Amazon Unveils Additional Shows for Japan’s Prime Video Viewers

Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a dozen original shows for its Prime Video service in Japan, seeking to attract more consumers to its annual shopping-and-entertainment membership.

The Web retailer is embracing the same strategy it used in the U.S. with “Transparent” and “Mozart in the Jungle,” by producing content that can only be seen by Prime members. The new shows for Japan include “Ultraman Orb,” an offshoot about the popular Japanese superhero, “Invisible Tokyo,” a documentary exploring the city, and “Work in Space,” a comedy about a group of businessmen and misfits battling aliens.

The new shows are also Amazon’s answer to Netflix Inc.’s growing ambitions in Japan. Both companies began online-video services in the country in September. Amazon invested $1.3 billion on Prime Video services in 2014 but hasn’t disclosed its spending since then, or any specific viewer numbers. While the subscription video-on-demand market in Japan is estimated to be about a 10th of the streaming market in the U.S., the country is a key driver of Amazon’s international sales, which made up a third of total revenue last year.

“We are going to keep strengthening the original content that you can only see on Amazon Prime,” Jasper Cheung, president of Amazon Japan, said at a news conference.

While a few of the shows are already available on the Web and via Amazon’s Fire TV streaming devices, the rest will begin in the coming months and next year. In total, Amazon plans to bring out 20 original shows in Japan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Reed Stevenson in Tokyo at rstevenson15@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robert Fenner at rfenner@bloomberg.net, Edwin Chan