Oscar Boyd: Advert: Are you looking for a new job? Then

today's sponsor might be right up your alley. Today's episode

is brought to you by RGF Professional Recruitment Japan

the bilingual arm of Recruit — Japan and Asia's largest

recruiting and Information Service Company, helping

thousands of people every year to unleash their potential. RGF

partners with multinational and domestic businesses with a

global outlook in Japan to provide market leading bilingual

talent across all industries. Their career consultants ensure

that your job search is smooth and stress free, whilst

identifying the best opportunities to meet your

career and personal goals. RGF specialize in finding positions

for skilled professionals across all functions of enterprise

technology, professional services and consulting,

consumer technology, back office and finance, industrial and

manufacturing and healthcare. Visit rgf-professional.jp, to

register your resumé and unleash your potential today.

Hello, and welcome to Deep Dive. From The Japan Times, I'm Oscar

Boyd.

At the start of the year, AMC Networks, the company behind

shows like 'Mad Men' and 'Breaking Bad,' acquired anime

distributor Sentai, and with it the anime streaming service

HiDive. In August, Sony bought the anime streaming platform

Crunchyroll for almost $1.2 billion. And over the past

couple of years, streaming giants like Netflix and Disney

have poured money into original anime programming. Interest in

anime around the world has never been higher.

Behind the scenes though, animators struggle to make a

living and many insiders are calling the industry

unsustainable as studios struggle to keep up with demand

and the pandemic slows production. Here at Deep Dive,

we figured this would be as good a time as any to revisit the

rise of this piece of Japanese soft power. And who better to do

it than my colleague, culture editor Alyssa I. Smith. On

today's episode, Alyssa will be speaking to Japan Times

contributer Matt Schley to ask: what's behind Japan's booming

anime industry? And with so much overseas interest, what makes

anime anime in 2022?

Alyssa Smith: Matt, welcome to Deep Dive. Thanks for joining me

today.

Matt Schley: Thanks for having me.

Alyssa Smith: So you've been writing about anime for The

Japan Times since 2017. And you're one of our go to people

for all things anime. To sort of kick us off, I think it would be

useful to give the discussion some context. So why don't we go

back to when anime started?

Matt Schley: Sure, anime in Japanese is a shortening of the

word animation. So in Japan, when you say anime, you're

talking about any kind of animation. Which really threw me

off when I first moved here and I asked people 'what's your

favourite anime?' and they said 'Toy Story 2' or something. But

in English when we say the word anime, we're of course referring

to Japanese animation.

Now Japanese animation has a long history. The first known

anime that we've still got, you can watch on YouTube, was made

in 1917, about 100 years now. The early kind of prewar anime

was often silent, leading up to World War Two a lot of kind of

propaganda films again, like in the States, Mickey being used to

boost morale.

Alyssa Smith: Right.

Matt Schley: Same thing here in Japan and the first full length

anime feature is called 'Momotaro Sacred Sailors.'

That's again a propaganda film.

Postwar, the industry really starts to become what we think

of it now as the modern industry. There's a very famous

film from 1958 called 'Hakujaden,' and that was made

by Toei, who are still around. It's the first full length

colour anime.

Alyssa Smith: And that film was based on a Chinese folktale?

Matt Schley: It was yes, yeah. There was a 4k restoration done

a bit a couple years ago. It's a really beautiful film. Now films

up to that period, really used a Disney style, animating 24

frames a second, really fluid animation. The first anime to

kind of introduce the style that we think of as Japanese

animation came in 1963 that was 'Astro Boy' ('Tetsuwan Atom').

That was produced by Tezuka Osamu, and that sets the

template for the anime that we still watch today. It's based on

a popular manga, it uses a kind of aesthetic with the big eyes

that we associate with anime, that kind of cute over

exaggerated characters. And it uses a style called limited

animation. And what that means is: Disney films, one second of

animation is 24 frames typically right, a very fluid look. Tezuka

and other people realise that that wasn't gonna be possible,

they didn't have the manpower to do that on a weekly basis, right

to get out this kid's show. So what they did instead was

embraced a style called limited animation. So instead of doing

every 24 frames, they would do eight frames and shoot those

shoot three of those frames three times. So you've got less

fluid animation, but you know, it's on TV, it's for kids.

Ultimately, it's out there to sell manga, and it's out there

to sell toys and stuff like that. And that kind of aesthetic

became the standard.

Alyssa Smith: Right. I know, it made a huge impression on my

mom, because you know, she doesn't watch a lot of anime

now. But even now she talks about 'Astro Boy' and how much

she loved watching it as a kid.

Matt Schley: It was it was huge.

Alyssa Smith: So then after 'Astro Boy' that must have

started a trend in anime?

Matt Schley: Yep, so anime became huge. Of course, it's

first aimed at children. Over time, people get into the

industry who originally wanted to make live action films. And

they had kind of higher ambitions, people like the

creator of 'Gundam,' which is considered one of the first kind

of adult anime. It's still for kids, and it's still meant to

sell robot toys. But he snuck in a lot of kind of more adult

themes. It's about war, people die. And that's still considered

one of the great anime

So as Japan's economy flourishes, you get into the

'80s You've got a lot of money swirling around, and you've got

really incredible, lavish productions. People think of

1988's 'Akira' as one of the kind of seminal, great looking

anime productions.

Alyssa Smith: When I think of 'Akira' I don't really see that

as being made for children. It seems like a very adult themed

film.

Matt Schley: No, absolutely. There's there's violence and

blood and guts and all that stuff. Yeah.

So we see anime getting more specialised, as well, in the

'80s. With the advent of VCRs, and Betamax players and stuff

like that, you've got a specialty market that's only on

video, that's aimed at more affluent consumers, obviously.

You've got this whole subset of anime that's for people in their

20s or 30s, or 40s, with a lot of money to spend. Again, it's

the '80s in Japan. And you've got people producing this

specifically for the video market or for the theatrical

market.

Alyssa Smith: So far, we've talked a lot about how anime

became popular in Japan. But how did it move over to the West?

Matt Schley: From a very early time from the '60s and '70s.

You've got anime being released in the West, but in kind of a

hidden form, if you will. So it's a cheap way for for TV

shows to get animation. They don't have to animate

themselves, they can import it from Japan, they can dub it into

English, they can pretend the main character's name isn't

Satoshi. It's John. And they scrub a lot of the Japanese-ness

from it, right?

Alyssa Smith: I remember watching an episode of Pokemon

and the main character's name was turned to Ash. Yeah, right.

Matt Schley: Yeah,

Alyssa Smith: It was so disconcerting.

Matt Schley: Yeah, exactly. And so you can imagine if you go

back even further, the '60s and '70s Just trying to scrub any

Japanese-ness from it, right. Once you get to the '80s, you've

got a more kind of discerning fan base that starts to grow.

And you've got people that realise this stuff is from

Japan, they start to demand that they get subtitled releases. In

addition to dubbed releases.

There were some early anime released in the West that, for

example, the original film is two hours. And the producer

said, 'hey, this is for kids, they, they're not going to be

able to sit for two hours, let's cut 30 minutes of it.' An

example of that is 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,' which

is a very famous, Miyazaki Hayao film, which was I think they cut

20 or 30 minutes of it, they renamed it 'Warriors of the

Wind.' They took emphasis off Nausicaä, the main character,

because you can have a girl be the main character, right?

Alyssa Smith: Unthinkable

Matt Schley: Unthinkable! And it just became this weird mess. It

doesn't make any sense. And fans in the States started to demand

from their licensors that 'Hey, we want to see the whole movie.

We want to see it given at least an accurate English dub. We also

want the option to watch it in subtitled form.' And that grows,

so in the mid '90s, you've got stuff like 'Dragon Ball,'

'Sailor Moon'. Eventually 'Pokemon' comes on air. As you

mentioned, 'Pokemon' is still a bit of a situation where they're

changing the names of characters and things like that. But you've

got a whole generation that doesn't have to search out anime

on tapes or get it from friends or whatever, you can just turn

on TV and it's there.

Alyssa Smith: So I think a sign that the West had really started

to accept anime as you know, a legitimate genre was when

'Spirited Away' won the Oscar in 2003.

Clip: And the Oscar goes to … Let's see. 'Spirited Away.'

Hayao Miyazaki.

Matt Schley: Yeah, there was huge 'Spirited Away' is the 2001

film from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. That was the

first and remains the only Japanese anime film to win the

Oscar. That film had Disney pushing behind it in the

publicity department. Nevertheless, that was a huge

thing for anime. Miyazaki, he didn't go because America was in

the middle of the Iraq War, which he was against.

Eventually, he did win a separate lifetime Academy Award,

which he went and gave a very charming speech you can watch on

YouTube, that remains the only enemy film to win an Oscar but a

few films have been nominated since then. The film that

probably has the best shot this year is Belle the new Hosoda

Mamoru film.

Alyssa Smith: The one that got the 13 minute standing ovation

at Cannes?

Matt Schley: That's the one.

Alyssa Smith: What would you say is the relationship between

anime, and the build up of Japan's soft power?

Matt Schley: I think it's all part of a piece you know, you've

got an anime becoming more popular, you've got video games,

you've got Japanese technology, people really looking to Japan

as being a place they want to go kind of dreamland and anime was

definitely huge part of that. Especially when you get to the

'90s and 2000s you get a lot more anime that's set in Japan

that it's obviously Japanese, not just the kind of sci-fi,

neo-Tokyo 'Akira' stuff, but stuff where you can really get a

look at kind of what Japan looks like. It becomes a great way for

people to kind of peer into the nation.

Alyssa Smith: Well, then, let's move into the 2010s which was a

pretty important decade for anime. What would you say were

the key events during this time?

Matt Schley: So anime continues to be more and more popular

abroad. You've also got the retirement, supposed retirement

of Miyazaki Hayao.

Alyssa Smith: The first time.

Matt Schley: Actually well, the about … every time he makes a

movie, he says 'This is the last one. This is the last one.' But

yeah, there was kind of a sense for many, many years, that when

you released a theatrical anime film, that didn't have a manga

behind it, the general public wouldn't go to see an original

anime film. Unless it was directed by Miyazaki. His films

always did really well. Other original anime films tended not

to do that well.

Alyssa Smith: So aside from Ghibli films, it was sort of

thought that if you didn't have all the manga series, or like

television series to back it up, then the film itself wouldn't do

very well?

Matt Schley: That's right. Yeah. Now that changed in 2016. Three

films came out that year, which were all relatively huge hits,

especially 'Your Name,' Makoto Shinkai's film, which became

this giant hit. For a time it was Japan's highest grossing

film worldwide. It's since been eclipsed by 'Spirited Away,'

which we just talked about, because 'Spirited Away' got its

official release in China two years ago. So that's kind of

cheating, right?

You also had two films, which were a little bit more modest

hits: 'In this Corner of the World,' which is a kind of

prewar and war film set and in Hiroshima. And you had 'A Silent

Voice,' which was more arty film, from Kyoto Animation. All

those films did really well. And they kind of busted that myth

that only Miyazaki could do well, with the general audience.

Alyssa Smith: So between 2002, around the time 'Spirited Away,'

was being released and 2020, the Japanese animation industry more

than doubled in size with an annual revenue of $21 billion.

What would you say are some of the reasons for this booming

economy?

Matt Schley: Well, we can't discount the foreign market,

which has exploded from 2010 to 2020. You go from about $2.5

billion to about $12 billion. Not just the West, but also

countries like South Korea, and China, Vietnam, Thailand. So all

across Europe, Asia, the Americas, people getting into

anime has been has been huge. The domestic market has also

gone up. Not as dramatically, but it has gone up as well.

People are really into this Japanese cartoon stuff.

Alyssa Smith: Who knew?

Matt Schley: Who knew? Who knew? So you see a lot of companies

now trying to capitalize on the popularity of anime in the West.

We talked before about the '80s and '90s, right? Where you've

got essentially what we would now call startups, companies of

two or three or four people, slapping some subtitles onto

whatever they could licence from Japan, Japan saying that, 'You

want to licence this?! Okay, fine. Here you go." These really

passionate fans releasing stuff for other passionate fans. At

some point, because anime gets so popular. As often happens,

these companies get bought by bigger companies. And now you've

got these really giant streaming companies, or other home video

companies kind of dominating the licencing industry in the West.

Alyssa Smith: Another reason for this huge boom would be that

people are getting into … they're they're hoping for more

of an interactive experience, right? So like, people are going

to live events, concerts and things like that?

Matt Schley: Yeah, that's been a huge thing. About 10 years ago,

one of the largest sources of income in the industry,

especially in the domestic industry, was Bluray and DVD

sales. Those numbers have gone down because well, everyone's

streaming. And the numbers for more interactive experiences

exactly like you said, have gone up. People are want to live

anime, they don't just want to experience it at home on a

screen. They want to go out and make friends

Alyssa Smith: Do cosplay.

Matt Schley: And do cosplay. Cosplay is huge. To a certain

extent, in Japan, it's huge. In the West, you've got anime

conventions in the West, which are which are huge. So yeah,

people want to bring anime into their into their lives.

Alyssa Smith: Now you've mentioned streaming a few times.

So let's talk about the impact of those streaming services. One

thing that really stands out is the success of 'Demon Slayer.'

And before the film 'Mugen Train' came out, it was a

series and that was available on a lot of different streaming

platforms, right? So do you think that contributed to the

huge success of the film itself?

Matt Schley: Yeah, 'Demon Slayer,' it had kind of all the

pieces to become a huge hit right? It was a moderately

successful manga. On top of that it had a pretty successful anime

series. Plus, it was at a time when everybody was stuck at home

Alyssa Smith: During the pandemic.

Matt Schley: During the pandemic. And so word of mouth

spread about this 'Demon Slayer' thing. As you mentioned, it was

not locked into one specific streaming platform. And that

really primed the pump for when the film came out in 2020.

Everybody had read the manga, or watched the show really dying

for something to do. The corona numbers weren't so bad when the

film came out. And so, the floodgates opened. And it became

Japan's highest grossing film of all time.

Alyssa Smith: So major companies like Disney and Netflix are

seeing the popularity of anime. And it looks like they're

aggressively moving into the sphere, right? And they're

starting to produce their own original content?

Matt Schley: Yeah, that's right. Netflix has its own original

content. For the purposes of full disclosure, let me just

mention here that I do some consulting work for Netflix.

Disney Plus has started producing anime, Netflix has

started producing anime, Crunchyroll has started

producing anime. And yes, they are going beyond simply

licencing anime, putting dubs and subs on it and releasing it.

Now they are making their own stuff.

Alyssa Smith: And we're also seeing international

collaborations, right? So these big companies are also working

with maybe smaller Japanese studios.

Matt Schley: Yeah, that's right. That's right. So one example

from last year was 'Star Wars Visions,' which is a bunch of

small 'Star Wars' stories made by different anime studios.

You've got the new 'Blade Runner' show. If you told me

when I was 13 or 14 that there was going to be a 'Blade Runner'

anime and my brain would have exploded. These kind of quasi

anime that are maybe they've got a American director, but they're

directed at a Japanese studio. So yeah, the amount of of

international coproductions is growing.

Alyssa Smith: Well, something interesting that's happened is,

in 2020, the overseas market for anime surpassed the domestic

market for the first time. Why would you say that is?

Matt Schley: Yeah, this was a pretty big deal. This was a

trend that was already happening, but the pandemic

accelerated it. Much like all other things, right? You could

see the numbers inching up year by year in the foreign market.

And in 2020, they did surpass the domestic market in Japan.

Now those events that we talked about earlier, going to animate

concerts, going to anime live talk events and stuff like that.

We couldn't really do that in 2020. So that might have been a

reason why the domestic market dropped a little bit.

Conversely, people in the West or in other countries in Asia

sitting around in 2020 without a lot to do, maybe discovering

anime for the first time, you've binged all the live action you

can … 'Oh, here's this library of this crazy cartoons from

Japan. Let's check this out.' So it was a combination of those

two factors.

Alyssa Smith: Obviously, like you said, the pandemic had a

huge effect on the consumption side of anime. But what about

Matt Schley: So early on in the, in the pandemic, a lot of shows

production?

were getting delayed. A lot of that was due to the global

supply chain, which everybody keeps talking about, right? A

lot of anime is produced, actually, in countries like

South Korea and China. Typically, the creative work is

done largely in Japan. And then the kind of more I don't want to

say grunt work, but what you call in between frames, which

are the frames between the keyframes that make the

animation look more smooth, are done in, again, South Korea,

China, Vietnam. And it was hard to get that stuff back and

forth, right.

The anime industry has typically not been an industry with a lot

of slack, everything's kind of done last minute. There's

stories of people running the tapes to the broadcaster at the

last minute, shoving the tape in the thing. And this the show

getting on air and

Alyssa Smith: Hoping it all works out?

Matt Schley: Hoping it all works out. And there are cases even

long before the pandemic of shows that that have been

delayed by weeks or months or whatever. So take that, add a

pandemic, things get delayed, right. So that was the early

days of the pandemic, things are much better. Now. One of the

reasons that things are much better now is because more

people have embraced digital technology,

Alyssa Smith: Because they were working remotely, or from home?

Matt Schley: That's right, exactly. Now, you might think

that anime is produced largely in computers. But a very

important step in the process, which is the drawing of

keyframes is actually still largely done on pencil and

paper. Those keyframes are then scanned into the computer where

all the colouring and, and post processing happens. It's one of

the things that I love about anime, the fact that that first

step is still done on pencil and paper. But as you can imagine,

once you've got the pandemic going, it becomes a lot harder

to get that paper from one place to another, for people to

assemble in great numbers in these very poorly ventilated,

small animation studios. So a lot of animators have embraced

either using tablets and things like that to draw keyframes

directly in in digital. Or they've kind of hooked up their

own home studio where they do it on pencil on paper, and then

they scan it in and they email it to the studio. As you can

imagine that has positives and negatives.

Alyssa Smith: You talked a little bit about the work

environment for these animators. But one thing that comes up a

lot when we talk about anime is the poor working conditions that

many of these creators have to deal with. So if anime is

thriving, why are these workers being treated so poorly?

Matt Schley: Yeah, it's a really complicated question. But there

are a few reasons. Like any creative industry, there's

always this kind of idea that well, you should do it for the

love because it's something you really want to do. Because of

the way the industry is structured, most animators, even

if they work at a single studio, are considered freelancers or

independent contractors. So instead of being paid a monthly

salary, they're often paid by frame or by shot. Nobody's ever

gotten rich on this, but it was possible to make a decent living

in the '60s and '70s and '80s, when anime looked a little bit

less complicated than it does now. If you look at a frame of

'Detective Conan' from the '90s. And you look at a frame of

'Demon Slayer,' for example, it's just way more intricate

these days. But the wages for for a frame have not gone up.

Right? So you're spending three or four times the amount on a

single frame of animation, getting paid the same 200, 300

yen.

Alyssa Smith: And there's this mindset where the companies are

saying this is how it's worked for decades, right? So we're not

going to change that, you just have to deal with it and do it

for the love of the work?

Matt Schley: There's that, there's the fact that a lot of

studios are run by former animators or former directors or

whatever, who are maybe better at making anime than they are at

making business decisions a lot of the time. There's also this

thing called the production committee system, the seisaku

iinkai, have you heard of this? A lot of people blame this

system for animators' kind of stagnant wages. Simply put, this

production committee, when you fund an anime, you don't fund it

with one company, you get a bunch of companies together. So

you get the music rights go to this company, they put in a

little money. The DVD company puts in some money, the

streaming service, recently, they put in some money, so

you're kind of hedging your bets right? But that makes it so the

studio while they might be producing the anime. They're not

often reaping the rewards. So they don't have, for example,

royalties. If an anime does poorly, they make a set amount

of money. If an anime does well, they make a set amount of money,

right? And they're often not the best at negotiating, is what a

lot of my sources have told me.

Alyssa Smith: Alright, so then how much are animators getting

paid?

Matt Schley: Yeah, so there's this group called the Japanese

Animation Creators Association. They're known as Jennika. They

do a survey every I believe it's four years to ask animators,

hey, how you doing? And their most recent survey, which is

2019, found that on average animators in their 20s make ¥1.1

million a year. A million sounds like a lot until you do the

math. And you realise that's about $10,000 a year, which is

less than minimum wage, you know, it's unlivable. Things get

a little bit better when animators move into their 30s

and 40s. People in their 30s said their average was ¥3.5

million yen, which is a little bit over $30,000. Again, not

great. Nobody's getting rich on this stuff, but livable.

Now the problem is, because the people in their 20s are only

making $10,000 a year, living in a place like Tokyo, which is

where all the anime studios are, they simply can't afford it. And

so you've got an NPO called Animation Supporters who have

done a survey that said that about 90% of animators quit the

industry within two or three years. So as it is now, it's

kind of an unsustainable system.

Alyssa Smith: So with all these animators dropping out of the

industry after a few years, would you say it impacts the

quality of the animation?

Matt Schley: Yes, there are a lot of reports out there

recently about productions that are not able to find enough

animators. So recently, a big trend has been studios going on

places like Twitter, looking at artist profiles of people

abroad, saying 'Hey, do you want to work in the anime industry?'

That's great for animators who live abroad who've always wanted

to work in anime. Now they can. And from what I hear, it's very

easy to get a job. Because they're so strapped for

animators. That said, that doesn't really point to a

healthy and sustainable industry.

Alyssa Smith: Right. Are there any efforts to improve the

industry?

Matt Schley: Thankfully, there are. There are a few training

programmes that have been opened by different companies. Netflix

teamed up with a studio called WIT to set up a kind of training

academy, which is giving people a stipend and hooking them up

with senior animators. There are also studios out there that have

been doing this for a longer time. The most famous example of

this is Kyoto Animation. Kyoto Animation has, for a long time,

had a really sustainable philosophy. They hire people and

they actually give them the skills to succeed. They hire a

lot of people on salary. They're based outside of Tokyo, so the

living expenses are a little bit more reasonable. And thanks to

Kyoto Animation being really forward looking, they grew to be

a studio that has some of the best looking animation out

there. As readers and listeners know, really tragically, in

2019, they were the victim of an arson attack that killed almost

30 of their employees. So that was a major setback for that

really, really admirable studio. Fortunately, they're still

around, and they are producing new anime.

Alyssa Smith: So then these companies are really focusing on

nurturing their talent and trying to retain people for long

term.

Matt Schley: That's right. That's right.

Alyssa Smith: And you're seeing that that has a direct effect on

the quality of the animations that they're producing?

Matt Schley: Absolutely. And when you've got the same

animators over a period of five or 10 years, not only animators

but character designers and directors and things like that,

you kind of get a house style. Every anime they produce is

going to have that kind of Kyoto Animation feel to it.

Alyssa Smith: You've talked about how we're moving away from

the more traditional style, and how bigger players like Netflix

and Disney are getting involved, you know, more non-Japanese

companies. We're seeing a lot of changes in anime. So then, you

know, we have to ask the question, what is anime? Is it

the storylines? Is it the visuals? How would you define

anime?

Matt Schley: Yeah, this is the million dollar question. This is

the huge debate heard all around the internet. I'll put it this

way. There are fans that really care who made it, who's the

director, is the large percentage of the creative staff

Japanese or not? There are fans that really care about that

authenticity. And there are fans that that don't, there are

people that love that anime look, and they don't care

whether that's made by a Western studio or a studio from South

Korea. If it's got that kind of anime look and feel that they

like, they don't care. I think both of those viewpoints are

entirely valid. And I think the industry is big enough that it

can handle both.

We talked about the international market surpassing

the domestic market for the first time in 2020. I think that

trend will probably continue, based solely on the the

population of Japan for example, right? It's going down and so

So it's trying to retain the heart of anime then?

there's a limit to what you can sell in Japan. That said, the

domestic market is still huge, it's still half of the market

for anime. So I think you're still gonna see plenty of what

we might call 'more authentic anime,' aimed at a Japanese

audience, and enjoyed by a western audience, but not made

for the Western audience. You're also gonna see a tonne of anime

aimed at a Western or an Asian or European audience.

Yeah. And ask 10 people what the heart of enemy is, and you'll

get 10 different answers, right? Again, it's not a it's not a

genre, it's a medium. There's anime that I hate, but people

that I work with love and vice versa, right? But there's kind

of this nebulous aesthetic or something that I think we all

think of as Japanese animation.

Alyssa Smith: Well, thank you for joining me today, Matt. It

was really nice talking to you.

Matt Schley: Thanks for having me.

Oscar Boyd: On Tuesday, Japan recorded 62,599 cases of COVID

19 nationwide — its highest tally since the pandemic began.

With cases still rising, the government is set to expand

quasi states of emergency to 34 of Japan's 47 prefectures.

Daycare centers have been particularly affected by the

recent surge in cases with more than 300 forced to shut due to

students or teachers testing positive.

Also, over the last week, demonstrations have taken place

in several countries against Japan's strict border measures,

which continue to prevent non-resident foreign nationals

such as hopeful students, academics and workers from

entering the country. According to organisers, more protests are

planned later this month in Germany, Austria, Spain and

Argentina, as well as outside the Prime Minister's office in

Tokyo in February.

This episode was hosted by The Japan Times' culture editor,

Alyssa I. Smith and produced and edited by me, Oscar Boyd. Our

guest this week was Matt Schley, a big thank you to him. You can

see all of his articles on The Japan Times' website, and I've

linked a couple in the show notes. That's it for this week.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to rate him

review Deep Dive recently. It helps more people to discover

the show, so please do keep those coming.

Until next time, as always, podtsukaresama.