KADOKAWA - Company History

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Financial history 2015–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1945
Founder Kadokawa Genyoshi
Founding location 東京都
Core business at founding Scholarly books on national history and Japanese literature, together with dictionaries and textbooks
Listed 1998
President Natsuno Takeshi President since 2021 (age 61, as of 2026)
Current priority Alliances · Overseas expansion Co-production with Sony and worldwide distribution of its works
Founding
In November 1945 Kadokawa Genyoshi (角川源義), a scholar of Japanese classical literature, founded Kadokawa Shoten in Tokyo. Amid the burnt-out ruins he began with scholarly books on national history and Japanese literature, and with dictionaries and textbooks, building a reputation on sober publishing of the kind that takes years and capital. In 1949 he launched Kadokawa Bunko, a low-priced imprint that put the classics and foreign literature on the shelf beside the textbooks and dictionaries as a product in its own right. Genyoshi also lectured at Keio University and Kokugakuin University, and it was this cast to his work that lay behind the description of the firm, in a 1976 interview, as a sober sort of bookseller. Around 1967 he handed the real command to his second son, Haruki, keeping only the title of president for himself.
The Decision
The company has taken a single work and sold it again and again — as a paperback, as a film, as animation. Kadokawa Haruki (角川春樹), who became president in October 1975, put colour covers on paperbacks and sold 2.5 million copies in two months with a fair reissuing the works of Yokomizo Seishi. In October 1976 he produced Inugamike no Ichizoku in partnership with Toho and began piling the original paperback high in bookshops to coincide with the film's release. Splitting the advertising budget between the publishing and the film side was a method without precedent in the trade. Shukan The Television, launched in 1982, was printing 1.3 million copies a week by the end of the 1990s, and magazines became a third product. In March 2013 the group absorbed nine operating subsidiaries, folding the publishers it had accumulated by acquisition into one company. A structure in which a work, once made, can be given more places to sell carried a publisher's trade beyond the bookshop.
Today
Publishing, which creates the works, makes the revenue; the games the works are carried into make the profit. For the year to March 2026 consolidated revenue was $1.8B (¥283bn), operating profit $51.2M (¥8bn) and net profit $8.2M (¥1bn). By segment, Publishing and IP Creation had sales of $971.2M (¥154bn) and profit of $25.9M (¥4bn); Animation and Live-Action Film $298.4M (¥47bn) and a loss of $3.2M (¥500m); Games $187.2M (¥30bn) and $47.4M (¥8bn); Web Services $127.7M (¥20bn) and $13.3M (¥2bn); Education and EdTech $108.8M (¥17bn) and $17.7M (¥3bn). Publishing is 54 per cent of sales, but games earn the largest profit. Niconico Douga, which came with the joint share transfer that established the holding company with Dwango in October 2014, was taken down by the cyber attack of June 2024, and an extraordinary loss of $24.1M (¥4bn) was booked in the year to March 2025. In January 2025 Sony Group invested about $334.1M (¥50bn) and became the largest shareholder, widening the places a work can be carried to beyond the group itself.
Competition
KADOKAWA is not a buyer of works but an owner of the place where works are born. Titles come up from novel-posting sites and paperback imprints, and the flow that carries them into the company's own animation and games is held in-house. Toho, which in the same animation business took a production studio and a North American distributor as subsidiaries, came at the original works from the side that holds production, distribution and exhibition. Sony Group, which has a distribution network in Aniplex and Crunchyroll, invested in KADOKAWA in January 2025 and is approaching the original works from the streaming side. What KADOKAWA does not have is the distribution that reaches the world, and there it has chosen to ride on a partner's network. The tie of capital between a KADOKAWA that owns the entrance to the work and a Sony Group that owns the exit has set KADOKAWA in the position of supplier of the original.

Timeline

1945–1974Genyoshi's years: foundations laid from the ruins on classical literature, dictionaries and the paperback

  1. 1945Kadokawa Shoten founded in Tokyo in November by Kadokawa Genyoshi
  2. 1945The list is built around national history and Japanese classical literature
  3. 1949Kadokawa Bunko launched — low-priced classics and foreign literature
  4. 1967Genyoshi keeps the president’s title but hands the business to his son
  5. 1967Haruki, aged 25, inherits losses and the freedom to remake the house
  6. 1972Paperback output reaches 25 million copies a year
  7. 1974Kadokawa draws level with Shinchosha, long the leader in paperbacks

1975–1992Kadokawa Haruki's media mix: colour covers on paperbacks, books carried into film

  1. 1975Genyoshi dies in October; Haruki formally becomes president
  2. 1975Colour covers put on paperbacks, breaking a publishing taboo
  3. 1975Paperback output 45m copies; Shinchosha passed on a 60:40 share
  4. 1976The Yokomizo Seishi Comeback Fair sells 2.5m copies in two months
  5. 1976Inugamike no Ichizoku made with Toho and released in October
  6. 1976Paperbacks reach some 70 per cent of sales
  7. 1982Shukan The Television launched; magazines become the third pillar
  8. 1992Tsuguhiko leaves the company after clashing with his brother

1993–2013Tsuguhiko's years: past the brothers' feud to a listing, a holding company and digital

  1. 1993MediaWorks founded in February; Tsuguhiko becomes its president
  2. 1993Haruki arrested under the Narcotics Control Act and driven out
  3. 1993Tsuguhiko returns and becomes president in October
  4. 1995Kadokawa film revived, with hits including Shitsurakuen and Ring
  5. 1998Listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 26 November
  6. 2003Converts to a holding company as Kadokawa Holdings in April
  7. 2003Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu published; 5.8m copies in total
  8. 2006Renamed Kadokawa Group Holdings in July
  9. 2008MediaWorks and ASCII merge to form ASCII Media Works
  10. 2011MediaFactory bought from Recruit; Kadokawa Eiga absorbed
  11. 2013Nine operating companies absorbed in October; renamed KADOKAWA

2014–2026From the merger of the century with Dwango to an IP company and a cyber crisis

  1. 2014Integration with Dwango announced on 14 May
  2. 2014KADOKAWA・DWANGO established in October; listed on the TSE first section
  3. 2015About 300 voluntary redundancies called for in January
  4. 2015Trading name changed to Kadokawa in October
  5. 2016Dwango opens N High School, a correspondence high school
  6. 2019The holding company absorbs KADOKAWA and takes its name in July
  7. 2020Tokorozawa Sakura Town opens in Saitama in August
  8. 2022Moves to the Prime Market in April; Tsuguhiko arrested in September
  9. 2023Sales of $1.8B (¥255bn), the highest since the merger
  10. 2024Ransomware attack on Niconico Douga comes to light on 8 June
  11. 2024Capital and business alliance agreed with Sony Group in December
  12. 2025Sony takes about 10 per cent and becomes the largest shareholder

Founding Story

1945–1974Genyoshi's years: foundations laid from the ruins on classical literature, dictionaries and the paperback

The company that became KADOKAWA began as a scholar's publishing house: for its first three decades Kadokawa Shoten earned its living from national history, dictionaries, textbooks and a low-priced paperback imprint, and was known in the trade as a sober sort of bookseller. That reputation was capital, and by the end of the period the founder had quietly handed the running of the business to a son who meant to spend it on something else entirely.

A founding raised from the burnt-out ruins on classical literature and dictionaries

Kadokawa Shoten was founded in Tokyo in November 1945[1]. Kadokawa Genyoshi (角川源義), a scholar of Japanese classical literature, set it up amid the burnt-out ruins of the months just after the defeat, resolved to rebuild Japanese culture through publishing[2], and built the house around national history and Japanese literature. Its books were taken up by readers in those immediate post-war years, and the firm secured its footing as a literary publisher. In 1949 it launched Kadokawa Bunko[3], a low-priced paperback imprint that carried the classics and foreign literature to a wide readership, and grew it into a pillar alongside textbooks and dictionaries. Kadokawa Tsuguhiko (角川歴彦) would later look back on the company's course and call this period Kadokawa Shoten's age of the literary publisher. Classical literature and dictionaries, paperbacks and textbooks: everything it sold was a sober book, and that soberness was the face of Kadokawa Shoten in these years.

Genyoshi was a publisher and at the same time a scholar, lecturing at Keio University and Kokugakuin University[4]. Work on academic books, dictionaries and textbooks in national history and Japanese literature gave Kadokawa Shoten the standing of a solid publishing house. When an interview in 1976 described the company as having an image of textbooks, dictionaries and scholarly works — a sober sort of bookseller[5], it was this scholarly cast to Genyoshi's work that lay behind the remark. Compiling dictionaries and encyclopaedias takes years and capital, and is work only a publisher settled in for the long term can take on. The credit built up by that sober publishing became the stake for the later turn towards entertainment.

Father and son at odds over entertainment, and the handover of real power

Kadokawa Haruki (角川春樹), the second son, threw himself into boxing and kendo at university and for a while after graduating worked as a labourer by day and a bartender by night[6]; he clashed with his scholarly father at every turn. The distance between father and son was well known, and Haruki has said he was disowned four times while he was a student[7]. By his own account he had never properly read a book, so different was he in temperament from his scholar father. Even so, Haruki is said to have believed that he would one day make the Kadokawa Shoten his father had built his own. A father guarding sober academic publishing, a son bent on publishing that sold entertainment: the course of Kadokawa Shoten swung between them.

For all the friction, Genyoshi entrusted the running of the business to his son early. Around 1967 he said that a man stops making progress once he turns fifty-five, and while keeping the title of president he handed the substance of the business to Haruki[8]. The president's chair stayed with the scholar father while the son who wanted entertainment took the day-to-day command. What Genyoshi handed his 25-year-old son was the task of turning round a loss-making business, and the freedom to remake a sober publishing house. Having taken real power, Haruki set about the losses first, and from there sent out one hit after another. The expansion of the business around the paperback began at this handover.

1975–1992Kadokawa Haruki's media mix: colour covers on paperbacks, books carried into film

In seventeen years Kadokawa Haruki turned an academic publisher into the loudest house in Japanese publishing — colour covers on paperbacks, films timed to book fairs, and magazines added as a third pillar. Selling the work rather than the book made the group's name and its money, and tied both to the judgement of one man.

From the sober Kadokawa to the Kadokawa of paperbacks and entertainment

Genyoshi died in October 1975 and Haruki formally became president of Kadokawa Shoten[9]. His first move was to put colour covers on paperbacks, breaking a taboo[10]. In an age when a paperback meant the plain, unshowy production of an imprint such as Iwanami Bunko, colour printing changed how the books looked on the display tables of bookshops. Alongside it he ran image advertising — lines such as there are journeys you set out on because you want to read — bringing in a method that appealed directly to the sensibility of the young and made them buy books. With those two devices, colour covers and bold advertising, Kadokawa Shoten changed from an old house of sober academic publishing into a publisher that moved readers with paperbacks and entertainment.

Haruki's method drove print runs up. Paperback output rose from 25 million copies in 1972 to 45 million in 1975; the company drew level in 1974 with Shinchosha, long at the top, and in 1975 was reported to have passed it with a 60:40 share[11]. By about 1976 paperbacks had grown into a pillar accounting for some 70 per cent of sales, and Haruki said that over these five years sales have risen about threefold and ordinary income about fivefold. The Yokomizo Seishi Comeback Fair, which reissued the works of Yokomizo Seishi (横溝正史) in paperback, set off an unprecedented Yokomizo boom and sold 2.5 million copies in the two months it ran[12]. The reputation of Kadokawa as the paperback house was fixed by those print runs and that share.

Kadokawa film and the making of the media mix

Haruki carried the momentum of the boom into film. In partnership with Toho he produced Inugamike no Ichizoku (犬神家の一族), one of the Yokomizo works, and released it in October 1976 to coincide with the Yokomizo fair[13]. The aim was this: since handling foreign works in translation had shown that the synergy with film made books sell, the company should compete with the works it held itself. Having seen the heyday of the paperback in the United States, Haruki judged that the age of the paperback was certain to come to Japan too, and began linking Kadokawa Bunko with Kadokawa film[14]. A novel was made into a film, and the film sold the paperback. Piling the original paperback high in bookshops to coincide with a film's release, and splitting the advertising budget between the publishing and the film side, was a method without precedent in the publishing world of the day.

Kadokawa Tsuguhiko wrote later that this media mix of paperbacks and film succeeded and dramatically widened Kadokawa Shoten's business base[15]. Turning a novel into a film, a comic into a game — selling one work by moving it from medium to medium — became the standard method of the Kadokawa group thereafter. A 2022 review assessing Kadokawa Haruki recorded that the method of combining the release of films and music with the publication of books produced what is called, whatever one makes of it, Kadokawa culture. What is sold is not a single book but a work that can be sold again and again in changed form. With that turn, Kadokawa Shoten carried a publisher's trade beyond the book.

Magazines as a third pillar, and the peak of Haruki's method

In 1982 Kadokawa Shoten launched Shukan The Television (週刊ザテレビジョン) and set magazines as a third pillar[16]. The idea came from TV Guide, the listings magazine the generation of the brothers Haruki and Tsuguhiko had been shown in the United States thirty years earlier. By the end of the 1990s Shukan The Television was printing 1.3 million copies a week and had become the largest-circulation weekly of any publication in Japan[17]. Kadokawa Shoten went on to succeed with one title after another — game software magazines, animation magazines, the city magazine Tokyo Walker (東京ウォーカー) — and built its age of the magazine. The city magazines added editions beyond Tokyo, in Yokohama and the Kansai region, and titles multiplied field by field across leisure: television, games, animation and music.

Haruki said that culture is no more than established authority; there is no thought without revolution[18], and went on breaking the taboos of the publishing world to move readers. Printing the work of unknown newcomers in exceptional numbers from the first edition, and selling films, music and books as a bundle, swept the publishing world of the 1980s while dividing opinion. Haruki's private life drew attention too — he was a haiku poet and a film director as well — but the reality of his management was that of an unorthodox editor who produced one device after another for selling books. A method that stopped at nothing to sell a book made the name of Kadokawa Shoten known to the public, for better and for worse. Management resting on so singular a personality, however, also made the handover to the next generation difficult.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999, separate supplement (contributed by Kadokawa Tsuguhiko)↩
  2. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999, separate supplement (contributed by Kadokawa Tsuguhiko)↩
  3. KADOKAWA Group official website, corporate history↩
  4. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  5. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  6. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  7. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  8. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  9. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  10. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  11. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  12. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  13. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩
  14. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999, separate supplement (contributed by Kadokawa Tsuguhiko)↩
  15. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999, separate supplement (contributed by Kadokawa Tsuguhiko)↩
  16. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999, separate supplement (contributed by Kadokawa Tsuguhiko)↩
  17. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999, separate supplement (contributed by Kadokawa Tsuguhiko)↩
  18. Nikkei Business, 5 July 1976, “The wild-man manager who has burst into publishing: Kadokawa Haruki”↩

References & sources

  1. Nikkei Business (Nikkei BP): November 1990 (series on Kadokawa Haruki); January 2001 (Kadokawa Shoten’s multi-media strategy and alliances).
  2. Securities Analysts Journal, 20 January 1999 (Kadokawa Tsuguhiko on Kadokawa Shoten).

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