ASOBISYSTEM, the Tokyo entertainment company that has spent close to two decades exporting Harajuku culture, has established a US subsidiary.
ASOBISYSTEM U.S.A. INC. is headquartered in Culver City, California, and will handle business development, partnerships, marketing, publicity and artist support across North America.
ASOBISYSTEM calls the launch its biggest investment yet in North America, and a permanent base for the J-pop acts it has been sending on tour across the United States.
Leading the subsidiary is Yusuke Nakagawa, who founded ASOBISYSTEM in 2007 and will keep his role as CEO of the company’s Japan headquarters.
Nakagawa is credited with helping popularize the aomoji-kei fashion movement, and sits on the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat’s Cool Japan Public-Private Partnership Platform.
“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.”
Yusuke Nakagawa, ASOBISYSTEM
“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 choice of Culver City puts ASOBISYSTEM inside one of Los Angeles’s densest entertainment and technology clusters.
Sony Pictures has anchored the district since 1990, and Apple, Amazon MGM Studios, TikTok and HBO have all opened offices there.
Apple Music runs a studio in the city, and Beats, the Apple-owned audio brand, is headquartered there.
Spotify‘s Los Angeles base sits across town in Downtown LA’s Arts District, alongside Warner Music Group – putting the streaming services, TikTok and the studios within reach of ASOBISYSTEM‘s new office.
The launch lands as Japan‘s music business pushes to grow overseas, after years anchored in one of the world’s richest domestic markets.
Japan is the second-largest recorded music market in the world, according to the IFPI‘s 2026 report, and streaming is widening the reach of its artists.
Japanese-language music’s share of the world’s Top 10,000 streaming tracks climbed to 2.1% in 2023 from 1.3% a year earlier, according to Luminate.
Those figures were reported by MBW in 2025, when ASOBISYSTEM partnered with Singapore-based investment firm blackx to widen J-pop’s global reach.
In that deal, blackx‘s Japan head Hiroki Shirasuka pointed to “unprecedented global momentum for J-Pop.”
The expansion builds on ASOBISYSTEM‘s artists gaining traction in the US.
ATARASHII GAKKO!, the four-member group that made its worldwide debut in 2021 through US label 88rising, appeared at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2024 and completed a North American tour that year.
The group returns to the US this fall for the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle in September 2026.
Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, who debuted in 2011, has completed multiple North American tours.
The roster also includes producer Yasutaka Nakata, of the electronic duo CAPSULE, who wrote New Genesis – the Ado single from the film One Piece Film: Red.
The company’s newer KAWAII LAB. project, home to the seven-member group FRUITS ZIPPER, runs under the mission “From Harajuku to the World.”
ASOBISYSTEM‘s US footprint already includes the New York restaurant SUSHIDELIC, designed by the company’s artist Sebastian Masuda.
ASOBISYSTEM‘s move follows, on a smaller scale, the route K-pop‘s companies took into Western markets.
HYBE, the South Korean company behind BTS, spent USD $1.05 billion to acquire Scooter Braun’s US-based Ithaca Holdings in 2021, folding a Western management company and its roster into a newly formed HYBE America.
Braun took a seat on HYBE‘s board, giving the company on-the-ground US relationships that BTS and its other acts could tap.
ASOBISYSTEM is opening an office rather than acquiring a company, but it frames the goal in similar terms – “building infrastructure on the ground” and partnerships inside the market.
The launch is part of a wider effort by Japanese music companies to build their own infrastructure in international markets.
Avex, one of Japan’s biggest music companies, expanded into North America with a US arm spanning publishing, labels and venture investment.
A cluster of Japan’s next-generation companies – including ASOBISYSTEM, SKY-HI‘s BMSG and And Music, the home of rapper Awich – is among the backers of Nebula17, the Los Angeles company launched in 2025 by former Avex USA CEO Naoki Osada to break Japanese talent in the US.
Alongside its own roster, ASOBISYSTEM USA will offer representation, business development, PR and consulting to Japanese companies expanding abroad, and act as an entry point for North American brands, promoters and media seeking Japanese talent.
ASOBISYSTEM describes the US headquarters as a long-term investment in the future of Japanese entertainment.Music Business Worldwide
