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Government says 5.7 trillion yen of Japanese media was pirated last year, thinks AI could help

Casey Baseel May 26, 2026
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Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry conducts study to estimate damage to producers of anime and other Japanese media.

With Japanese entertainment media growing in popularity around the world, the Japanese government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is also growing more concerned about the effects of media piracy overseas. In its latest study of the situation, the ministry claims that damage from piracy has been rapidly increasing, but one of its proposed countermeasures might not really do much to solve the problem.

For its study, the ministry conducted surveys in six foreign countries, including the U.S. and China, regarding “content piracy,” “content” here being a loose term used for entertainment media including anime and digital manga. Based on the results of the surveys, the ministry estimates that 5.7 trillion yen (US$37 billion) worth of Japanese content was pirated overseas in 2025, roughly three times the amount estimated for 2022, the previous iteration of the ministry’s study.

For the 2025 investigation, the ministry also added a new category, estimating the amount of pirated “character goods” that were sold online outside of Japan, such as knockoff and unlicensed figures, posters, plushies, and the like. For this category, the ministry arrived at an estimate of 4.7 trillion yen, brining its total figure for pirated content and knockoff merch to 10.4 trillion yen.

The ministry is framing this as the amount of “damage” caused to the legitimate Japanese media/merchandising industry, which invites consideration of whether pirated media always directly correlates to lost sales revenue. Those of a more lenient viewpoint could argue that if someone pirates content which they weren’t going to pay for anyway, no actual damage has been done, and similar logic could be applied to pirating of Japanese content not available in the country of the pirating party. On the other hand, it’s naive to think that no one is pirating content they would have paid for in the absence of an illicit way to get it for free, and with such a significant amount of Japanese entertainment media now being distributed in major foreign markets in a fairly timely matter, it’d be disingenuous to try to frame piracy as strictly an issue of availability either.

As such, while the actual damage to Japanese rightsholders is likely less than the full 10.4 trillion yen that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is claiming, it’s also not like there are no negative effects from piracy, and so it’s not surprising that the Japanese government would want to look for ways to address the problem.

However, one of the ideas being floated by the researchers is to promote the use of AI in production to lower costs and secure profits. In addition to sidestepping the root causes of piracy (insufficient legal enforcement and/or local availability), a reliance on lower costs also ignores that a major reason Japanese content, particularly anime, has become so popular around the world is that many foreign fans see it as having a mix of high quality and unique narratives, neither of which are things that AI is particularly good at producing. Leaning on the technology as a method by which to address piracy could end up as a sort of monkey’s paw if, by eroding what makes Japanese entertainment content attractive to audiences in the first place, AI simply turns Japanese-made media into something that’s not worth watching.

Source: TBS News Dig via Livedoor News via Otakomu
Top image: Pakutaso
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