Overview: Japanese movies from 2001 to today

Overview: Japanese movies from 2001 to today

Recovery (?)

In this period, the number of theaters (screens) has largely increased to approx. 3300 to 3400.

The number of attendance has varied in a range of 140 to 170 millions.

The number of distributed productions has also increased largely: in 2004, approx. 310 (including approx. 100 porn movies); from 2005 to 2010, approx. 400 to 450 (including approx. 80 to 40 porn movies); and, from 2012 on, more than 500 (including approx. 40 porn movies).

Quantity guarantees quality. I myself feel that the level of Japanese movies has risen in 21st century, when compared with that in the bottom period of 1990s.

The same directors have been found in the Top_10_movies list regularly (e.g., Hirokazu Koreeda, Nobuhiro Yamashita, Miwa Nishikawa, and more). It is because the current conditions of Japanese movie industry enables directors, who has been once recognized as talented or skilled, to get offers of directing a movie regularly.

As the data above shows, the number of productions and that of the theaters (screens) have increased at a similar rate. However, the number of attendance has not (i.e., it is probable that total profit of the industry has not increased so much). It means that the number of commercially distributed movies that could not recover the cost has largely increased in this period.

I'm afraid that some or many of such movies were produced by people who were aware that they would lose money and whose goal was not to get profit which enable them to produce the next movie, but to get a chance of screening of their works. For such people, movie production is not a profession, but an expensive hobby? If so, they are amateur movies, commercially distributed amateur movies.
What becomes of the directors of such movies? Few of them might become a professional one, and many of them might not direct his/her next film.

Quantity guarantees quality. However, what guarantees the quantity of Japanese movie today? It is something unsound, I think. Thus, I cannot be so optimistic about the future of Japanese movie industry.