Japanese films dominated the local box office in 2024, but change is sweeping the industry, and that even includes the definition of “film” and “theatre”.
In 2024 the Japanese box office was once again topped by local animations and live-action films, mostly based on proven properties. That has been true for years and, in the case of some popular anime franchises, for decades. Meanwhile, the still domestic-focused industry is becoming more open to the world at large, from co-productions with foreign creators and producers, to established auteurs making content for Netflix and other platforms with a global reach.
The Japanese box office totaled USD1.36 billion (JPY207 billion) in 2024, a drop of 6.5 percent from the previous year, according to figures compiled by the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (Eiren). This compares with the all-time record of USD1.72 billion (JPY261 billion) set in 2007.
Of the earnings total, Japanese films accounted for USD1.02 billion (JPY155.8 billion), for a 75.3 percent market share and a 5.1 percent gain from the previous year. This broke the all-time box office record for domestic films of USD977 million (JPY148 billion) set in 2016.
Box office for foreign films fell 70 percent year-on-year to USD337 million (JPY155 billion yen) for a 24.7 percent market share, with the 2023 Hollywood strikes by writers and scriptwriters having lingering effects on production.
Also, the earnings of non-film contents, exclusive of live broadcasts, were USD162 million (JPY24.7 billion), a five-fold increase since 2012. The share of ODS (other digital stuff) is expected to grow, making multiplexes less movie theatres than venues for video contents of all types.
Annual admissions amounted to 144,441,000, down 11.09 million or 7 percent from 2023, while the number of screens rose by 22 to 3,675 for the 23rd straight year of gains.
A total of 685 Japanese films were released in 2024, an increase of nine from the previous year. Foreign film releases totaled 505, a decrease of 51. The number of all releases for the year, 1,190, was the fourth highest of all-time.
Nine of the top ten hits for 2024 were Japanese and, as in previous years, going back decades, most of the highest-earning local films were anime, including the number one for the year, Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram.
Based on a popular manga series, the 27th installment in the venerable feature anime series, about the cases of a teenaged detective trapped in a boy’s body, grossed USD103 million (JPY15.8 billion) following its April 12 release. The film has also won fans overseas, especially in China where it earned nearly USD40 million after opening there on August 16, a series record for the world’s second-largest film market.
The highest ranking live-action film, at number three with USD53 million (JPY8.03 billion), was Kingdom 4: Return of the Great General. Based on a bestselling comic by Hara Yasuhisa, the fourth entry in the Kingdom period action series, like all the others, is set in China’s Warring States Period, (475-221 B.C.), with action specialist Sato Shinsuke directing and Yamazaki Kento starring in all four installments.
Yamazaki plays Xin, a general based on a real-life figure who rose from the rank of foot soldier to serve China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. In the manga and movie series, he begins as a slave boy who dreams of becoming a great general and, in the course of many fights and battles, staged more with expert stunt work than SFX miracles, does just that.
In 2024 Japanese films were conspicuous by their absence among the award winners at the Big Three festivals: Cannes, Venice and Berlin, though Cannes celebrated the career of master animator Miyazaki Hayao with a special section. Also, the festival screened films by young up-and-coming Japanese directors, such as Okuyama Hiroshi with the gay-themed ice-skating drama My Sunshine, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, and Yamanaka Yoko with her second feature Desert of Namibia, which screened in the Directors’ Fortnight section.
Meanwhile, Japan’s nominee for the 2024 Best International Feature Academy Award, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, made it into the final five, though Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest won the Oscar. A Japan-Germany coproduction, the film was initially part of a project to publicize 17 public toilets created by leading architects and designers for Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward.
Originally expected to make one or a series of short films about the toilets, Wenders turned in a feature about a toilet cleaner, played by Yakusho Koji, living a solitary but contented existence until reminders of his past begin to appear. Boosted by Yakusho’s low key but transcendent performance, the film won a number of accolades, including a Best Actor prize for Yakusho at the Asian Film Awards.
Wenders’ triumph is part of a growing trend toward international coproductions in the Japanese film industry, which has long had a heavy domestic focus. Another recent example is Katayama Shinzo’s Lust in the Rain, a sprawling surreal drama based on the work of celebrated manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu. Screened in competition at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, this Japan-Taiwan coproduction was shot almost entirely in Taiwan, with Chiayi City standing in for urban Japan in the early postwar period.
The festival’s big winner, however, was Teki Cometh, Yoshida Daihachi’s drama/fantasy about a retired professor, played by Nagatsuka Kyozo, who stoically goes about his daily routine until a message appears on his PC that an “enemy” (teki) is coming.
Blurring the boundary between dream and reality with a dark comic vibe, this black-and-white film was both formally inventive and psychologically revealing as its elderly protagonist’s facades fall away. Teki Cometh won the Tokyo Grand Prix for best film, while Yoshida was named best director and Nagatsuka best actor.
Under the leadership of festival chairman Ando Hiroyasu and programing director Ichiyama Shozo, the Tokyo festival, which was once derided as a showcase for the lineups of big domestic distributors, has emerged as a go-to destination for overseas programmers and critics, as well as local media and fans. In a festival preview, IndieWire critic David Erlich wrote that “TIFF has quietly assembled a series of diverse and exciting film slates that reward curiosity while defying expectation.”
Among Japanese films released in local theatres in 2024, the one trailing the most overseas honours was Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Evil Does Not Exist. Winner of five awards at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, including the second-place Silver Lion prize, this film about the clash between residents of a mountain village and proponents of an environmentally unfriendly glamping site subtly but sharply dramatises the clash between rural and urban values while starkly illuminating humanity’s complex relationship with nature, which can both nurture and destroy.
Coming completely out of left field was Motion Picture: Choke, Nagao Gen’s micro-budget fantasy about a dystopian future in which people have lost the ability to speak. Starring Misa Wada as a woman living a Robinson-Crusoe-like life until three male bandits come calling, the film entertains with inventive deadpan humor in its opening scenes, but segues in a disturbing recapitulation of human history in miniature, from war and slavery to the rise of the patriarchy, which the heroine fights tooth and nail. The film was screened at the 26th edition of the FEFF.
Motion Picture: Choke and other imaginative, risk-taking films like it show that for all its pressing problems, from a lack of governmental and industry support to harsh and exploitative working conditions, the indie sector is still producing some of Japan’s most interesting cinema, whether Cannes takes notice or not.
The lineup of Japanese films for the current year again features the inevitable animations, including the 28th installment in the Detective Conan franchise, set for an April release. Also, reportedly penciled in for a September bow is Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, the latest feature entry in the Demon Slayer manga and anime franchise that will be the first of a trilogy. The franchise’s first feature animation, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, set an all-time Japanese box office record in 2020, racking up earnings of USD507 million.
Also highly anticipated is the latest offering by anime auteur Shinkai Makoto, maker of the smash-hits Your Name (2106), Weathering with You (2019) and Suzume (2022). In a New Year’s message on X, Shinkai said that he had been working on a new film in 2024 and planned to announce it sometime this year.
Among live-action titles scheduled for a 2025 release are the many films derived from hit TV shows and manga, as well as adaptations from bestselling and award-winning novels. Major films based on original screenplays are also coming out this year, however.
One is First Kiss, a romantic drama scripted by Sakamoto Yuji, winner of the Cannes Best Screenplay prize in 2023 for his work on Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Monster. Matsu Takako stars as a widow who travels back in time to just before she and her late husband (Matsumura Hokuto) met to fall in love with him once again. The film opened in February.
Sakamoto also wrote an original script for the female friendship drama Kataomoi Sekai (World of Unrequited Love). Starring Hirose Suzu, Sugisaki Hana, and Kiyohara Kaya as three young women sharing the same house in present-day Tokyo, the film examines their close relationship in all aspects of their lives, romance included. Release is set for April.
Also, international co-productions are in the pipeline, including Love Song, a gay-themed romance starring Win Morisaki and Mukai Koji of the boy band Snow Man and set in Tokyo and Bangkok, Thailand the film was directed and written by Weerachit Thongjila, a Thai director of hit TV dramas. It is scheduled to open in Japan this fall.
New films by such Japanese auteurs as Hamaguchi Ryusuke, Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Kore-eda Hirokazu have yet to be announced as of this writing, though Kore-eda’s mini-series Asura dropped on Netflix in January. Based on a 1979 mini-series by pioneering female scriptwriter Mukoda Kuniko, Asura stars Aoi Yu, Hirose Suzu, Ono Machiko and Miyazawa Rie as four sisters who clash after discovering that their father has been carrying on an affair.
Meanwhile, in April of last year Kurosawa released Chime, a 45-minute shocker about a chime-like sound that causes havoc with whoever hears it and is passed like a virus from person to person. His distribution partner was Roadstead, a fledging DVT (Digital Video Trading) platform that treats each release like a DVD or other physical media that can be bought and sold by users.
As these examples indicate, not only multiplexes but also filmmakers are seeking out new approaches to the visual contents business. Not too long ago a director of Kore-eda’s international stature would not have stooped to series TV while a start-up like Roadstead would have once been hard put to persuade a master of horror like Kurosawa to make his new film their first-ever offering.
Ways of consuming films are also changing in Japan. In February distribution and exhibition giant Toho released HYPNOSISMIC – Division Rap Battle – Movie, Japan’s first interactive feature film, developed by the King Records label as part of a multimedia franchise that launched in 2017 with rap singles followed by albums, live concerts, games, manga, stage plays and a TV anime series. At the world premiere at a central Tokyo theatre in early February, 300 fans who had been selected by lottery cheered, applauded and waved multicolored light wands as the on-screen action unfolded.
Prior to the start of the film, set in an alternative future where the women who rule central Tokyo have channeled male aggression into rap battles, moviegoers downloaded an app that allowed them to choose their favorites after each rapper-versus-rapper contest, with the winner announced on screen. The result was the sort of enthusiastic response rarely seen – or heard – in Japanese theatres, where audiences tend to be silent save for the occasional titter at a comedy or snuffle at a tearjerker.
Interviewed after the screening, director Tsujimoto Takanori opined that HYPNOSISMIC would “open up new possibilities” for not just the franchise but the film medium as a whole. “Japanese people tend to watch movies quietly, but it’s OK to shout while watching this one,” he said. “We hope the audience will enjoy the movie in ways that transcend the usual boundaries of the theatre experience.”
Mark Schilling