3 YouTubers Making Successful Moves in Japan

This month we’ll be holding our first class entirely on YouTube in Japan.

This is an important class for plenty of reasons:

-35% of Japan’s population use YouTube each month on their smartphones.

-YouTube in Japan has a higher daily penetration than Line.

-And when interviewed, 1 in 5 Japanese youth claim that being a “YouTube vlogger” is what they want to be when they grow up.

Now, with that being said, there are already some major players leading the YouTube movement in Japan, here is who they are and why you should know them.

Chris Okano

Chris Okano is a well established YouTuber and CEO of Tokyo Creative, one of the more emerging growing influencer networks and platforms in Japan as you can see in the photo below.

Tokyo Creative started out as an idea Chris had to empower younger Japanese youth and foreigners in Japan by giving them the resources, tools, and network to build their personal YouTube brand and learn how to bring it to market.

Now, Tokyo Creative is much more than just that.

With the release of Tokyo Creative Learn, they now have an online education platform that is empowering thousands to learn about digital influence and how to build their own influential brand online.

Outside of that, they’ve launched additional platforms like Tokyo Creative News, Play, Talk, and Travel in an effort to utilize their growing list of influencers in Japan to help bring about a new world of media being released in Japan — visit their site now, join their next event, and get involved today.

Chris Broad

Also within the Tokyo Creative influencer network and team is Chris Broad from the YouTube channel “Abroad in Japan”.

With 1.1 million YouTube subscribers, Chris is strategically positioning himself as a powerful and influential tool for both developing and showcasing the Japan Brand abroad and how that can impact the tourist boom rising and expected to skyrocket around the 2020 Olympics coming up.

When watching Chris’s channels it’s easy to see why he’s so successful, outside of having a 100% grasp on basic YouTube to-do’s and strategic norms, Chris’s content is also targeted and well refined.

His ability to speak to different audiences that are either looking to live vicariously through him as he makes his travels through Japan or that are already living in the land of the rising sun and happen to find themselves lost in the midst of a series of cultural norms is what makes his channel unique and a recommended favorite.

HikakinTV

Finally, this post isn’t complete without a dive and look into HikakinTV, one of the most popular YouTube channels in Japan.

While this post isn’t about the most popular channels, rather the ones making a difference- Hikakin is doing just that.

A little bit about Hikakin — He started his career as a YouTube celebrity with a Super Mario Bros video mashup. That video went viral in 2010, reaching over 3.8 million views (according to Wikipedia).

Since that moment, he recognized the power of YouTube in Japan where most brands failed and capitalized on the free real-estate to grow his YouTube channel while also forming other affiliated channels and both partnerships with emerging Japanese YouTubers- a key strategy in any country to grow a build a large YouTube subscriber rate.

Ever since his breakout success he’s built one of the most powerful YouTube channels in Japan, is the founder of the UUUM Japanese multi-channel influencer network and is becoming another bridge between Japan and the rest of the world by finding ways to empower Japan’s transforming culture through his vlogs reaching millions every day in the process.