the film industry and some have been become reality.
It is now easier to create investment funds for film production and
structures are being put in place to enable clearer management of
copyright among various partners. These and other measures are making
it easier to get bank financing, for instance (bank financing for film
production was largely unheard of before in Japan, even though it is
standard in the US).
Things are changing so quickly it's hard to keep up with it. But one
does wonder what difference this will really make. Maybe Mark can add
to this?
Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies Program
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
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