The plane slowly stopped at Narita Airport, Japan's largest and now Asia's largest international airport, located in Narita City, Chiba Prefecture, 68 kilometers from downtown Tokyo.

Although it was once occupied by the United States after World War II, it was in danger of annihilation. However, after the war, in order to establish the United States as a bridgehead in Asia to contain the Soviet Union and the Red Wave, in the early fifties, the United States gradually lifted the ban on castration and repression of Japan and replaced it with limited support. After the war, Japan was able to quickly realize its dream of rising by relying on the countless wealth plundered in Asian countries during World War II and the industrial foundation left over from the Meiji Restoration.

By the early '80s, Japan had become the world's second-largest economy, with an economy more than half that of the United States, fulfilling its dream of becoming a world-class industrial power that it had failed to achieve before World War II.

However, compared to Japan's current huge economy, which is so big that even its godfather, the United States, is afraid of it, Japanese films have never been able to keep up with the pace of their own economic rise.

In fact, when it comes to Japanese films, looking back at their experience in the past century, there have been brilliant and brilliant experiences, but more about experience and lessons.

Relying on the Meiji Restoration in the last century, Japan quickly became rich and powerful and became the first power in Asia, and Japan's education, industry, and economic development brought it to Asia as soon as it was born, becoming one of the first Asian countries to come into contact with film.

The development of Japanese cinema before the start of World War II took many detours, and like the famous comedian Charlie Chaplin, who was almost abandoned by American cinema because of his stubbornness, silent films dominated the Japanese market for a long time before the thirties of this century. Subsequently, due to the introduction of the Russian Revolution, it influenced some Japanese filmmakers to a certain extent, and a large number of films with distinct class and critical tendencies were born, such as "Proletarian Newsletter", "Children", "Oda River", "May Day", "Noda Workers' Tide", etc. The Japanese government and chaebol regard domestic films as 'thorns' and 'tumors', and have always implemented the policy of 'limited support and suppression'.

This trend reached its peak with the advent of World War II and the rapid invasion of other Asian countries after Japan's rapid demilitarization. So much so that during the war, the Japanese government had to set up a special agency and order the domestic secret services to cooperate, prohibit the filming of films with critical social tendencies, and encourage the production of so-called "national policy films". Some Japanese filmmakers, who did not want to be complicit, devoted themselves to bringing pure literature to the screen in order to express their conscience and escape strict censorship in the name of masterpieces.

After Japan's surrender, the film laws enacted by the former military/national government were abolished, but the strict censorship system still existed, except that the US occupation authorities replaced the government's censorship. Japanese conscientious filmmakers, who had been personally educated about the war and occupation, put forward a demand for the democratization of film in order to defend the democratic rights of the nation, but because of the intervention of the Japanese Communist Party's martial arts faction secretly supported by the mainland (before the 80s, the mainland had always been the absolute main force of the Red Movement exporting revolution to Asia, even though many countries in Africa and South America were under the influence of maoism), the conflict intensified, and finally led to the intervention of the US occupation forces, and only certain results were achieved.

In the mid-to-late 50s, with the re-emergence of the Japanese economy, Japanese films were also deeply influenced by it, and there was a wave of "going out" and "independent production" craze, which once became the representative of Asian films in the eyes of Europeans and Americans. During this period, a series of influential 'great directors' around the world, including Akira Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, and Kaneto Shinto, were born.

However, due to the excessive pursuit of art and the anatomy of human nature, Japanese films have since embarked on a wrong path of emphasizing literature and art over commerce. Entering the 70s, with the birth of the post-war generation of Japanese, the new generation of Japanese who had not experienced the war and the pain of the war were completely unable to understand the ideas and deep meanings of the older generation of filmmakers in their works. It is worth mentioning that like Hong Kong films before the decline in history, there were also a large number of shoddy follow-up films in Japanese films during this period, and many well-known Japanese filmmakers also invested in the production of erotic/erotic films, which once made the glorious Japanese films become a necessary means of attracting customers in small video halls in Asia and even Europe and the United States.

After the 90s, despite relying on the strong economy of the second most powerful capitalist country, the Japanese film box office contributed more than $1 billion a year to the total box office. In the past 1991, the total box office revenue in Japan was as high as 1506. 6.4 billion yen (about 11.) $58.9 billion).

However, Japan's box office revenue is about 57.6 billion yen per year, and its market share is 38 percent. 23%； Compared with overseas films, which generated about 90 billion yen in box office revenue, Hong Kong films accounted for 18% of the total box office. About 84%, and last year alone, the Japanese market contributed 28.4 billion yen (about 2.) to Hong Kong films. US$18.4 billion) box office, which is nearly 20% higher than the total box office in Hong Kong, which shows the importance of the Japanese market to Hong Kong films.

In my memory, before 93, Hong Kong films always occupied half of the Japanese box office. In 94-95, Hollywood blockbusters turned their guns on Asia after successfully suppressing the stubborn resistance of European films, and the influence of Hong Kong films in Japan quickly plummeted to only one-third or a quarter of the previous one. In 97, with "Princess Mononoke", the Japanese government introduced a film protection law shortly thereafter, and Hong Kong films were completely sunk by the surging American blockbusters in this year. After 99 years, the Japanese horror movies that rose with the rise of "Midnight Bell" invaded Hong Kong in turn and successfully staged a good show called "Feng Shui Turn".

Regrettably, although live-action films such as "Midnight Bell" only brought a brief splendor to Japanese cinema, Japanese filmmakers have managed to become a beautiful sight in the world film industry with animated films. In contrast, Hong Kong films have completely declined after the arrival of the new century, and as the talented older generation of filmmakers grow old and never rise, they have no power to return to heaven and become a sad 'modern history' in the history of Chinese films.

The four-hour voyage is not short, nor is it long. Lin Xiaozhi and his team boarded the plane on Cathay Pacific Airways at half past nine in the morning, and the group had a fairly delicious lunch on the plane, and when they arrived in Japan, it was already past noon.

As soon as he got off the plane and walked into the lobby to look for a while, an entourage found several employees of the Japanese branch of Media Asia waiting there holding Chinese Traditional Chinese signs, the first of which was Deng Yuanlong, the former assistant of Zheng Fei, who has now been promoted to vice president of Media Asia, and an old man who had followed him since the New Asia period. Because he has been following Zheng Fei back and forth between Japan and South Korea in the past few years, after thinking about setting up a Japanese branch last year, he became the head of the Japanese branch of Media Asia by relying on the good Japanese he learned by himself in the past two or three years.

"Boss, please come here, the car is ready!"

Lin Xiaozhi is no stranger to him, and after helping to stuff all the luggage into the Toyota business car to pick them up, he sat in the same car with him, and asked with a smile: "How is the propaganda on the Japanese side, can you keep up?" ”

"The Japanese side wanted to spend a lot of money on TV for movie commercials, and we needed to get a stamp from NHK (Japan Broadcasting Association), but fortunately, Kadokawa also helped us with the campaign, so we got the slip. However, due to the cost of publicity, we can only run advertisements on this TV station for about a week. In addition, we have bought advertising space with several newspapers and movie magazines in Japan with a large circulation, and the theater has also agreed to put our promotional posters in the most conspicuous position, and if we want to add banners to get the best current issue and show, we need to give up 1% of the box office revenue before the delivery! ”

"These greedy little devils!"

Lin Xiaozhi frowned and scolded, the statistics of the Japanese box office were relatively chaotic before the new century, and the total box office obtained by each film screened in Japan was the so-called box office before the letter distribution, and the share that really fell into the hands of the film producer was called the income after the letter distribution. After the distribution of the letter, the income will be removed from the theater chain and the distributor's tax, and then less than 30% of the total box office revenue will be left for the film producer.

After a few years of word-of-mouth business in Japan, Media Asia has won a little more than other Hong Kong companies, but it is much worse than the five major American film giants. Therefore, 1% of the box office revenue before the distribution is not a little bit of profit. If "League of Assassins" gets a box office of 3 billion yen in Japan, it will be equivalent to a net box office income of 300 million yen less after they are credited, which is a more ruthless one on the Japanese side.

"We must do our best to form our own cinema chain here in Japan!"

He waved his hand coldly and said, but there was not much anger in his words. The Japanese are already very united and xenophobic, and most Hong Kong film companies, as outsiders, have not suffered from the difficulties of Japanese theaters in Japan. In Hong Kong, only Golden Harvest, a film company that has been painstakingly operating the Japanese market since the 70s, and relying on many martial arts superstars such as Bruce Lee and Cheng Long to make a die-hard fan in Japan, can give Japanese theaters some face.

Lin Xiaozhi also admitted that although Media Asia, which has only begun to enter the Japanese market in recent years, has achieved remarkable results, this time it is the ultimate for the Japanese publishers to cooperate with them to adjust the release time, and then want better shows and publicity, which is tantamount to making the little devils with strict hierarchical concepts and the most recognized seniors and qualifications completely soft, unless they can continue to deliver better results for a few more years. Otherwise, there is only one solution, and that is to meddle in Japanese theaters.

And this time he will go to Japan in person, and one of the reasons is for this.

Now a good thing has fallen on his head, and Kadokawa Shoten, one of Japan's largest publishing groups, has been unstable at the top since the middle of last year, and there have been frequent controversial personnel appointments and dismissals, and it looks like a wonderful drama of infighting is about to be staged.

Kadokawa Shoten is a publishing company founded by Japanese scholar Genyoshi Kadokawa in 1945 under his surname, and at first its main business was to publish Japanese literary works, and before his death, it had developed into a well-known large-scale publishing company in Japan. In the 70s, Genyoshi Kadokawa's eldest son, Haruki Kadokawa, joined the company as president, and promoted the Yokozo Masashi series to the general public, creating the company's peak period.

However, at the end of the 70s, Haruki Kadokawa founded Kadokawa Pictures despite the opinions of the company's top management, and became involved in film production, although it caused a wave in the market in the first few years. But it is a pity that he chose to enter the film industry just in time for the last twilight before the decline of Japanese films, and the subsequent decline of the Japanese film industry soon made him suffer enough.

As a result, Haruki Kadokawa, who was quite a literati arrogant, entered the film production industry, which not only failed to bring about the performance improvement he promised the group, but also lost money almost every year since the 80s. In the past two years, although it has relied on the line of Media Asia and relied on the operation of Media Asia, several popular movies of Media Asia have been released in Japan and have received a lot of dividends, but as soon as they changed hands, not a penny was put into the group's pocket, but was thrown into the bottomless pit of Kadokawa Films.

On the other hand, Kadokawa Haruki's younger brother Kadokawa Rihiko, as the vice president of Kadokawa Bookstore, he is in charge of TheTelevision and Tokyo Walker and other magazine departments in recent years, and the income of his brother Haruki Kadokawa has been completely suppressed for a while. In addition, Haruki Kadokawa has a short temperament and never allows others to question his decisions, which makes some of the senior executives of the Kadokawa Group who have followed him since his father's time to start a business very dissatisfied.

According to the information obtained by Lin Xiaozhi, at the beginning of last year, some shareholders and senior management of Kadokawa Bookstore planned to take advantage of the hot Japanese stock market in the past two years to operate a group listing circle and make a sum of money, and forced him to ask the palace to sell Kadokawa Pictures, which had been operating at a loss. However, this plan was categorically rejected by Haruki Kadokawa, who did not want to be restrained, and then began to clean up the high-level executives of the group who dared to challenge him, thus completely intensifying the internal contradictions of Kadokawa Bookstore.

Many high-level leaders in Kadokawa in history have been cleaned up by Haruki Kadokawa in the past two years, so that Haruki Kadokawa temporarily won the power struggle. But Xu is the butterfly effect brought about by Lin Xiaozhi's rebirth, so that the younger brother Kadokawa Rihiko, who did not participate in the internal fighting of the Kadokawa Group, only chose to take some of his subordinates to resign peacefully and leave the Kadokawa bookstore because he was dissatisfied with the domineering and stubbornness of his brother Kadokawa Haruki, and now not only joined the power struggle in the Kadokawa bookstore, but also became the leader of the team to force the palace against his brother Kadokawa Haruki, this time things are very beautiful!

Seeing that his position as vice president is in jeopardy, his henchmen are constantly being dismissed, and he is in danger of being driven away by his brother Haruki Kadokawa at any time. While he continues to collect evidence that Haruki Kadokawa has used his position to embezzle the group's assets in the past ten years, he does not forget to choose a suitable 'takeover' buyer for Kadokawa Pictures, who has long wanted to sell it, or to help him get the position of president of Kadokawa Bookstore.

It is unfortunate that the boss Lin Xiaozhi is ambitious and has sufficient funds and strength, so when Kadokawa Rihiko was sent to Hong Kong by his brother to sign a contract with Media Asia to buy out the novel copyrights of several well-known movies such as "Resident Evil", he took the opportunity to hook up with him.

One of the two wanted to buy Kadokawa Pictures to get its theater to gain a foothold in Japan, and the other wanted to sell the money-losing goods to help him get rid of his brother Haruki Kadokawa and get Kadokawa Bookstore, and the two parties hit it off and have tacitly reached some verbal agreements.