ASOBISYSTEM, the Tokyo entertainment company behind Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, ATARASHII GAKKO!, and FRUITS ZIPPER, has established ASOBISYSTEM USA, its first dedicated North American headquarters. Established in July and based in Culver City, California, the subsidiary will be led by founder and CEO Yusuke Nakagawa, who describes the launch as the company’s biggest investment yet in the region.
While the Culver City office will handle business development, strategic partnerships, marketing, publicity, and artist support across North America, its remit extends beyond ASOBISYSTEM’s own roster. The company plans to strengthen its own network and business infrastructure in the region before using that experience to support the wider Japanese entertainment industry, including local representation and business development for companies without their own US operations. ASOBISYSTEM USA will also provide US brands, media, promoters, and other partners with a direct point of contact for Japanese talent and IP.
Nakagawa, who founded ASOBISYSTEM in Harajuku in 2007 and sits on the Japanese government’s Cool Japan Public-Private Partnership Platform, will lead the subsidiary while continuing as CEO of the Japan headquarters.
“We’ve seen incredible growth in global interest for Japanese entertainment over the last several years, and we believe now is the right time to establish a permanent presence in the United States”, said Nakagawa. “Our goal is not only to create more opportunities for our own artists, but to help build lasting connections between Japan and North America by supporting creators, companies, and partners on both sides”.
The expansion also coincides with a wider push to increase the international reach of Japan’s entertainment industries. The government has set a target of increasing overseas sales of Japanese content to ¥20 trillion by 2033, with stronger international distribution networks and sustained marketing among the areas identified as necessary to reach it. Japan remains the world’s second-largest recorded music market, while a METI survey published in April 2026 estimated the Japanese music industry’s overseas sales at ¥151.67 billion in 2024.
Kyary Pamyu Pamyu launched the first of five world tours in 2013, repeatedly taking ASOBISYSTEM’s Harajuku pop to audiences across North America and beyond. More recently, she closed Coachella’s Gobi Stage in 2022 before playing her first US headline show in four years in Los Angeles, then returned in 2023 for dates in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. ATARASHII GAKKO! followed their own Coachella appearance in 2024 with a 13-city North American leg of the AG! CALLING WORLD TOUR, drawing around 40,000 people as part of a 26-stop run across Europe, Asia, and North America attended by 65,000. The group return to Seattle on September 6th for Bumbershoot Arts & Music Festival.
ASOBISYSTEM says those tours and festival appearances, alongside Los Angeles events including matsuri ’25: Japanese Music Experience LOS ANGELES and Zipangu, showed both the appeal of Japanese music in North America and the continued demand for it. The company has been expanding its US business network around that activity for some time. At the July 2024 launch of PONYCANYON USA in Los Angeles, it joined Activ8 and Pony Canyon to announce W KAWAII, with Pony Canyon’s new US arm as the project’s overseas strategic contact. It then partnered with Singapore music investment firm blackx in March 2025 to develop IP and strengthen international fan engagement, and a month later its Activ8 joint venture established ANNIN US in Los Angeles. In March 2026, ASOBISYSTEM took ASOBIEXPO overseas for the first time with a Honolulu edition featuring Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, ATARASHII GAKKO!, and FRUITS ZIPPER.
Beyond its headline acts, ASOBISYSTEM represents nearly 100 artists, creators, producers, models, and designers, including producer Yasutaka Nakata and fashion designer Sebastian Masuda. Its KAWAII LAB. project has also produced some of Japan’s biggest breakout idol groups of recent years, with FRUITS ZIPPER, CANDY TUNE, and CUTIE STREET each scoring songs that have surpassed 100 million streams. FRUITS ZIPPER went on to headline Tokyo Dome in February 2026, while CANDY TUNE performed at NHK’s Kōhaku Uta Gassen following the viral success of ‘BAIBAI FIGHT!’.
