Toei CEO Confirms ‘One Piece’, ‘Super Sentai’ Studio Now Focusing On Overseas Markets Due To Japan’s Population Crisis
According to Toei Co. President and CEO Fumio Yoshimura, where once the studio’s various film and television projects – such as those related to Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, and One Piece – were developed strictly with local audiences in mind, the shrinking of Japanese audiences due to the country’s ongoing population crisis has now forced them to shift their economic focus to overseas markets.
Established in 1951 following the purchase of the Toyoko Eiga Company and Ōizumi Films studios by the Tokyo Film Distribution Company, Toei Company is perhaps best known to our readers for their popular tokusatsu franchises like Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Metal Heroes, as well as their majority ownership of Toei Animation, whose production output includes such popular anime franchises as Dragon Ball, Digimon, One Piece, Sailor Moon, and Yu-Gi-Oh.
One of the most prolific media companies in the whole of Japan, odds are, if you’ve watched an anime in recent years, they likely had some level of involvement in it.
Yoshimura, who was appointed to his current dual-role in January 2023 following the sudden death of his predecessor in Tezuka Osamu, detailed the iconic media production house’s forward facing plans while speaking to Deadline’s Liz Shackleton for the outlet’s International Disruptors interview series, itself focused on spotlighting “key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace.”
Speaking to his previously-announced plans to have international markets make up 50% of Toei Co.’s revenue by 2033, a boost from their current contribution of 30%, the studio boss explained that the reason for this shift in focus was, simply put, the fact that the amount of customers available to them in Japan has been shrinking by the day.
“In the past, Japan had a large population and therefore market for entertainment content, so we didn’t see the necessity of going overseas,” said Fumiyo. “But now our population is declining, a trend that is not likely to be reversed, so now is the time for us to create new strategies.”
Per data collected by the United Nations, the fertility rate in The Land of the Rising Sun has been on a dire downward trajectory since the end of World War 2, with national ‘births per women’ having fallen from roughly 3.43 in 1950 (the first year the organization began to record such data) to an abysmal 1.37 in 2024.
While the reasons for this trend are varied, the most common factors are poor job market prospects, the rising costs of living against stagnant wages based on a declining currency, and a disconnect between Japan’s highly-rigid workplace culture and a rise in parents wanting to spend more time with their families.
Combined with an ever-passing number of elderly citizens, Japan’s population as a whole, to say nothing of its markets, are facing a slow but seemingly unstoppable collapse – to the point where the Japanese government itself considers it one of its top concerns.
As such, the President detailed that in service of finding new economic footholds, their two main ‘markets of interest’ were their fellow Asian countries and North America as a whole.
“Asia accounts for more than half the world’s population, local contents are growing in nearly every Asian market, and the region is closer to us culturally, so it’s an obvious place to start,” he said. “But North America is also a huge market, so of course we would want to roll out there as well.”
“We’d like to work on partnerships and affiliations, trying to bridge the gap we have currently,” Fumiyo continued. “We’re starting with production so we’re looking for partners that we can co-produce and create with – the idea is to produce content that can work in the North American market.”
Though the CEO refrained from providing any specific details as to what sort of ‘content’ they want to produce for either Asia or North America, he did note that overall, “We also want to look at how we can expand our existing tokusatsu special effects franchises – Kamen Rider, Super Sentai and Power Rangers – this has always been Toei’s forte and we’re hoping to expand these properties.”
Further, in terms of the former region, Fumiyo also noted that Toei was looking “to work with Chinese producers to create local IPs, which will be regarded as Chinese content, rather than imported Japanese content.”
“Production capabilities are improving rapidly in China and Toei wants to co-produce both animation and live-action with Chinese partners,” he added.
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