Entertainment

Japan's entertainment industry is one of the most globally influential cultural forces of our era, exporting manga, anime, film, music, and celebrity across the world. This category covers its full breadth: idol agencies and the contractual control they hold over performers' personal lives, manga publishers navigating demographic shifts and AI-generated content, television networks whose conduct shapes public discourse, and filmmakers and authors who have built lasting international reputations.

Since we're "the Japan you don't learn about in anime," we don't live in this space per se. But we do cover it when it touches upon our other core topics, such as sexual harassment and women's rights in Japan. The entertainment industry is an industry - with power structures, labor conditions, and accountability failures that deserve the same scrutiny as any other sector. Our reporting draws on Japanese-language sources, industry commentary, and the voices of artists, fans, and critics inside Japan who rarely make it into English-language coverage.

The idol system is the focus of many stories here: how agencies enforce restrictive personal conduct rules, the consequences when those rules are violated or exposed, and how fans and performers navigate a parasocial contract that disproportionately benefits those at the top. The Fuji TV scandal over sexual assault allegations marked a genuine reckoning, and we've tracked what made it land differently than scandals before it.

Elsewhere, the AI manga boom raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and industry economics. Meanwhile, a posthumous nude release and death threats against a cosplayer reveal how quickly entertainment culture can turn predatory. Finally, through deep retrospectives on directors like Kitano Takeshi and renewed global attention on Dazai Osamu, we make room for the serious critical work that Japanese culture deserves.