First, I’d like you to look at this figure. It indicates that art is an industry worth about 7.6 trillion yen today.

That’s about the same as the convenience store, semiconductor and advertising industries. Now, look at the next figure.

It’s unfortunate, but Japan’s art industry is currently 1/100th of the size of the USA’s. In Japan, only the manga (comic book) industry exceeds 1 trillion yen, and this market exceeds 2 trillion yen when you add anime and merchandising. Because this particular entertainment market doesn’t exist in any other country, it may be that part of our art market is flowing into our comics and anime market.
The market for Yoshinoya’s red pickled ginger is about 200 billion yen, and the Japanese movie market is about 230 billion yen. However, there is only about 30 billion yen in art in Japan currently. This might make you wonder if art is really even needed at all in Japan. But the market is the same size as that of Tamagotchis, so there definitely is a market for art in Japan. And this brings me to the first point I would like to make.