Make Believe Bonus: 10 Things To Watch From Japanese Pop Culture In 2025 (NewsPicks)
In: Physical Media, Indie, Escapism
As is now a tradition, I write a feature for Japanese site Newspicks every January predicting what will happen in the intersection of J-culture and global entertainment. Last year’s edition saw me being…kind of right about a lot of stuff, so safe to say everything I put down for the 2025 edition is a STEEL COLD LOCK to happen.
OK, I’ll pump the brakes on that, especially as I have a few more radical calls for the coming year, but as I did in 2024, I’ve shared the original English-language draft of this piece for paid subscribers (the Japanese version is behind a paywall, so seems fair to put one up here too). Good chance to subscribe to Make Believe Bonus, wherein you’ll get one extra post a week!
Japanese pop culture boasted many standout moments in 2024. The Japanese-American TV show Shogun wowed audiences and critics, before making history at the prestigious Emmy Awards with 18 wins, including “Outstanding Drama.” Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy And The Heron and Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla -1.0 won Oscars at the Academy Awards. Multiple Japanese artists performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, wowing attendees in person and those watching online. Shohei Ohtani delivered another historic session while helping lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to World Series glory. Meanwhile, for those scrolling through short-form videos on their phones, TikToks and Reels about Japan from the millions of tourists visiting the country felt inescapable.
As the decade reaches its midway point, the 2020s have been a time of newfound attention on and ambition from Japanese entertainment on the world stage. While long enjoyed by people all over the globe, Japanese pop culture — especially in its native language — has been embraced by international audiences in a more enthusiastic way during these last five years, and received more mainstream attention than ever before. Here’s one example I noticed in America recently to underscore it.
Two players in an important college football game celebrated a big play by doing the Fusion Dance pose from Dragonball Z. That’s honestly not the surprising part — it’s major sports network ESPN actually referencing it on social media like it’s a household happening.
So how does the latter half of the 2020s play out for Japanese entertainment? Can 2025 follow up such a monumental year for the country on the global stage? There’s clues about what comes next, and I believe some of it will be more unexpected than simple continued growth.
As 2025 settles in, here are 10 things to watch for in the coming year in relation to how Japanese pop culture spreads internationally.
1. Japanese History Becomes The New IP Bonanza
The biggest Japan-related entertainment story of 2024 was the critical and commercial success of the FX series Shogun. Based on James Clavell’s 1975 work of historical fiction of the same name (and already given the TV treatment…to wild success…in 1980), the series boasted dynamic acting and stunning visuals that gave it the feel of a historic epic. It also featured a large part of its dialogue in Japanese subtitles, which audiences rolled with, perhaps the most promising development for the country’s film and TV content moving forward.
Seeing as how Hollywood generally operates on a “if it worked once, do it over and over again until everyone is sick of it” model, expect Japan’s rich history to become a new mine for material. It’s already happening — Hiro Murai’s forthcoming directorial debut for A24 will focus on samurai. Expect way more producers behind feature-length films and TV series to crack open the history books to learn about the nation’s history in order to find new stories to bring to global audiences. Aspiring screenwriters, if you have a draft centered on the Meiji Restoration sitting around, now is the time to pitch it.