For decades, the country’s biggest domestic filmmaker and theatre owner was content to focus on its home market, the world’s fifth-largest economy. But Matsuoka, who assumed his role in 2022, wants Toho to more closely follow the paths of better-known Japanese entertainment exporters such as Sony Group Corp and Nintendo.
Expanding into new markets will help the company weather the shrinking of Japan’s population and take advantage of an exploding global appetite for anime, one of Toho’s major businesses. Netflix and Sony’s Crunchyroll, two leaders in the genre, have generated enviable sales exporting popular anime titles all over the world, and Toho wants a bigger slice.
“For Toho to grow, or for any Japanese company to grow, we have to really see opportunities outside of Japan,” says Matsuoka, 59, from his office overlooking Hibiya Godzilla Square, which features a 3m bronze statue of the towering reptilian monster.
To reach more viewers outside the island nation, Toho is undertaking its most ambitious expansion ever. Since Matsuoka took the helm, the company has announced eight acquisitions, including the US anime distributor GKIDS and paid US$225 million ($289.2 million) for a 25% stake in Fifth Season, which produced the Apple TV+ hit Severance.
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Matsuoka and Toho’s international head Koji Ueda are developing films, video games and television shows based on the company’s existing properties, including Godzilla and popular anime series such as Jujutsu Kaisen.
Toho goes global
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Toho is also pushing into other corners of entertainment. A Godzilla-themed 4D ride featuring big screens and moving seats that’s opening in August at the Seibuen Amusement Park in Tokorozawa, Japan, will ultimately be exported to about 40 other locations, including in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and China, with Toho retaining 100% intellectual-property ownership.
The company is also investing about JPY40 billion ($348.4 million) to transform Tokyo’s Hibiya district into a major theatre hub, anchored by properties including the historic Imperial Theatre (located in the Marunouchi district, facing the Imperial Palace). Its stage adaptation of the 2001 Oscar-winning animated film Spirited Away, created in collaboration with longtime partner Studio Ghibli, kicks off an international tour starting in Shanghai this month, with stops in Seoul next year and potential expansion to Southeast Asia and the US.
All told, the Tokyo-based company has earmarked about US$1 billion over the next three years for the initiatives, which it expects to help double operating income by 2032. Toho is aiming to increase its share of total revenue from overseas sales from the current 10% to 30% by the same year. Management is also on a hunt for another monster-size franchise like Godzilla, a search that’s been on and off for decades. “Once we find it,” Matsuoka says, “the opportunity is going to be massive.”
Matsuoka, whose only exposure to the family business as a child was tagging along while his father checked ticket sales, is no stranger to the global entertainment industry. After earning a degree in Japan, he moved to the US in the 1980s and studied business at Pennsylvania’s Albright College. He then interned in Hollywood, got an MBA at the University of Pittsburgh and did a stint at talent agency International Creative Management.
Later, Matsuoka returned to Japan and joined Toho-Towa, a film distribution subsidiary of the family empire, founded in 1932 by Ichizō Kobayashi, a Japanese industrialist who also oversaw Hankyu Railway and the all-female Takarazuka Revue theatre troupe. Over the decades, Toho’s movie distribution network grew powerful, bringing both Japanese movies and US hits to local audiences.
Cinematic legacy
The cornerstone of its film legacy has long been Godzilla. A symbol of Japan’s post-World War II fears of nuclear destruction, the prehistoric “atomic-breathing” monster awakened by radiation has starred in 38 films, which have collectively generated more than US$3 billion in global box-office revenue (Akira Kurosawa’s action epic Seven Samurai, released the same year as the first Godzilla and frequently ranked among the best movies ever made, is also a Toho film). Today, Toho includes a national chain of cinemas as well as a slew of media, production and distribution divisions.
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But the company has had trouble fully exploiting opportunities outside its home market. That’s partly because Toho licensed English-language rights to the character of Godzilla more than a decade ago to Legendary Entertainment, now owned by Apollo Global Management Inc. Since 2014, Godzilla films in English have grossed almost US$2 billion in theatres worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo — but the deal meant only a fraction of that revenue went to Toho.
A turning point came in 2023, with the film Godzilla Minus One. Toho was able to make and distribute the Japanese-language movie itself, bypassing the Hollywood studios that serve as gatekeepers to US theatres. It was produced for a relatively low US$15 million, then went on to generate US$114 million globally and earn an Oscar for visual effects.
That success has underpinned the company’s current mantra: to own more of its content, like Netflix, Nintendo and Sony.
Building on Godzilla Minus One’s performance, Toho is planning a sequel for as soon as next year, plus a potential sequel to the film Shin Godzilla and a still-untitled Southeast Asia-focused project, Ueda says. With Legendary, it’s also co-producing a second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Apple TV+ for next year.
Another bright spot for Toho is its anime, over which it already has full control, no matter the language. Management plans to create new titles and roll out more seasons of such hits as Jujutsu Kaisen, which follows a high school student in a secret society of sorcerers, and My Hero Academia, about a superhero in training. “The anime side of their business seems to have made a lot of wise choices,” says Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba. “They’ve been hitting a lot of anime home runs.”
Ultimately, anime may be bigger than Godzilla for the company, Hall says. Helping its recent run is the government’s “cool Japan” strategy, aimed at bolstering the economy, tourism and the country’s soft power by exporting more Japanese culture. The nation has said it wants to quadruple the amount of content it sells in overseas markets by 2033.
That will be Toho’s 101st anniversary, Matsuoka is quick to point out, and he hopes his own company will play a big part in Japan’s ambitious growth plan. “Through our activity — anime, musicals, Godzilla, live-action series, motion pictures — we want to generate more Toho fans around the world,” he says. “We want the world to know us.” — Bloomberg Businessweek
