Entering film with Toho — The Inugami Clan (1976)

Not an invention — the rights-holder crossing the line

What Haruki said his aim was, in 1976, was this: handling foreign titles in translation had shown him that a work sells when a film sells it, so he would run the same effect on the works he already held. This was not a novel idea but the reproduction of a phenomenon other studios’ films had already demonstrated. The character of the move lies elsewhere — in the fact that the party holding the source material went and seized control of the production budget and the release date. As with the colour paperback covers, the wager was placed precisely where the existing division of labour was ignored.

That said, the verdicts of Shochiku’s executive vice-president Okuyama Toru — that Kadokawa did not know the market — and of Nikkatsu’s Nemoto Teiji — that it had no exhibition network — were not wide of the mark. Kadokawa owned no cinemas, and The Inugami Clan could not have been released without the tie-up with Toho. The coexistence in one man of a temperament that spent ¥50 million of his own money on an ancient ship and an abacus that counted paperback print runs was also hard for other firms to imitate. Owning a work and owning the place that delivers it are different things; the 1976 entry was a test of whether the first alone could buy a way into the second.