'House of the Owl' brings Hollywood values to Japanese TV

Japanese live-action streaming series have struggled to match the global impact of South Korean rivals such as “Squid Game” and “Crash Landing on You.” However, the recent Japan-based shows “Tokyo Vice” and “Shogun” have become popular with international streaming audiences. Both are made by multinational production teams that reject the nearly exclusive domestic focus of the usual drama series backed by consortiums of media companies that have little interest in the overseas market.

Another Japanese series made with a similar outward-looking approach will drop April 24 on Disney+. Created and scripted by veteran entertainment industry executive David Shin, the 10-episode “House of the Owl” stars Min Tanaka as a powerful political fixer, or “kuromaku,” who has a troubled relationship with his adult children, particularly an idealistic son played by the single-named Mackenyu.

Currently CEO of Singapore-based Iconique Pictures, which produced the series, Seoul-born and U.S.-raised Shin worked in Japan for 10 years as president of the Fox Networks Group. From 2019 to 2023, he was in charge of Disney’s content sales and streaming businesses in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

Speaking to The Japan Times over a coffee in Tokyo’s Kanda neighborhood, Shin says that, despite his industry experience and contacts, moving “House of the Owl” from the concept stage to production took the better part of a decade. And his creative ambitions date back even further: “My entire career I've always been thinking about whether to do this film or this series,” he says. One product of this itch was the 2012 indie horror film “The Room,” which he scripted and directed.

After graduating from the University of Southern California’s prestigious film school in 1992, Shin began a climb up the corporate ladder that took him all over Asia while he worked on his own projects. “I currently have like seven scripts that are coming along,” he says with a grin.

The influence of kuromaku on Japanese politics and business is hardly new. The most notorious such influence peddler, Yoshio Kodama, rose to power in the 1950s with the backing of the CIA and various yakuza gangs, and played a key role in the Lockheed bribery scandal of the 1970s. Tanaka’s kuromaku, Ryutaro Ogami, is a more urbane type than the thuggish Kodama, however, and the series’ story of behind-the-scenes machinations, which involve a sitting prime minister and leading members of her ruling party, have present-day echoes.

“The characters are composites, with none based on any one present-day or historical figure,” Shin says. That includes Ryutaro’s family, from the talented youngest daughter, who aspires to be professional singer, to the scapegrace oldest son, who is anxious to get back into his father’s good books.

“House of the Owl” is riding on a wave of overseas interest in Asian content in general and Japanese content in particular. “The streamers all want Korean live-action and Japanese anime,” Shin says. “Those are the two main pillars of content out of Asia for streaming.” The potential is also there for Japanese live-action, he believes, “but it never developed.”

One reason is that, Japan’s terrestrial networks, with their laser focus on the domestic market, have long controlled TV drama production here. A Japanese version of U.S. cable giant HBO, whose signature series like “The Sopranos” and “Game of Thrones” found fans worldwide, never emerged. “So Japan lagged behind in creating premium content for the international market,” Shin says.

Now, however, interest in Japan among foreign production companies is strong, but always focused on “the samurai and the shogun and the yakuza,” Shin explains. He wanted to do something different — and hit on a show about kuromaku. “They’ve been incredibly influential in Japanese society, but no one knows about them,” he says. “I thought it was a fascinating topic.”

Selling the show to Japanese networks, however, “would have been impossible, no question,” he adds. “The subject matter would have been risky for them — and the Japanese hate risk.”

Also, Shin wanted to pitch the project elsewhere due to what he described as “the lower production values” of Japanese TV and its tendency to cast “the most popular actor, whoever it is, not necessarily the most appropriate actor.” Thus his decision to take “House of the Owl” to Disney+.

Another way the series stands apart from the general Japanese TV drama run is Shin’s hiring of three directors with feature film credits — Yuya Ishii, Yusaku Matsumoto and Yoshitaka Mori — to shoot the 10 episodes instead of TV veterans. “They all have their own identities as directors, which I liked,” he says.

But Shin describes the “challenges” of working with them: “They have a good eye, they have good aesthetics and all of that, but they're just not used to working as a team.” As the showrunner — the executive producer who steers a series from conception to completion — he had to make sure they “shared my vision” for the show, he says. The result is a series with a polished, cinematic look that also has a unified feel.

The U.S. showrunner model doesn’t exist in the Japanese TV industry, though, where the scriptwriter’s vision typically prevails. Shin sees “House of the Owl” as a possible game changer.

“There’s a tremendous opportunity in Japan for serialized drama,” he says. “The country is so rich in potential story ideas. But what the industry needs to do, and what the streamers want, is employ Hollywood storytelling techniques.”

“Honestly, I hate to use the term ‘Hollywood storytelling techniques’ because it wasn't Hollywood that invented them,” he quickly adds. “The three-act structure, all of these things, go back to Aristotle. Hollywood just perfected them for film and television. And you can find them in the storytelling of (Juzo) Itami and (Akira) Kurosawa. The techniques are universal. They’re what the industry here needs. You could have something amazing in terms of content traveling abroad and in terms of content that resonates with the Japanese.”

Trying to prove that has taken Shin on a long, uncertain journey, beginning with a pilot episode that he spent years shopping around.

“You have to just go out and do it,” he says. “Because if you wait around, hoping someone else will do it, it’s never going to happen. Never.”