Reconsideration on the Agglomeration Factors of Cultural Industries

The early studies on the cultural industries had mainly emphasized the viewpoint of "efficiency" based on the "flexible specialization" theory, but they have gradually shed light on the viewpoint of "creativity": creative human resources and various networks generating creative energies. Despite the importance of these studies, it is impossible to explain every cultural industrial agglomeration phenomena from specific and few viewpoints due to the diversity of each cultural industry. This study describes the dissimilarity of agglomeration factors between the Japanese animation and home video game industries which form salient agglomeration in the same region. Both industries share similar characteristics with industrial agglomeration of SMEs in Tokyo and close inter-firm relationships. However, they differ in their historical development paths and each firm's behavior and strategy because of their own distribution systems and production processes. In particular, the difference in distribution systems clearly affects whether a company values "efficiency" factors of agglomeration advantage or "creativity" factors of that in case of locational choice. The distribution sector of the cultural industry, compared with the production sector, has a tendency to value profitability rather than creation itself. Therefore, a cultural industry with the strong distribution sector tends to form the industrial system emphasizing profitability. The Japanese animation firm is apt to choose its location from the perspective of efficiency, which easily contributes to profitability, because television broadcasting stations are strong distribution sector. Conversely, the Japanese game firm chooses its location from the perspective of creativity due to the absence of strong distribution sector.