Buying Tsuburaya Productions (2010)

From borrowing to lending

The heart of this acquisition lay not in its size but in the choice of which side of the transaction to stand on. A pachinko distributor buys machines from manufacturers and borrows characters from rights holders. An eye for which cabinets will sell is necessary, but the value of the work itself sits in someone else’s hands. By taking over the 51% that TYO let go when it chose to concentrate on its advertising core, Fields moved to a position where it could open the toy, film and licensing outlets itself. Less a swap of businesses than a decision to move one rung within the industry.

It was not, however, a deal settled at the moment of purchase. In the ten years that followed, the machine business went through two sharp declines and posted the largest loss in the company’s history in the year to March 2017. Through it all Ultraman remained, taking shape as a revenue source unmoved by regulation or parlor traffic. If one follows Yamamoto’s formulation that a property takes twenty or thirty years to grow, the verdict on the asset acquired in 2010 rests on how the overseas expansion goes as the series reaches sixty years on air. Whether a company that made its money selling other people’s work can become one that sells its own to the world — the question is still open.