Content Tokyo event report: where art meets tech

This year’s Content Tokyo took place from June 17th to June 19th at Tokyo Big Sight, bringing together hundreds of established companies, local businesses, and emerging startups. This business-to-business event offers an opportunity for organizations to showcase their work, seek collaborations between companies, and promote future endeavors.

The exhibition spanned a range of categories, combining art, business, and technology. Area of the venue included the Video and CG Production Expo, Licensing Japan, the Creator EXPO (featuring over 450 indie creators), the Advertising Creative Marketing Expo, the Communication Design Expo, and the Immersive Technology Expo. Across these different sections, visitors could explore dozens of niche subcategories, ensuring that everyone walked away with new insights or fresh industry interests.

Japan, the Character Capital of the World 

The line between business and entertainment has quickly disappeared as tech companies continue to build tools and resources for artists, racing companies are using anime characters, and international brands travel to Japan to collaborate and promote themselves. 

While many assume that a Tokyo based expo would feature strictly Japanese participants, this year’s event saw impressive attendance from foreign art, design, and entertainment companies. In the past, expos in Japan were viewed primarily as traditional corporate networking hubs. Today, however, events like Content Tokyo have evolved into massive collaborative platforms where global entertainment, video game, and anime brands come together to share ideas and explore commercial partnerships. Foreign companies have begun to invest into the culture of characters and are recognizing Japan as the hotspot market to insert themselves into this quickly rising industry. The future of entertainment has found a platform within Tokyo and from the current look of it all, it seems as if it’ll only be growing.

Standout Booths:

Canon

Universally known for cameras, Canon showed off its new Mixed Reality (MR) technology, which seamlessly combines the real and virtual worlds. They showed how objects like new car models are still being designed, or buildings that haven't even been built yet, can appear right in front of you in real space. By combining smart lenses and 3D imaging, they let you look at virtual objects from any angle as if they were physically right there.

Runa Entertainment

Through Runa Entertainment the world of motorsports combines with pop culture through their product design and managing events that use racing promotions alongside character licensing (especially Evangelion), bringing fan favorite mascots right onto the racetrack.

Wenzhou

Wenzhou is where the expo meets a physical presence through the showcase of their 20 years of experience of making giant, custom inflatable products. They handle everything from research and development to final manufacturing, proving that brand mascots can come to life in any shape or size.

Studio Nugget

Studio Nugget, a Japanese entertainment and character development company showcased their lead characters Urameshi Boy and Kadtory as lifesize mascot costumes to bring out the energy their stories provide. Studio Nugget focuses on world building and connecting, doing so through illustrating each character with a unique background.

Character IP development is one of Japan’s well favored and known attributes, so there’s a feeling of familiarity that many feel from the variety of figures displayed at this event. This same notion can be considered to be the incentive for the increase in entertainment within Japan. Japan has become a magnet and Worldwide hub for not only Character Development IP, but all forms of media. 

If you missed out on Content Tokyo this year, don't worry! They will bring their ecosystem of growing companies and networks again in 2027 at Tokyo Big Sight next June. It’s completely free as long as you register to attend in advance.