After two years of pandemic disruption, the Japanese film market returned to business as usual, more or less, in 2022. Four of the top 10 box-office films for the year, led by the Tom Cruise action film “Top Gun: Maverick,” were from Hollywood, a figure reflecting the market share of foreign films for much of the current millennium. In 2021, when Hollywood studios had basically shut down international distribution of their products, only one non-Japanese film was among the top 10 earners: “F9: The Fast Saga.”
But the pandemic has also wrought changes likely to be long-lasting. One is that the mainstream audience, which once made Hollywood movies their default entertainment choice, developed a decided preference for local films, especially anime. For the past four years, the top box-office film in Japan has been a domestically made animated feature, including 2020’s “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie — Mugen Train,” whose ¥40.4 billion take set a new record for the highest-earning film ever in the Japanese market.