Japan wants to quadruple the overseas market for its manga, cartoons and video games to reach the equivalent of 118 billion euros by 2033, the government announced on Tuesday.
The country, cradle of manga and epic “anime” like Dragon Ball Or One Pieceand globally successful video games like Super Mario And Final Fantasyconsiders its creative industries as an engine of growth in the same way as steel and semiconductors.
In its revised “Cool Japan” strategy released Tuesday, the government said it aims to increase exports of such cultural goods to 20 trillion yen by 2033.
In 2022, the gaming, anime and manga sectors will bring in some 4,700 billion yen (nearly 28 billion euros) abroad, not far from the 5,700 billion yen generated by Japanese chip exports. electronic, according to government statistics.
“In recent years, content such as anime and manga have played an extremely important role in attracting a growing young audience from overseas, serving as a ‘gateway’ to Japan,” commented the government in its new roadmap.
The rise of broadcasting in streamingfueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, has helped boost the global profile of Japanese cartoons, including franchises such as Demon Slayer, whose feature films are huge hits at the global box office.
The booming phenomenon of virtual animated YouTubers, or “Vtubers”, playing video games, also contributes to strengthening Japan’s power of attraction abroad, according to the Japanese government.
By combining the growth of these sectors with related industries such as fashion, cosmetics and tourism, Japan is even targeting an economic profit of 50,000 billion yen by 2033 (nearly 300 billion euros at current prices). ).
The new strategy also plans to strengthen the fight against websites illegally distributing anime and manga translated into other languages, such as English or Vietnamese.
“Strengthening measures against piracy sites is essential to the expansion of the global market” and “rapid intergovernmental action is necessary to deal with this crisis”, insists the Japanese government, according to which part of the advertising revenue from these sites is donated to “criminal groups”.