The Marché du film – the business hub of the annual Cannes Film Festival – and Tokyo International Film Festival Content Market (TIFFCOM) recently partnered to host a three-day ‘Japan IP market’ from 15-17 May 2026. The initiative forms part of Cannes’ “Japan, Country of Honour 2026” programme, with participating companies including Kadokawa, Toei, Shochiku and Amuse Creative Studio – some of the most established rights holders across Japan’s publishing, animation and film industries. Through curated pitch sessions, one-to-one meetings and industry discussions, the Japan IP Market enabled international film adaptation opportunities by allowing attendees to discover Japanese IPs directly from rights holders at an earlier stage of development, and learn about best practices for successful collaboration with Japan. 

The timing and location are no coincidence. This article examines the increasing prominence of Japanese IP within the global content market, explores the distinctive commercial models underpinning its cross-media appeal, and the legal and practical frameworks that international partners must understand to structure cross-border collaborations that work for all parties. 

International growth of Japanese IP and cross-border partnerships

Japanese IP is increasingly being adapted for international audiences and developed through cross-border partnerships. Netflix and Japanese animation studio MAPPA have announced an expanded partnership to co-create original anime for global audiences, with Netflix holding exclusive worldwide rights. Netflix reported in 2025 that anime viewership on its platform has tripled over the past five years. Japanese titles on Netflix have been watched for a cumulative 25 billion hours, making them the second most watched category of non-English language content globally, with anime as a major driver.

At Marché du Film, Tetsu Fujimura, Executive Producer of Netflix’s One Piece (an extremely faithful live action adaptation of an anime series, which reached the Netflix Top 10 in dozens of countries), delivered a headline keynote titled “The Future of Japanese IP in Global Adaptations”. He noted that every title in the 2024 worldwide top 10 was Japan IP based (such as ‘Godzilla x Kong’ and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’), and that beyond film, Japan IP has also been adapted into theatre productions and music. Fujimura acknowledged that although the most prominent Japanese IP titles have largely been committed to studios and platforms, “attention is starting to shift toward the next tier of IPs […] These are titles that might not be as well-known yet, but they’ve got incredible potential. And the scope is widening. We’re seeing momentum across novels, light novels, and even indie games.”

At the same time, studios and platforms are engaging earlier in the development process. Disney+ has entered into a multi-year agreement with Tokyo-based production company The Seven, embedding its content team at the earliest stages of project development – signalling a move away from licensing completed content towards shaping projects from the outset. For international studios and distributors, this shift from passive licensee to creative collaborator is both an opportunity and a responsibility. Getting it right requires understanding not only what Japanese IP is, but how it is developed. 

Nature of Japanese IP

Building worlds in parallel: the ‘media-mix’ model 

Whereas ‘Western’ studios have tended to establish its IP in one format first before adapting it to other formats, Japanese creators focus on the concept of ‘media-mix’. This treats multiple formats as equal expressions of the same IP – a manga, its anime, and its accompanying merchandise are developed in parallel from the start.

This is achieved through ‘seisaku iinkai’ – centralised production committees for coordinating the various studios, publishers, and manufacturers involved to ensure the IP is managed cohesively. Each participant contributes to the project and holds rights linked to their area of involvement. This provides for faster scaling, as each format actively promotes the others, creating a compounding effect which would be expensive to replicate through mere advertising alone. It also hedges risk, as any format that is poorly received doesn’t necessarily pass on to the others.

This approach means it is more common for the original creators of Japanese IP to retain a meaningful say in how their characters and IP are portrayed across different media, as opposed to signing away creative control as part of a standard assignment or licence. 

Fandom as Fuel: The doujinshi tradition

Another key feature of Japanese IP is that fan interaction is embedded into the creative lifecycle. The doujinshi tradition – self-published fan works, typically manga or illustrations – are produced independently and sold at dedicated events. The largest of these, Comiket in Tokyo, attracts upwards of 500,000 attendees across its biannual events. The works sold there are, in the strict legal sense, unauthorised derivative works based on protected IP. Rightsholders have historically tolerated and in some cases encouraged doujinshi, recognising that fan creativity sustains community engagement, keeps properties culturally relevant between official releases, and functions as an organic promotional mechanism that no advertising budget could replicate at equivalent cost.

International partners should therefore understand that the implicit social contract between Japanese rights holders and their fan communities is part of the IP’s value. Enforcement policies that may be ordinary in a ‘Western’ context may therefore need to be re-calibrated to maintain relationships with Japanese IP rights holders and with the fanbases that those rights holders have carefully cultivated.  

Your work, your rules: moral rights associated with Japanese IP

Japanese IP law affords strong protection to moral rights, namely, the rights of publication, attribution, and integrity. Crucially, these rights shape the practical reality of cross-border Japanese IP transactions in ways that ‘Western’ parties may not immediately anticipate. 

The right of integrity is the most relevant moral right in this context. This is the creator’s right to preserve the integrity of their work and its title, and its ability to object to any alteration or modification of their work that would go against their will. In common law jurisdictions such as the UK and the US, moral rights exist but are capable of being contractually waived. Japanese law does not permit outright assignments or waivers of moral rights. Instead, Japanese practice has developed the fukoshi tokuyaku - an author’s contractual undertaking not to assert its moral rights – which is accepted as valid in principle.

Perhaps it is fitting that the Japan IP Market was held in France, a jurisdiction which, similar to Japan, does not allow the waiver of moral rights and in fact goes even further than the Japanese position in that agreements akin to fukoshi tokuyaku are void as a matter of public policy.  Culturally, the similarities in approach between Japan and France regarding respecting a creator’s moral rights gives investors a taste of a similar environment. Nonetheless, for international studios working with Japanese IP through French co-productions, this layered exposure to different legal regimes is an aspect that deal documentation must proactively address.

Lost in translation? How to get cross-border collaboration right

Adaptation frameworks and agreements involving Japanese IP should ideally contain the following:

• An explicit acknowledgement of the creator's moral rights and a framework for how those rights will be respected throughout the production
• A clearly defined process by which the original creator reviews and approves key creative decisions
• Specific provisions addressing the scope of permissible modifications to characters, world-building, and narrative. It should be noted that unauthorised modifications of a copyrighted work may constitute infringement of the right of adaptation (if not expressly transferred) and/or the author’s right of integrity.
• A dispute resolution mechanism for creative disagreements
• In the transfer agreement, the parties should specify that the rights under Article 27 (the right of translation, adaptation, etc.) and Article 28 (the right of the original author in connection with the exploitation of a derivative work) of the Copyright Act are included in the rights to be transferred. Unless expressly specified, those rights are presumed to be retained by the transferor.
• Where fukoshi tokuyaku (undertaking not to assert moral rights) is used, it should be drafted so as to specifically refer to moral rights (i.e., the rights of publication, attribution, and integrity) that are subject to the undertaking. Courts have shown willingness to uphold agreements not to exercise moral rights, subject to the caveat that a court might still find infringement under exceptional circumstances. It is good practice to identify, as precisely as practicable, the modifications or uses to which the author is consenting not to object in the clause, or to obtain the author’s approval outside the contract for specific modifications or uses.
• For IP which originates in Japan but is exploited across different jurisdictions globally, it is important to ensure that each jurisdiction’s legal frameworks are considered at each stage of the chain, for instance from creation to assignment and distribution to licensing.

The best adaptation is a faithful one

Japanese IP offers something genuinely distinctive: for creators, a framework for meaningful creative collaboration from the earliest stages of production; for investors, a multi-stream asset and diversified exposure within a single property. But realising that potential depends on understanding the IP itself. As Sanford Panitch, President of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, observed at the Japan IP Market, “the key is for producers who have a love for and deep understanding of the original work to develop it jointly with the Japanese side”. Similarly, the commercial and creative success of One Piece – and of the broader wave of Japanese IP now reaching global audiences – flows precisely from that respect for the source material and its creators. Legal frameworks and contractual structures can facilitate or frustrate that collaborative spirit, but they cannot substitute for it.

With thanks to Tyler Rigby & Oranooz Wafa for assisting with the initial research and drafting of this article.