Kadokawa Corporation

• 1. Introduction

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  Kadokawa Corporation began not as a media empire but as a small postwar publishing house with a mission: to revitalize Japanese culture through books. That was 1945, the year the original Kadokawa Shoten was founded, and Japan was still rebuilding from the ruins of World War Two. Eight decades later, the company that grew from that single publishing venture now controls anime studios, video game developers, a streaming platform, real estate holdings, and a sprawling network of overseas subsidiaries across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. How did a publisher become one of Japan's Big Four film studios? What drew Sony, Tencent, and Kakao Japan all to acquire stakes in the same conglomerate within a few years of each other? And what does a bribery scandal connected to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics reveal about the pressures facing Japan's biggest media groups?

• 2. Postwar Origins

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  Kadokawa Shoten was founded in 1945 with an explicit cultural mandate: to revitalize Japanese publishing in the postwar era. For decades it built a reputation as one of Japan's leading book publishers, expanding into manga, bunkobon paperbacks, and visual media magazines. The Kadokawa name became a family name in the most literal sense. Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, son of the company's founder Genyoshi, would eventually rise to lead the organization his father had created.

  The company's transformation from publisher to multimedia conglomerate accelerated through a series of mergers. On the 1st of October 2014, the original Kadokawa Corporation merged with Dwango Co., Ltd., a digital entertainment firm, to form the entity known as Kadokawa Dwango. The reorganizations that followed were intricate. In February 2019, Dwango was restructured to become a direct subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation rather than of Kadokawa Dwango. Then on the 1st of July 2019, the holding company itself was overhauled again. Only the publishing business remained in the entity called Kadokawa Corporation, which was then renamed Kadokawa Future Publishing. Kadokawa Dwango took on the Kadokawa Corporation name and became the holding company for the entire group. The original Kadokawa Shoten name survived as both a brand and a division within Kadokawa Future Publishing.

• 3. Global Capital Moves

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  On the 4th of February 2021, Kadokawa announced a Capital Alliance with Sony and CyberAgent, with both companies each receiving a 1.93% stake in exchange for supporting the creation, development, and acquisition of new intellectual property. The ink had barely dried before an even larger move followed. By August 2021, Kakao Japan had accumulated an 8.3% stake, briefly becoming the company's largest single shareholder.

  Tencent entered the picture on the 29th of October 2021, acquiring a 6.86% stake for 30 billion yen, equivalent to roughly 264 million US dollars at the time. The stated goal was to expand Kadokawa's global reach through Tencent's platforms, with China identified as a particular target given an existing joint venture the two companies already shared.

  Kadokawa's ambitions reached into European publishing in January 2024, when the company announced a partnership with Belgian publisher Dupuis. Kadokawa acquired a 51% stake in Dupuis's manga imprint Vega Dupuis and launched a joint venture called Vega SAS, with Dupuis retaining the remaining 49%. The aim was to bring Kadokawa's own titles, as well as Japanese and Korean comics, to the French market. In May 2025, a similar move took shape in Italy, where Kadokawa announced it would acquire a 70% stake in an Italian manga publisher.

• 4. Sony's Deeper Play

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  Reports surfaced in November 2024 that Sony Group Corporation was in talks to acquire Kadokawa outright. Sony had held shares since the 2021 Capital Alliance and had previously discussed a full acquisition, but those earlier conversations stalled over a fundamental disagreement: Sony wanted only the anime and video game assets, while Kadokawa insisted any buyer take the entire company.

  What emerged instead was a deepened partnership rather than a takeover. On the 19th of December 2024, Sony announced a strategic capital and business alliance with Kadokawa. On the 7th of January 2025, Sony acquired 12 million new shares for 50 billion yen, approximately 320 million US dollars, giving it a 10% stake and making it Kadokawa's largest single shareholder at that moment. The collaboration envisioned under the agreement spans anime co-productions, live-action adaptations, and wider distribution of Kadokawa intellectual properties. Oasis Management then acquired a 13.76% stake in March 2026, displacing Sony as the largest single shareholder. The shifting ownership table reflects just how attractive Kadokawa's catalog of IP has become to outside investors.

• 5. The Bribery Arrest

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  In September 2022, Japanese police arrested Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, the chairman and son of the company's founder. The charge centered on a payment prosecutors alleged he authorized: 76 million yen, later adjusted to 69 million under Japan's statute of limitations, paid to a consulting company with ties to a former executive of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee. The alleged purpose was to secure Kadokawa's selection as an official sponsor of the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.

  Kadokawa denied the allegations, and his company announced it would cooperate with the investigation. On the 4th of October 2022, prosecutors formally indicted him. Later that same day, he announced his intention to resign as chairman while continuing to deny the charges and vowing to prove his innocence at trial. The case placed Kadokawa at the center of a broader inquiry into the commercial dealings surrounding one of the most scrutinized sporting events in recent Japanese history.

• 6. The BlackSuit Ransomware Attack

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  On the 8th of June 2024, a hacker group calling itself BlackSuit targeted Kadokawa's digital infrastructure. The attack hit multiple websites, with the video streaming platform Niconico among the hardest affected; most of its services were temporarily suspended. Niconico is one of Japan's most recognized online video platforms and sits at the heart of Kadokawa's digital media portfolio.

  On the 27th of June 2024, BlackSuit published a statement on the dark web claiming responsibility and threatening to release 1.5 terabytes of stolen data. The claimed haul included business partner information and user data. The hackers stated the release would proceed unless a ransom was paid. The attack underscored the vulnerability of large media conglomerates whose subsidiaries share interconnected digital systems, and it came at a moment when Kadokawa was already navigating the legal fallout from the bribery indictment.

• 7. A Sprawling Group

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  FromSoftware, the game studio behind some of the most widely discussed video game releases of recent years, sits inside the Kadokawa Group with Kadokawa holding a 69.66% stake. Spike Chunsoft, Acquire, and Gotcha Gotcha Games are among the other game-related companies in the portfolio. On the anime side, Kadokawa acquired studio Doga Kobo in July 2024, adding it to a films and visuals segment that already includes Kinema Citrus at 31.8%, ENGI at 53%, and the long-established Kadokawa Daiei Studio.

  The publishing arm stretches across dozens of imprints. Enterbrain, Media Factory, ASCII Media Works, Fujimi Shobo, and Kadokawa Shoten itself all operate as divisions or subsidiaries. Internationally, Yen Press, the North American manga and light novel publisher, is 51% owned by Kadokawa in a co-ownership arrangement with Hachette Book Group. Anime News Network, a majority stake co-owned with Christopher Macdonald and Bandai Namco Filmworks, extends the group's reach into English-language anime media. Across Southeast Asia, joint ventures in Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia carry the Kadokawa name into markets far from its 1945 origins in Tokyo. The merger of BookWalker and Kadokawa Connected into Dwango, which took effect on the 1st of April 2025, shows the group continuing to consolidate its digital services even as it expands outward.