The Real Best of 2006

[Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to Markus for passing on some data. Eiren will be releasing 
their final data at the end of the month, so it will be interesting to 
see the exact figures.

It does seem like the papers and magazines are frequently running 
articles about the "healthy" Japanese film industry. You especially see 
the movie business appearing in the business pages more than you did in 
the past. There are a lot of films making money these days and it would 
be significant if hoga topped yoga for the first time since 1985 (some 
are already reporting that that is the case). But we should all note 
that most of these articles on the business point to a number of 
problems. I also encounter a number of people in the film community 
here who see the industry in crisis, not in a boom.

Here are some factors of concern:

1) While the hoga share is rising, the pie is not getting bigger. Maybe 
2006 will see a rise in the total BO, but it will be too early to call 
it a trend. The total BO has basically gone up and down over the last 
five years and shown no major expansion. This all means that it is 
still debatable whether Japanese films are really capturing audiences 
on their own; perhaps fickle audiences are just temporarily separating 
from yoga. With total BO not increasing as the number of screens does 
increase, that means that revenue per screen is going down. The number 
of films released is also increasing, which means the revenue per film 
is decreasing.

2) The hoga distribution market is radically unbalanced. In 2005, Toho 
films captured over 60% of the hoga market. That is one single company 
monopolizing 60 yen out of every 100 yen spent on Japanese movies. The 
situation probably will not change in 2006 since Toho just announced it 
had record sales last year (even though its year end releases flopped). 
Some are saying that with the rise of cinemaplexes, one of the evils of 
the Japanese film industry--the block booking system which basically 
prohibited 80% of the films from ever having access to the vast 
majority of theaters--has loosened up. And it is true that some of the 
films that are doing well on small release are getting picked up by the 
shinekon--something that didn't happen before--but with Toho being so 
dominant, the playing field is still tremendously skewed. This is 
especially the case with the rising force of TV capital. With the major 
hits all having TV backing, some of the business articles are reporting 
that theaters are refusing to show films without TV backing. And when 
theaters are showing non-Toho films, they are reportedly pulling the 
plug faster than they did before. As more films appear, it is not only 
getting harder to book a theater, but theaters are quickly dumping 
films that don't perform in the first week. Word of mouth hits are 
going to decrease and the market may separate into two polar opposites: 
TV/Toho majors and the rest.

3) The major hits are mostly films backed by TV networks and/or based 
on TV shows. Many people say that Japanese are moving to Japanese 
movies because Hollywood films are getting repetitive and formulaic. 
But that is precisely what the Japanese majors are making these days. 
Not a few predict this boom will soon peter out. The question is 
whether the industry actually has the talent to produce original work 
that can bring in people. It is encouraging to see the rise of 
filmmaking programs around the country, but one wonders what kind of 
films they will make. I ran into Shinozaki Makoto last weekend, who is 
now teaching at Rikkyo, and he was quite depressed: none of his 
students, he says, go to the movies. They all want to make movies, but 
they make no effort to see movies, especially the classics. A lot of 
filmmaking programs don't even offer film history courses.

4) But this is also a question of management. The Japanese film 
industry is undergoing a profound transformation as various media 
companies are buying up film companies. This shows that the contents 
industry is taking the movies seriously, but one wonders what they will 
do to it. A colleague told me the other day that last year the head of 
DVD/video sales of a major film studio called him to ask if director A 
was someone important. My colleague was floored: director A happened to 
be one of the major directors of Japanese cinema history, someone that 
anyone on KineJapan would know. And this was a director who was a major 
figure in that company for decades! And this was the head of DVD sales 
in that company! Oh My God! Is this the kind of personnel who are 
running the movie companies today? (In some ways it makes sense, 
because the people in their 40s who are becoming the kacho and bucho 
these days are the generation that never watched Japanese movies.) I 
have had complaints about how the film industry treats its own history 
and those who study it--I have long argued that they are shooting 
themselves in the leg over how they deal with their catalog of 
films--but this stunned me as well.

Anyway, I hate to be the pessimist here. Perhaps people like Mark can 
offer a more optimistic vision. I myself am hoping things do turn out 
for the better, but to me, that can only be done by seriously 
confronting problems like the ones cited above.

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
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