Reed Exhibitions Japan held Japan’s largest international business platform for content business – Content Tokyo 2015 last week at Tokyo Big Sight, Japan. In its fifth year running, the visitor figure hit a record high, serving as a dynamic business hub for various professionals involved in creating distributing and managing entertainment content.

The 3-day event was composed of 6 exhibitions – 5th Licensing Japan, 4th Creators’ Expo, 3rd Production Companies Expo, 3rd Content Solutions Expo 1st Content Marketing Expo, 1st Advanced Content Technology Expo, over 39 conference sessions and various business boosting events.

From individual creators, production companies, licensers, licensees, IT experts, marketers, media professionals to technology, services users and providers etc. the show attracted a wide range of professionals to network, build partnerships and share new ideas for various content related businesses.

“We are a 3D animation production company from Korea. As the Japanese market is around 10 times bigger than Korea, we are thrilled to be able to participate in such an international event. We exhibited to showcase our ability to produce high quality animation and we have already decide to come back next year with an even bigger sized booth,” said Keyring, Licensing Japan Exhibitor, Korea.

“It was definitely an interesting show to visit. We were able to speak to many creators with a lot of potential as well as keeping up-to-date with the latest technologies and good case studies for content marketing solutions,” said a web designer, Content Tokyo Visitor.

“We were able to meet major firms like TV, media etc. and already had many meetings and exchanged contacts,” said Audio Network, Production Companies Expo Exhibitor, UK.

“We are an industrial robot manufacturer from Germany and showcased our next generation robot highly adapted to work with humans with fitted cameras allowing to film TV commercials and movies. By participating, we were able to exchange many contacts and find new ways to contribute to content related business as an advanced technology provider,” said Kuka Robotics, Advanced Content Technology Expo Exhibitor, Germany.

“During the show I was hoping to meet professionals in bridal, stationary and general merchandise related business that can use my illustrations. A lot of potential orders were discussed in depth with professionals within my target range,” said Illustrator, Creators’ Expo Exhibitor, Japan.

“We have participated in academic conferences in the past but it’s our very first time introducing our immersive auditory display “Sound Cask” at a trade show. We have been having meetings with numerous exhibitors as well as visitors discussing potential new projects like collaborating with creators of 3D head mount displays to create 3D sounds, combining our sound technology with books to make a completely new form of picture books, creating art work by collaborating with 3D visual effects etc. Something is definitely going to be born from this experience,” said Tokyo Denki University, Advanced Content Technology Expo Exhibitor, Japan.

The Content Tokyo Keynote Session was led by Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, Chairman of the Board of Kadokawa/Kadokawa-Dwango who discussed content business in reference to various business models such as the market entry of ‘Netflix’ into Japan, ‘Niconico Music Party’, ‘Cool Japan Forest’ etc. Kadokawa also introduced IoT (Internet of Things) and O2O (Online to Offline) as opposing but essential concepts to work towards further developments of the business and projected various challenges to overcome.

At the Content Tokyo International Conference, Daito Manabe, Director of Rhizomatiks shared the examples of the latest, innovative ways to combine advanced content technology with live performance such as dancing and fencing, linking movements to cameras, drones, lighting and visual effects. From Tokyo University, Susumu Tachi the Professor Emeritus discussed how the different areas of advancements in robot technology and virtual reality have brought a revolutionary change to entertainment and daily lives in recent years. Michitaka Hirose, Professor of the graduate school of Information Science and Technology of Tokyo University shared the potential of using media content in the real world such as ARG (alternate reality games).

The award ceremony of the annual industry award – “Licensing Of The Year In Japan” was held on the first day. The grand-Prix winner was awarded to “Yo-Kai Watch” – a popular role-playing video game and anime in Japan. To view the winners of the other award categories: http://www.charabiz.com/award/news/20150629.html (Japanese website).

With the launch of 2 new exhibitions – 1st Advanced Content Technology Expo, 1st Content Marketing Expo, and complementing conference sessions, participants were able to catch the latest trends and information of hot advanced technologies such as VR, AR, wearables, interactive technologies, drones etc. and trending content marketing.

With a more colourful line-up of exhibits and events, the show resulted in attracted nearly 10% more visitors in comparison to the previous edition with a larger percentage of participants from overseas.

In total, 1,330 firms exhibited from 20 countries and gathered 54,314 visitors and 7,653 conference attendees from across Japan and the world. For breakdown of figures: www.content-tokyo.jp/en/doc/TAC/

Show Director of Content Tokyo, Keisuke Amano of Reed Exhibitions Japan looks to expand the show further by 50% next year. “We hope to expand the show both in scale and international profile so both professionals from Japan and overseas will be able to utilise the show to exchange contacts and seek the latest services and technologies for further developments of content business.”

The next edition of Content Tokyo will be held on June 29 – July 1, 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight, Japan.