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Japanese Box Office Enjoys Record Year With 235.5 Billion Yen in 2016

The Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPPAJ or Eiren) released the statistics for the Japanese box office for 2016 on Tuesday. The statistics count films that opened from November 2015 to November 2016.

The total gross for the Japanese box office for the year is 235.508 billion yen (about US$2.07 billion), an 8.5% increase from last year, and a record high for Japan. The total of number of admissions for the year is 180,189,000, an 8.1% increase from last year. That equates to an average of 1.42 per person.

Domestic films earned a total of 148.68 billion yen (about US$1.30 billion), a 23.5% increase from last year. Foreign films earned 86.9 billion (about US$764 million), a 10.2% decrease from last year. Foreign films contributed 36.9% to the overall box office earnings, compared to 44.6% from last year.

610 domestic films opened in Japan, compared to 581 last year. 42 of these films earned more than 1 billion yen (about US$8.79 million), an increase from last year's 39. These 42 films earned a total of 116.7 billion yen (about US$1.02 billion). 11 of these were anime films, a decrease from last year's 13. These anime films earned a total of 55.3 billion (about US$486 million), 47% of the total of all domestic films. Makoto Shinkai's your name. anime film has earned a total of 23.56 billion (about US$207 million) yen as of Tuesday.

Notable anime films that did not make it into the top 10 highest grossing films of the year include Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu and Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu, which combined earned a total of 1.5 billion yen (about US$13.19 million), as well as the Eiga Mahō Tsukai Precure! Kiseki no Henshin! Cure Mofurun! and Eiga Precure All Stars: Minna de Utau Kiseki no Mahō!, which combined earned a total of 1 billion yen (about US$8.79 million). The KING OF PRISM by PrettyRhythm earned 700 million yen (about US$6.15 million).

539 foreign films opened in Japan, compared to 555 last year. 19 of those films earned more than 1 billion yen. Four of them were animated films. Animated films account for 33% of the total earned by these 19 films. The highest earning foreign film was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, followed by Zootopia, Finding Dory, and The Secret Life of Pets.

The total number of movie screens in Japan was 3,472 screens, adding 35 screens from last year. The average admission fee was 1,307 yen (about US$11) down slightly from 1,303 yen last year.

Source: Animation Business Journal (link 2) (Tadashi Sudo)

Update: Ticket price rate corrected. Thanks, Aezreal