ASCII MEDIA WORKS
(ASCII MEDIA WORKS is a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings, inc.) Kadokawa Group Holdings, Inc. (the “Company”),was founded in 1945 by Genyoshi Kadokawa, a scholar of literature, who wished to revitalize Japanese culture by establishing an independent publishing company. Initially, the Company engaged mainly in literary publications of Japan’s national history and literature. In the 1970s, the Company started the filmmaking business and succeeded in promoting a media mix that included movie screenings at paperback book fairs. As a result, the Company gradually expanded its corporate foundation. In the 1980s, the Company began publishing TV information, urban information and media information magazines. Thereafter, the Company steadily extended into the movie/video business and the IT business by cultivating new segments and genres in the publishing field and via an effective merger and acquisition strategy. The Company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1998. The Company is currently extending its businesses overseas to establish itself as a mega content provider based on the three mainstay business segments of publishing, movie/visual and cross-media. It is the owner of a unique array of comics, novellas (so-called light novels) and animation content, all of which are representative of the “Cool Japan” concept that has attracted much attention worldwide in recent years.
