Japan¡¯s podcast industry is finally coming into its own. After years of being a niche format, entertainment companies and tech platforms have started putting in greater efforts to make the podcast medium mainstream, and this fall saw a serious push toward bringing established celebrities into the mix to take advantage of a burgeoning interest in the field.
The biggest sign of a shift happened this September when video game maestro Hideo Kojima joined the podcast space. He teamed up with audio streaming platform Spotify to create ¡°,¡± a show promising to ¡°take a deep dive into his brain and shed light on his creative process¡± in both English and Japanese. The weekly series offers episodes clocking in at an average of 30 minutes and touches on many corners of Kojima¡¯s creativity, along with interviews with creators like film directors Jordan Peele and S.S. Rajamouli. Save for a few special sections tagged on at the end, the show is all about exploring what goes on in Kojima¡¯s noggin.
¡°Brain Structure¡± served as one of the most high-profile podcast debuts in Japan, with legitimate hype behind it, a rarity for pods in the country. But it isn¡¯t the only program to shake up this dormant corner of Japanese entertainment.
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