Abstract
In Japan, the animation industry, a major content industry, has intensively agglomerated in Tokyo. This study analyzes the agglomeration mechanism of the animation industry in Tokyo from a business-to-business transaction and labor market perspective. Corporations in the industry can be the categorized as prime contractors and processing order-receiving firms. The prime contractors play a role of contacts in distributing jobs within the industry. The processing order-receiving firms are in charge of specialized processing and subcontracting from other production firms. These production firms are typically small to medium sized. As a characteristic of the business-to-business trade, it was found the trading with sponsoring firms outside the industry tends to last for mid-to-long term, and the contracts are specifically documented. Trades within the industry tend to be short-term without specific documents of contract. For trades within the industry, the production firms have some flexibility in the transaction through trust in technologies and payments of the clients. Thus, it is important for each firm to establish mutual trust.
The employees consist of regular workers and freelancers. The majority of employees are freelancers. They come from technical schools and through intermediate recruitment within the industry. While these freelancers have special skills and thus rely on the job opportunities in animation production, they are typically paid based on their performance, and therefore have unstable job conditions. They up grade their skills through coaching by senior workers and get information about works from the colleagues.
The agglomeration of the animation industry in Tokyo is maintained through: 1) proximity to other firms in the same industry that enables transactions based on a relationship of mutual trust; 2) a labor market that secures and reproduces specialized labor with flexibility; 3) concentration of the content industry as sponsoring firms; and 4) mutual relationships with special technical schools that provide new employees.
