Creative Lecture 3 (Advance into the Global Market) 2018 - Direction and Success Strategy of the creative musical in Japan Market
Date and Time: Sep. 28, 2018 16:00 ~ 17:00
Place: 16th Floor Conference room at Contents Korea LAB in Kwanghwamoon
Lecturer: Duk-Joo Oh (VP of AMUSE KOREA)
Right after finishing CEO Wang’s lecture, the next lecture was continued by VP. Duk-Joo Oh who’s been an expert of Japan musical market. He introduced himself actively by saying, “I know about Japan market, however, I don’t have enough success stories for you to tell as a good case though.” with getting host’s welcome message that he is an ‘expert of Japan market.’ But he said, “A succeeded people do not know the knowledge how to succeed. A great baseball player will just be able to say ‘I just did it.’ even if you ask him ‘how to hit home-run like that.’ He started his lecture by saying, ”Even failed people can have their chances to get some lessons and to analyze any symptoms much critically.
Japan, a country at the end of East with bunch of strange people
To advance into Japan, we need to get to know about Japan and Japanese people first. Oh said, “During the period of Silk Road, some called Japan as ‘JIPANGU’ which means the end of Silk Road. It was an origin of the word, Japan nowadays. The word JIPANGU stands for the country of gold, but there’s no gold in Japan. At that time gold was Sun. However the Sun doesn’t rise up from Japan either. It just rises up from the East.” And he added that Japan was just ‘the end of East’ inside the people’s mind long time ago. Even around Japan is all surrounded by sea. So there might be many foreigners who came to Japan by wandering at the end. People keep distance among each other because they are strange each other, and that sense of distance even makes a ‘kindness.’ This is the reason why Japanese make rules well and keep them well. Also that sense of distance which Japanese got have developed a sort of careful talk instead of direct in their speeches, so to speak, figurative speech. Oh said about this, “Japanese believe that there are something inside nothing, and analyses them.”
Among calm, silence, and strong stimulus
At his point of view, circumstances in Japan with various disasters also contributed to make emotion of Japanese. Japanese who experience natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami apt to admit their problems as a sort of ‘disaster which they should also endure.’ They apt to make solution instead of complaining about the reason of problem. Japanese that Oh explained were shy, liked stability, loved to get along each other, and think that no failure is much important than winning, so the average standard is somewhat higher. Also, the meaning of ‘kawaii’ in Japanese cannot be translated into ‘cute’ in Korean, because Japanese do not only express ‘kawaii’ to the cute person but also to the stylish person. However, Koreans say differently. Oh pointed out the different tendency between Japan and Korea.
But Japanese hope to live stable and quiet, so they want ‘stimulate’ things from outside their world which is totally different from their ordinary lives. Now this is the point for Korean contents which can have strength in Japan. Oh put his opinion and said, “In the work, to show somewhat impractical scenes might be effective in Japan.”
Essence, which frequently cross the frontier
Oh mentioned BTS and added, “There must be something learning from every succeeded.” Some say that the reason of BTS’s success was SNS (Social Network Service), but Oh did not think so. That was a secondary reason. The main reason for BTS to succeed was that they ‘kept true to themselves.’ Oh said, “Every person’s elder brother or sister is always a little bit ahead while their childhood. They share the process to look for something important and then they share their bond of sympathy.” So the sympathy is the most important essence to cross the frontier. In his point of view, musical ‘Chorus Line’ was also one of the successful works which kept its essence. According to the behind story of ‘Chorus Line’, director Michael Bennett came out first that he was a gay, because no ensemble actors did not try to do it. So one by one came to talk their own stories after touched by Bennett’s braveness and sincere, then that story came to be interesting with audition style. This kind of sincere color of its own is also a sort of essence to across the frontier.
Timing is the most important ever
The next example that Oh mentioned was the movie ‘ILLANG : THE WOLF BRIGADE’ which was a box office failure. He thought that the original work of ‘ILLANG : THE WOLF BRIGADE’ was not that much worse. It’s dull but stylish. In that kind of work, a strong actor, Dong-Won Kang and a successful director of ‘The Age of Shadows’ Ji-Woon Kim met, however their timing was not that good. On the contrary, ‘Anpanman’ of BTS is the best example to catch its timing very well. The lyrics, ‘I don’t have any super power like avengers, but what I can do is to share the bread that I cooked to everyone as Anpanman, and that’s my everything and my happiness. So I sing my song instead of sharing bread.‘ is so touching, however, this song came out right after the movie ‘Avengers’ was unsealed. Such as like this, your work should be come out by considering timing and market trend as well.
Oh thinks that musical is "the only one genre to sing by crying" which has strong and stimulate power. Musicals like ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Vincent Van Gogh’, and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ were successful in Japan. He finished his lecture by advising, "If you want to advance into Japan with your musical works, then just go to Japan and see what audiences are watching there".