National Tide 1980

Perhaps it was because this child was really a gift from God to Ning Weimin and Matsumoto Keiko.

Perhaps it was because Ning Weimin's feat of giving red envelopes to all his grassroots employees also accumulated virtue and added blessings to himself.

Anyway, since Ning Weimin and Matsumoto Keiko returned to Tokyo, Japan and confirmed that Keiko was pregnant, their luck has become particularly good.

It's simply that everything they want is available, and everything goes well.

Matsumoto Keiko, the future mother of the child, was first delighted to learn that during her absence from Japan, the TV series "Black Leather Notebook" starring her has firmly occupied the top spot on the national Japanese drama hot list since the third episode.

It ended with an average of 33.7% in the hourly ratings and a peak of 39.1% in the hourly ratings.

This result even made the show squeeze into the fifth place in the highest ratings of Japanese dramas so far.

Then she received a surprising account sharing data from Shochiku.

It is learned that Crazy Rich Asians, the second masterpiece produced by Mist Studios, which was released on Valentine's Day, has also been successful.

It finally won 3.3 billion yen in box office in Japan, creating a new high box office record for Mist Studios' films.

Moreover, the theme song of this movie, "The Flowing River", has also received great response in the Japanese music scene. As the box office of the movie continued to rise, the single quickly rose to the top of the hot list and was widely praised.

The soundtrack album produced and released by Jinniu Stock for this movie also sold 550,000 copies in the Japanese market.

So far, the box office and soundtrack income of this movie in Japan alone are enough to cover the production costs, and it has even begun to make a profit, with a profit of at least 300 to 400 million yen.

In other words, this movie is destined to make a lot of money.

The income from other markets in the future will all be pure profit.

And the income from copyrights in the future will continue to make income for Mist Studios.

But this is not the most important thing. The key is that this TV series and movie have been praised by the newspapers, and there are few criticisms.

This means that Matsumoto Keiko's Mist Studio has not only further consolidated its position and increased its voice in the film industry.

It has also opened up the situation in the TV drama production that was almost completely controlled by major TV stations, forcibly torn open a gap, and gained a certain amount of development space.

In addition, because the French films under Matsumoto Keiko's name and the Chinese films brought to Japan by Ning Weimin have performed well in the market, and the number and variety of films in their film library are enough for these independent theaters to show all year round.

Now, not only are more and more independent theaters deciding to maintain long-term cooperative relations with them, but Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto have stable partners.

With the help of Shochiku Films, the screening business of these films has been further covered in Yokohama, Sapporo, Kobe, Hiroshima, and Nagoya.

It can be said that Ning Weimin and Matsumoto Keiko relied on the film library to control some independent small theaters that were originally unsystematic in their own hands.

Although the two of them did not plan to invest in building theaters, in this case, they also have their own theater chain, which can at least cover most of Japan's major cities and ensure the simultaneous release of at least fifty screens.

Therefore, it is precisely because of this that Ning Weimin, with the help of his wife's Mist Studio, introduced the first Hong Kong film "A Chinese Ghost Story" in Japan, and with the help of Shochiku Films' theaters and these independent theaters, the number of screens for the opening of the film was increased to more than 140 theaters simultaneously showing the film.

And it soon proved that this film was a box office dark horse, with the box office reaching 280 million yen in the first week.

Not much, the box office performance of a film depends on many factors.

Including the film's subject matter and script, the main creative team, the film's positioning, the film's quality, ticket prices, schedules, distribution, theater scheduling, publicity and promotion, etc., but no matter what, the number of screens for the opening is the most important.

The more theaters that screen it, the more audiences will see it, and the more conducive it is to word-of-mouth fermentation.

This is why "A Chinese Ghost Story" can be popular in Japan, compared with the original history, even if the two leading actors, Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong, did not come to Japan to promote the film this time.

But just because the number of openings is enough, the film still relies on excellent quality, romantic national style aesthetics, and themes that Japanese people like, which makes the film popular. It is destined that the final box office will far exceed the original 360 million yen.

In short, Matsumoto Keiko's Mist Studio has completed its transformation at an unimaginable speed and has become a production organization and producer that the Japanese industry must respect.

Now, whether it is a movie theater or a TV station as a media platform, or an agency that makes a living by drinking the blood of artists, they can't help but greet the Mist Studio with a smile.

Because the Mist Studio not only likes to shoot big productions, but also can achieve success frequently. Such production capabilities are simply too important for them.

The benefits that the Mist Studio can bring to them are simply countless. Now in their eyes, it is equivalent to a money printing machine and a cash cow that can throw money at will.

It can be said that as long as the future big productions of the Mist Studio do not encounter a Waterloo-like failure in the future.

This film and television production agency will be a partner that they can never refuse.

Putting aside the background and business scale, let's talk about the current influence in the industry.

In fact, in the eyes of industry insiders, Kirigami Studios can be compared with the "Big Five" in the Japanese film industry.

As long as the number of works produced each year can be gradually increased, it is a foregone conclusion that Mist Studio will become one of the "Big Six".

So for this reason, Matsumoto Keiko won the Best Actress Award again at the 11th Japan Academy Awards.

And her Mist Studio won seven awards including the Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress at the Japan Academy Awards for the film "Li Xianglan", and even became the No. 1 box office film in Japan in 1987, which is a matter of course.

In fact, at the award ceremony, when Matsumoto Keiko took the stage to receive the award, countless filmmakers stood up and applauded her, which is unprecedented in the history of the Academy Awards.

It is enough to prove her current status in the Japanese entertainment industry. Almost everyone pampers her, pats her, coaxes her, and provides for her. This is her status in the industry.

Of course, how much of this is admiration, how much is gratitude, how much is flattery, and how much is fear or submission to the general trend, that is unknown.

Anyway, no matter what, Matsumoto Keiko, who is about to become a mother, has been very elegant and dignified recently.

Although the only drawback is that she has a strong morning sickness reaction, which has tortured her recently.

But the good news about her career has comforted her to a great extent, provided her with motivation to cheer up, and effectively reduced her pain.

It helped her to pass the most intense period of reaction without knowing it.

And this is her personal benefit.

As for Ning Weimin, he is no less.

This time he returned to Tokyo, he simply came back to get a red envelope.

What he wants to do is just one thing - count money!

For no other reason, it is because since 1988, Japan has completely entered a frenzy era of uncontrolled credit expansion.

First of all, under the "window guidance" of the Bank of Japan, the loan indicators that major Japanese banks need to complete are getting higher and higher, which forces these banks to take more and more excessive unconventional operations.

To what extent are these so-called unconventional operations excessive?

It's so excessive that there's no need for too much collateral.

Not only have major banks in Japan begun to lend large amounts of money to individuals and companies that have no repayment ability, they have also begun to relax the value assessment of collateral, especially for real estate.

In the past, banks only lent 50% of a house for mortgage, but now it has increased to 70%.

And as the value of houses continues to appreciate, this ratio is still increasing.

Banks will also take the initiative to ask customers who have already taken out loans whether they are willing to add more loans.

In the words of thirty years later, it is a "big release" with the tap completely turned on.

It's no longer a matter of how much you can take, but how much you want to take.

The bank is enough.

So now in Japan, whether it's a small company or an individual, it can easily get a low-interest loan.

And in this era of soaring stock prices and land prices, who would really use these loans to do business?

Of course, after getting them, they will buy stocks and real estate.

Secondly, Japanese banks not only caused bubbles through lending, but also directly participated in creating bubbles.

Japanese financial groups cross-hold a large number of stocks. Two-thirds of the stocks in the entire Japanese stock market are held by companies.

The stocks held by banks controlled by these financial groups alone account for nearly half.

Everyone is connected to each other.

In early 1988, Japan also introduced a new accounting standard - if the stocks held by banks appreciate, part of them can also be recorded as real income for that year.

This standard can be expressed in a popular way: as long as the stock price keeps rising, no matter whether the company actually makes money or not, it is profitable on the books.

If it is profitable on the books, the stock price will continue to rise.

This is a mutually reinforcing cycle.

At that time, interest rates were so low that financial groups borrowed money to buy each other's stocks, making the bubble bigger and bigger, and finally out of control.

In general, the whole country of Japan, regardless of what level, has reached a consensus on the pursuit of stocks and real estate under the condition of credit flooding.

All of Japan is immersed in the fantasy of high land prices and high stock prices, daydreaming.

People were deeply trapped in the frenzy of money worship and could not extricate themselves. Almost all assets, including stocks, real estate, and even artworks and golf memberships, began to rise at an alarming rate.

Relatively speaking, only the threshold for loans and bank interest rates have been falling.

So you can imagine how good this era is for bubble gentlemen!

There are many cases of carp jumping over the dragon gate and getting rich overnight.

As soon as Ning Weimin returned to Tokyo, he was soon contacted by Yoshima and his son.

It was not him who took the initiative to find them, but they took the initiative to find him.

This father and son really deserved him, almost gratefully, and gave him another 100 billion yen from Sumitomo Bank to spend, with an interest rate of only 2.5%.

Ning Weimin almost did not hesitate to put the money into the stock market again, and added the capital to go all in.

And the stocks he bought were indeed very impressive, especially Hanwa Kogyo, whose total assets, including the balance of commercial paper issuance, had exceeded 6 trillion yen without notice.

The balance of special funds and designated funds outside the trust is as high as 600 billion yen, most of which are "handshake" funds held by securities companies and trust banks with guaranteed returns under the premise of rising stock prices.

Therefore, Hanwa Kogyo's market value exceeded 880 billion yen without any suspense, and began to create a new high.

The land price was even more incredible.

During this period, the housing price of Tokyo's Ginza Street had reached 350,000 US dollars per square meter.

The two Ginza properties under Ning Weimin's name were already worth up to 40 million US dollars.

It was no joke to say that Japan at this time could buy the United States.

Therefore, a large number of tourism real estate projects and high-end hotels in Guam and Hawaii have changed their owners and become Japanese.

Even in European countries, there are also frequent news and information about Japanese buying a large number of assets.

Even those real estate developers and service personnel in European and American countries have begun to be keen on learning Japanese in order to obtain higher labor remuneration.

Therefore, Ning Weimin now can't calculate how much assets he has under his name, because the leverage is full and the debt structure has become complicated.

Also because asset prices change too quickly.

He just finished calculating a number, and the number changed again.

Of course, it must be changing in a good direction. The money is getting more and more, and he is very sure of this.

In short, Ning Weimin is now full of absolute confidence in his personal property and his own financial strength.

He no longer cares about the risk of investment failure that he needs to face in supporting his wife's career. Can any greater risk be higher than the risk of leverage?

Even if all the projects he invested in this year lost money, he didn't care.

However, Matsumoto Keiko's pregnancy made him feel uneasy. Although he was ecstatic, he had to force Matsumoto Keiko to change his work plan for the new year for the safety of the fetus and his wife's health.

At least she couldn't shoot "The Wandering Princess". That play was cold and hungry, and there were displacements. It was too painful to act. He didn't want to pursue realism and let the child take risks.

For this, Matsumoto Keiko was a little reluctant at first. She loved acting and couldn't stand Ning Weimin's caution. Thinking about not working for a year, just eating, drinking and having fun, and sending her who had never dared to be so lax, it was really a bit boring, a bit empty, and even terrifying.

But then again, Matsumoto Keiko also wanted Ning Weimin to tie her to the bed with a rope to take care of the baby.

She received special care in the process, which is something that Japanese people find difficult to do.

For example, Ning Weimin first took her to find obstetricians and gynecologists in well-known hospitals and asked about various precautions.

Then he studied relevant books every day and gave her many instructions every day.

It can be said that Ning Weimin was much busier after she became pregnant.

But no matter how busy he was, he didn't want his wife to be busy. He did the housework, made nutritious meals for his wife, and helped Keiko deal with the affairs of the office and the studio.

Matsumoto Keiko certainly felt sorry for her husband's busyness, but Ning Weimin didn't feel tired or hard. Instead, he felt that life had a clear goal and hope, and life was more meaningful than before.

All of this made Matsumoto Keiko feel extremely sweet. Although she felt that Ning Weimin cared about her a little too much, she was happy with it. She was the happiest pregnant woman in the world.