Hello, this is Izumitani from Ehime Film Commission.
On June 26, at the NPO Japan Film Commission General Assembly held in Kobe, I officially passed the role of President to newly appointed President Yuichi Komuro, completing three terms and six years in the position I first took on in 2019. I’ll reflect on that tenure in two parts — this is Part One.
When I became president in 2019, at the general assembly held in Sendai, Miyagi, I made a declaration to film commissions gathered from across Japan: “I don’t want to be at the top of this organization — I want to be at its center.”
What I meant was this: I saw my role not as a hierarchical authority, but as a connector — someone embedded in the national FC network, working to strengthen the bonds between commissions across the country.
Alongside that, I set out two priorities: actively support anime productions, and make the impact of film commissions visible through data.
On anime: FCs had long supported animated productions, but the connection was rarely made public — the image of “location support” was firmly attached to live-action film. That perception shifted when Nagoya Location Navi’s support of Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet contributed to a ¥10+ billion box office return, Yamaguchi FC backed the equally successful Shin Evangelion, and Kochi FC supported Ryu to Sobakasu no Hime (Belle), another hit. Anime suddenly became a conversation we could have openly. Ehime FC’s own work on the anime adaptation of Ganbatte Ikimasshoi (Give It All), released in October 2024, is a continuation of that commitment.
On visibility: for years, FC contributions were felt but never measured. We undertook a systematic review of every Japanese film released between 2015 and 2024 that earned over ¥1 billion at the box office — the threshold for inclusion in the Motion Picture Producers Association’s statistics. The results: in any given year, FCs supported between 42% and 76% of those hit films, with an average of 59%. For the first time, we had a number — a defensible, third-party-verifiable number — that represented what the FC network actually contributed to Japanese cinema.
There was much more in between. But the hardest years, without question, were the three years of the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2023, when filming stopped everywhere.
(Continued in Part Two.)