The Oscars in Tokyo: The Academy Looks to Toho and Japan

The Academy brings the Oscars to Tokyo: Bill Kramer meets Toho CEO Hiro Matsuoka as Japanese cinema accelerates its global expansion.

On October 28 and 29, the Tokyo International Film Festival will host Academy in Tokyo, with CEO Bill Kramer, president Lynette Howell Taylor and Meredith Shea, head of membership and industry relations. Kramer, on his first visit to Asia, will also receive a Global Cinema Leadership Special Award.

The discussion with Hiro Matsuoka, president and CEO of Toho, will cover theaters, streaming and international collaboration.

The Oscars in Tokyo: Toho buys it all while practicing cultural diplomacy

Toho is no longer just the house of Godzilla exporting its monsters.

The company has made overseas business one of the pillars of its 2032 strategy and aims to increase the share of net operating revenue generated outside Japan from 10% to 30%. In 2024, it bought GKIDS, the US distributor of auteur animation, for around $140 million. In 2025, it added Anime Limited in Europe, while Science SARU joined the group on the production side. The stated goal is to build a network capable of distributing Toho content directly around the world, rather than merely licensing it.

The curious detail is that the bridge to the Academy had already been built by the films.

Godzilla Minus One won the Oscar for visual effects in 2024. That same year, GKIDS had brought Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, winner of best animated feature, to the United States. When Toho bought GKIDS a few months later, it also bought an American machine already fluent in the language of awards.

The Academy globalizes the Oscars; Japan globalizes itself

The Academy presents the event as part of its international outreach: around 11,000 members, global programs, a panel dedicated to the future of world cinema and even a reception reserved for Academy members in Tokyo. Hollywood has rewarded, selected and distributed foreign cinema through its own gates; now it is meeting a Japanese industry that is buying some of those gates.

Matsuoka, moreover, sits on the Academy Museum’s board.

Kramer heads the institution that awards the Oscars; Matsuoka leads a group that wants to control more production, intellectual property and international distribution.

In industrial terms, it looks much more like a snapshot of the new balance of power.