Japanese Mediascape: Intellectual Property and the Value Chain

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the Japanese Governments approach to protecting its media trade and, concurrently, growing its cultural and monetary value. Media trade falls within the umbrella of the Japanese contents business. A precise definition of what constitutes this business from a Japanese perspective is very difficult to ascertain. In the global village of an increasingly interconnected world, the achievement of meaningful protection for its commensurate intellectual property is problematical. Piracy of content, which occurs on a grand scale at the individual and business level, is substantially detrimental, from the perspective of revenue, to the owners of the originating intellectual property. The advances in technology, which conjointly creates problems and opportunities for media trade, are significant in the ever-changing mediascape. The value chain is used to draw attention to the need for multi-channel revenue streams in the promulgation of media trade to maximise revenue. This study argues that the Japanese government, in the bubble economy of the 1980s into the 1990s, failed to appreciate the intrinsic financial and cultural value of its popular culture. It delineates the change process within Japan since then to better retain value and enable the longer-term viability of its contents business.

Key words: Japanese content business; Intellectual property; Value chain; Japanese media strategy; Remaking; Regionalization