Japan’s IP360 incentive offers 50% against Japanese spend

By Grace Kim

At the Motion Picture Association’s (MPA) annual seminar, “Tokyo Vice” producer Alex Boden and Netflix production policy director Deb Richards said Japan’s international production incentive, IP360, offers 50% against Japanese spend. Boden said the minimum, raised to JPY800 million ($5.1 million), shuts out independent films and co-productions.

The seminar took place at the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). Boden, a London-based producer who spent almost two years in Japan making two seasons of HBO Max’s “Tokyo Vice,” traced the incentive’s lineage to a 2020 research program supported by the series, the 2023 J-LOD incentive and today’s IP360.

What does the incentive change for independent producers?

Most Japanese films cost $1.5 million to $3 million, Boden said, well below the JPY800 million eligibility threshold. The scale makes the incentive available mainly to larger projects, rather than independent films and co-productions, he argued.

He also said panel-based selection left Japan among the few territories with a subjective incentive, even though projects can take three to five years to develop. Boden called for automatic approval: “So how does a producer know that they can count on the Japan incentive in advance? That’s the question, and we need a solution.”

Boden pointed to Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” along with “Pachinko” and “Shōgun,” as Japan-set projects that scouted in the country but shot elsewhere. He argued for adding training to the incentive, using the U.K.’s 0.5% ScreenSkills training levy as a model.

Richards said certainty mattered more than a higher headline rate: “You can have a lower incentive, that’s fine, as long as it’s certain, as long as the criteria are clear.” She added: “And that’s one of the things that for the Japan incentive, the criteria is not clear.”

Applicants could work out why they were rejected only by comparing the approved list, she said, calling the process “opaque.” Paul Muller, the MPA’s vice president of production policy for Asia-Pacific, held up Australia’s rules as an alternative. He said international productions there must spend at least AUD20 million ($13.9 million) and direct 1% of their budgets to training.

Since the rules took effect in June 2023, more than AUD20 million has gone into training, Muller said. He also noted that the average cost of an hour of Australian television rose from AUD2 million ($1.4 million) to about AUD5 million–AUD6 million ($3.5 million–$4.2 million) over seven or eight years.

Muller welcomed signs that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), which runs Japan’s incentive, was moving from single-year to two-year financing and raising maximum thresholds. Georgina Pope, head of production at Toho Tombo Pictures, said Tokyo permitting remains difficult but is changing.

Her team recently closed the road in front of Tokyo City Hall to stage a large car scene, she said. Her recent Japan work includes A24’s “Marty Supreme” and “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.”

Pope said: “I’m finding that Japan is really starting to realize the value of having a dynamic international film industry.” Boden called Japan the hottest country in the world at the moment and said: “Everyone seems to be in Japan or visiting Japan tomorrow.” He warned that letting years pass would mean “a real missed opportunity.”

Japan’s 2027 policy reset

On Oct. 22, a task force for the planned body held its first meeting, Nakahara Hirohiko, director-general of the Cabinet Office’s Intellectual Property Strategy Promotion Secretariat, told the seminar. The body, which the Japanese prime minister directly ordered, aims to break down policy silos among government bodies.

Nakahara listed the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, METI and, for overseas expansion, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The government aims to launch the unified body in 2027.

These agencies currently handle separate parts of content policy, Nakahara said. Their work would sit within a July public-private investment roadmap targeting JPY20 trillion ($127 billion) in overseas sales by 2033.

Content is one of 17 strategic fields in the growth strategy of Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s administration, according to Nakahara. For film, the roadmap covers support for large-scale location shoots (on-location production), international co-productions built on Japanese intellectual property (IP) and tougher anti-piracy measures.

Nakahara said: “We hope to become a global hub for film shooting and production.” Former Liberal Democratic Party secretary-general and METI minister Amari Akira then drew a historical parallel.

Amari recalled chairing the parliamentary league behind Japan’s basic content law 22 years ago, with future prime minister Kishida Fumio as secretary-general and Hayashi Yoshimasa running its secretariat. He joked that the lineup proved his foresight.

Amari said the underlying thinking was right but execution lagged, leaving Japan behind Korea in taking content overseas. “In our day, we tried to do this through addition. This time, the government is doing it through multiplication,” he said.

He described the 2033 target as a plan to quadruple the industry in 10 years and said it could grow further. TIFF’s new festival director Hisamatsu Takeo noted that Japan was country of honor at this year’s Cannes Film Market and that 37 Japanese films screened at the recent Busan International Film Festival.

Looking 10 years ahead, Muller said that if the government delivered the discussed changes, the JPY20 trillion IP360 goal was “well within scope and well achievable.” That confidence depends on turning the seminar’s proposals into durable rules before projects with three-to-five-year development timelines reach production.

For producers, the practical tests are clear eligibility, automatic approval and stable training funding. Without those changes, projects may again scout Japan and shoot elsewhere; with them before 2027, the unified body could convert current international interest into sustained film production.