Katana Inc.’s Immersive Fort Tokyo, the ‘world’s first immersive theme park’, is scheduled to open in March 2024. Rooted in immersive theatre, this is a unique attraction where visitors have the opportunity to participate in a range of compelling experiences spanning the venue’s attractions, shops and restaurants.
The theme park is the first project of its kind in the world. It is entertainment on a whole new level, with immersion that allows guests to participate and interact as players rather than observers in an experience that is unique for each visitor.
At around 30,000 m2, the attraction is one of the largest all-weather theme parks in Japan, featuring 12 attractions and six shops/restaurants.
Katana’s first theme park, and the first theme park project to be developed in the heart of Tokyo, Immersive Fort Tokyo is a project the company has handled from inception to operation.
The team behind Immersive Fort Tokyo
Featured attractions include a large-scale immersive theatre with a runtime of over an hour, a terrifying immersive horror experience, and a show that erupts suddenly in a restaurant. Guests are drawn into dramatic, highly-charged moments so the boundaries between reality and fiction break down.
The individual experience depends on each participant. Conventional passive theatre experiences are cast into the past as audiences engage actively, becoming protagonists.
The “Hotel Albert” series at Universal Studios Japan in 2018 and 2019, under the leadership of Tomoe Okiyama, pioneered immersive theatre. Initially, the spread of the form remained on a relatively small and experimental scale. Now, under the aegis of its CEO Tsuyoshi Morioka, and the vision of creative directors such as Shoichiro Tsuno and Tomoe Okiyama, Katana is bringing dramatic, large-scale immersive experiences to Tokyo.
Okiyama, creative director of Immersive Fort Tokyo and senior art director T. Rick Hayashi, spoke to blooloop about the new attraction.
Immersive theatre pioneers
Tomoe Okiyama studied entertainment at California State University and worked at Universal Studios Japan (USJ). In 2017, it was she who first perceived the potential of immersive theatre, and introduced it to USJ. In the role of producer, she led Japan’s first large-scale immersive theatre, Hotel Albert, with great success. She then moved on to lead its sequel, Hotel Albert II: Requiem as executive producer.
Since joining Katana, one of Okiyama’s major projects has been the Immersive Dramatic Restaurant in the Mystery Train. This is a hugely popular immersive theatre experience in a restaurant, selling out daily.
T. Rick Hayashi is a creator with extensive experience in entertainment development and management in New York, London, and Japan.
Active in the production team of many major titles such as Hairspray on NY Broadway, he was invited to USJ in 2013 to join a team led by Morioka and participated as a senior creator in various entertainment developments, including a show in the Harry Potter area, a parade commemorating the 15th anniversary, and a new night parade with groundbreaking production.
At Katana, in addition to working on Immersive Fort Tokyo, he is also a central member of the creative development team at Junglia, which will open in 2025.
Katana Inc.
Katana is an elite group of professional marketers. It was set up by Morioka, a representative strategist and marketer. After completing his mission for the recovery of Universal Studios Japan, he set up Katana in 2017. He has leveraged strategic mathematical and marketing theories refined throughout his career and a systematic approach to strategic human resources to enable corporate growth.
Katana also works on regional revitalisation, which involves the creation of sustainable businesses in each area.
“A lot of the members of Katana come from theme park experiences,” Hayashi tells blooloop. “Specifically, some of our key creative members and marketing members came from Universal Studios, Japan. They introduced immersive theatre to Japanese audiences.
“The concept of immersive entertainment was familiar in the States, London, much of Europe and other parts of the Western world. But in the Eastern world, USJ was a very successful pioneer in that area, under the creative direction of members, including Tomo. A lot of us had the opportunity to come to Katana.
“From its founding in 2017, as the creative team started developing immersive experiences, taking the theme park experiences to that next level was always the dream of our founding members.”
Taking theme park experiences to the next level
That dream is about to be realised with the opening of Immersive Fort Tokyo at the beginning of March.
In terms of precisely how the Katana team take theme park experiences to the next level, he remarks:
“As a global trend, we have identified two distinct facets to immersive attractions. Firstly, there is immersion through digital artwork. This is where you’re in a great space and the art surrounds you, or you are travelling through art exhibits. That type is hugely popular: beautiful and photogenic.”
Secondly, there is immersion through theatricality:
“Our thought was to create a combination of both. So, it’s not just limited to its photogenic quality, but nor is it limited to just theatre. Instead, what we’re trying to do is take all the facets of immersion in theme parks and immersive art and immersive experiences, and combine them into this amazing nexus point.”
Giving guests agency
Okiyama, outlining the creative process that immerses guests in the imagined worlds she builds, explains:
“First of all, the show set creates the atmosphere. It means that once you step into the world, you automatically feel you are somewhere else. That’s one thing that I always focus on.
“Another point is that Japanese people are very shy, compared to other people in the world. When I make an immersive theatre kind of attraction, I always try to make it friendly to the Japanese people. For example, that might involve giving them roles, and telling them what to do, to an extent.”
It’s a fine balance, affording audiences agency, and yet giving them parameters within which to operate where they don’t feel uncomfortable:
“I don’t want to make so we just tell them what to do. There’s a line. The role has to come seamlessly from the atmosphere, from the place, so it feels effortless. It’s really important to create Japanese-friendly immersive experiences.”
She describes the target audience:
“We’re in Tokyo, so we’re aiming at people from Tokyo or Japan more broadly, perhaps aged 20-30. But we are also aiming at anybody who is getting bored or unsatisfied with ordinary entertainment, or maybe even their lives. People who want to forget completely about their daily lives and jobs; people who want to release their emotions, to release themselves.”
Storytelling at Immersive Fort Tokyo
There have, Okiyama says, been challenges to overcome:
“As Rick said, immersive experiences are not a major entertainment genre here. Many people still don’t know what immersive entertainment is, and it’s hard to encapsulate in a sentence. It’s something you have to experience to understand.”
The theme park format of Immersive Fort Tokyo addresses this challenge:
“The mission is to spread this new type of entertainment throughout Japan by creating it in a large-scale theme park format, so people understand it’s a new type of experience, and you engage with it through participating.”
She outlines the storytelling, and what people will experience:
“One of the attractions, based on the stories of Edo Oiran, takes place in a mysterious and beautiful Japanese-themed world. We can’t tell you exactly what the guest will experience, because we want to keep it secret.”
Horror experiences
Throughout the 12 attractions – which include a Sherlock Holmes experience, a Jack the Ripper adventure, an immersive rally, and a cabaret, among others – horror proliferates. Hayashi explains:
“Before starting the process and exploring the stories we’d be dealing with, we worked with marketing members to create a consumer-based strategy rooted in our guests’ desired experience, to identify the kind of stories, places, and experiences to pique those emotional responses we want our guests to have.”
“We want to be able to push people out of their daily lives to inhabit a different character here. We are unleashing the freedom of experiencing a different life. Being part of something like a murder mystery experience where you get to scream your head off is a great way to do that.
“You’re in the safe environment of a theme park, experiencing a thrill that you don’t get to experience in your daily life. And after that initial cold sweat, you get to feel really refreshed by what horror does to you.”
Entering secret worlds at Immersive Fort Tokyo
The world of the immortal Sherlock Holmes recreates Victorian London on a night in 1890, a few days before Guy Fawkes night. As they navigate the world, visitors encounter mysteries: a missing fiancé, and a string of gruesome murders. Participants begin to question their own identity: Are they the sleuth who solves the mystery? The victim? Or… the suspect?
There is less ambiguity in the adrenaline-fuelled, immersive horror story that is the Jack the Ripper experience. Having wandered into the back alleys of Victorian London, guests witness the moment of murder and become his prey.
Spy Action takes place in a European city on an ordinary day. There is a background of people laughing, and birdsong. Then, a gunshot ruptures the peace, and a battle between the Mafia and secret agents erupts:
“In the spy action show, you are caught in the middle of a street fight where the hero comes down and saves the day,” Hayashi continues. “It feels as if you’re part of an epic action movie.
“There’s a cabaret restaurant where performers come right to your table. It’s one of those iconic movie moments. Then there’s Edo Oiran, which brings the classical beauty and otherworldliness of Tokyo.
“Across the array of standalone experiences, we’ve evoked a whole gamut of fantasy and the emotions of living your best life in a different form, striking emotional chords of thrill and excitement.”
The evolution of immersive experiences
Okiyama offers her insights into the elements that make immersive entertainment so compelling:
“With immersive theatre, it’s your own entertainment, nobody else’s. You play the role. I think that the depth of the memory that you get through immersive experiences is so much greater than from any other entertainment. Those are the factors that make them compelling.”
In terms of the trend’s evolution, Hayashi adds:
“Immersive entertainment has come at a good time. Coming out of a tough period where we couldn’t be around people, like all of the other theme parks, we are focusing on how to create a completely transformative world.”
‘Immersive’ is almost becoming a catchphrase.
“What we’re trying to do is create a level of entertainment where you, the guest, become that protagonist. We promise you can live out a different story in your desired experience. By doing that, in the digital form cross cross-referenced with the physical and enhanced by live cast members, that level of transportation will, I believe, continue to develop.
“The VR experiences where we went to a digital realm were great. But it’s when we fuse live theatre with digital, and people can connect in both the physical and digital worlds, that the experience becomes transformative.”
Junglia
Immersive Fort Tokyo is the first iteration of Katana’s global immersive theme park strategy.
Another Katana entertainment destination, the 60-hectare Junglia, is scheduled to open in 2025. This will focus on the forests of northern Okinawa Prefecture, famous for the Yambaru subtropical forest region, a UNESCO Natural World Heritage.
Junglia is on a former golf course site stretching from the village of Nakijin to the city of Nago. It will, according to the Japan Times, drive investment in Okinawa. The location will feature such delights as balloon rides and an attraction in which visitors will be chased by dinosaurs through the jungle while they ride in a vehicle.
