Announcing the world’s first immersive theme park in Odaiba, Tokyo! Immersive Fort Tokyo opens in spring 2024

Japan is leading the world in entertainment with this fully-immersive experience that goes beyond a theme park.

The former Venus Fort has been transformed into a fashionable and mysterious world. Offering twelve attractions and six shops or restaurants

Katana Inc. (Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture; President and CEO Tsuyoshi Morioka) is opening the world’s first* immersive theme park, Immersive Fort Tokyo, in spring 2024.
Here at this exciting theme park dedicated to “immersive theater,” the much talked about, most cutting-edge entertainment format in the world, you can experience complete immersion. Feel drawn into another world with characters and events that seem real at the various attractions, shops and restaurants.
Greatly surpassing conventional theme parks, this fully-immersive experience is incredibly thrilling and addictive. This theme park built entirely around immersive experiences—with a focus on immersive theater—is the first effort of its kind in all the world. Now offering this experience that cannot be matched with virtual or digital experiences, the age of Japan leading the world at the forefront of live entertainment has arrived.

The main differences between a conventional theme park and an immersive theme park

1. A strong feeling of being part of the action: Participating and acting, not as a bystander or third-party but as a central character 
2. Numerous unique experiences: Instead of everyone having a standard planned experience, each participant has their own experience each time
3. Live Intensity: The intense emotions felt during a live experience create a uniquely strong sense of immersion

Immersive Fort Tokyo is also one of Japan’s largest all-weather, entirely indoor theme parks (approx. 30,000 m2), with enough immersive entertainment to fill an entire day—twelve attractions as well as six shops and restaurants. The stunning European scenery captures your attention the moment you step inside, but other dark and mysterious areas have been created to suit the themes of various attractions. This experience delivers a true sense of immersion, with visitors feeling just as though they have become characters in a story and part of the action.
This facility is the first theme park fully operated by Katana Inc., from planning and development to operations and opening. It is also the first theme park project developed by Katana Inc. in central Tokyo. This project repurposed the buildings of commercial facility Venus Fort, owned by Mori Building Company, Co., Ltd. (Minato-ku, Tokyo; president and CEO Shingo Tsuji), that had ended operations in March 2022. While making full use of the former Venus Fort with its beautifully elaborate European city streets, this facility has now been redefined as a space for immersion into stories—reimagined for live entertainment using sound, lighting and detailed interior design, and transformed into a place where incredibly immersive experiences are possible.
Repurposing a commercial facility into a theme park is a new, sustainable development method that does not require large-scale development like conventional theme parks typically do. It aims to serve as a moveable business model for cities around the world.

Further details will be announced regarding the experience descriptions for each attraction, ticket prices, sales methods, character content collaborations with attractions, and more.
*This will be the world’s first theme park built around multiple immersive experiences only, with a focus on immersive theatre. Confirmed by Katana Inc. in September 2023.

Immersive Fort Tokyo Facility Overview

⚫Facility name: Immersive Fort Tokyo
⚫Location: Aomi, Koto-ku Tokyo (JR Rinkai Line: 3 min. on foot from Tokyo Teleport Station; Yurikamome Line: direct walk-in from Aomi Station)
⚫Opening: Spring 2024 (tentative)
⚫Dimensions: 30,000 m2 (equivalent to the 2F/3F area of the former Venus Fort)
⚫Number of attractions: 12
⚫Number of shops and restaurants: 6 (4 restaurants, 2 shops. 1 shop includes a restaurant, shows and attractions.) 
⚫ Website: https://immersivefort.com/

Guests can enjoy an entire day of immersion with a wide-ranging variety of different possible experiences at the available attractions, such as large-scale immersive theater with intense and convincing experiences lasting over an hour, authentic horror immersive experiences, immersive experiences that happen suddenly with glamorous shows at restaurants, and more. 
All the experiences—being the sole witness to a murder, being the only one who knows the crucial key to a story, finding yourself the suspect in a crime investigation, suddenly standing on a glamorous stage, being caught in the middle of gunfire—will pull you into dramatic moments when the boundary between reality and illusion falls away, drawing you into joy, terror, thrills and intense emotional impact unlike anything that you have ever experienced.

What is a fully-immersive experience?

Immersive theater was first created in London, and is an immersive style of cutting edge entertainment sweeping the world in places such as New York. Forget about conventional ideas of enjoying a performance from the audience, this not only pulls the audience into the performance as characters and actors in the world of the story, but also actively connects to the story, and makes possible an infinite number of different individual experiences for participants, etc., making it completely different from a typical play or show and enabling an experience of immersing into the story. 
Universal Studios Japan’s Hotel Albert series (2018 and 2019) was a pioneer in immersive theater in Japan, but since then only a few small-scale experimental events have been held here. And so unfortunately, very few people have experienced immersive theater in Japan.
But now, elite Japanese marketing and entertainment group Katana Inc.—a company with members including creative directors Shoichiro Tsuno and Tomoe Okiyama who were executive producers of the Hotel Albert series—has created authentic immersive experiences such as a large-scale immersive theater. By not simply seeing dramatic actions—the kind surely only possible in a film, drama or video game—but actually doing them, guests will remember this experience as a real part of their lives.

The creators at Katana Inc., the producers of Immersive Fort Tokyo

Shoichiro Tsuno
Katana Inc. Senior Creative Director
A professional who creates entertainment that shows keen insight into consumer psychology and is carefully designed to stir the emotions. Utilizing every possible performance technique and technology, this creator has made the impossible possible across genres such as parades, stage shows and visual attractions. 
He served as general producer for USJ’s Halloween Horror Nights—an event that contributed to USJ’s dramatic financial recovery—planning almost all of the entertainment and leading the performances to great success. He also led production of USJ’s Hotel Albert series (2018 and 2019), a pioneering effort in authentic immersive theater in Japan.
After joining Katana Inc., he created attractions such as Seibuen Amusement Park’s Godzilla the Ride and Ultraman the Ride, as well as Huis Ten Bosch’s Haunted Halloween, among others.

Tomoe Okiyama
Katana Inc. Creative Producer
　With a unique and unrivaled sensibility, she is always creating revolutionary entertainment such as Japan’s first large-scale immersive theater, and has attracted attention from Japan and abroad. She studied entertainment at California State University and has worked at Universal Studios Japan. In 2017, she was one of the first to focus on the possibilities of immersive theater and took the lead in implementing it at USJ. She worked on Japan’s first large-scale immersive theater, Hotel Albert, and led it to great success, before then leading production of Hotel Albert II – Requiem – the next year. 
After joining Katana Inc., she worked on Mystery on a Luxury Train—an immersive dramatic restaurant on a train held at Seibuen Amusement Park from May 2023—creating new immersive experiences performed in a restaurant, culminating in a wildly successful attraction that sold out for consecutive days.

Katana Inc. entertainment projects and the future

Under the leadership of Tsuyoshi Morioka, also known as the marketing strategist crucial to the impressive economic recovery of Universal Studios Japan, and based on the aim of “Energizing Japan through marketing and entertainment!”, Katana Inc. has forged ahead in helping various business grow and solving social problems by implementing advanced marketing methods. In particular, Katana Inc. has collaborated with and operated numerous theme park facilities across Japan, such as the complete renovation of Seibuen Amusement Park (opened May 2021) and a collaborative launch with Huis Ten Bosch (from 2022), etc., for regional economic revitalization focused on theme parks. The company is making an incredible impact in the field of Japanese theme parks and entertainment, such as by starting the Northern Okinawa New Theme Park Project (in Nago City, Okinawa) that it aims to open in 2025 through Japan Entertainment Inc. which was the company preceding the founding of Katana Inc. 
In the fields of tourism and theme parks in Japan, about 40 years have passed since the concept of "theme parks" was added to the traditional amusement park format with the opening of Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. During these years, the theme park concept of “all guests enjoying entertainment in the same way as observers and third parties” has not changed significantly. The start of this business is an evolution bringing the conventional theme park to the next level—with intense excitement, a sense of closeness with live experiences, feeling like part of the action, and unique individual experiences—and serves as a historical turning point and entirely new challenge. As a leading company in the fields of marketing and entertainment, Katana Inc. wants to serve as the starting point for this kind of forward-thinking and transformative change.

About Venus Fort and the Revitalization of Tokyo’s Odaiba Area

The Odaiba area was developed in the 1990s as the Rinkai Fukutoshin (Tokyo Waterfront City), with the creation of not just offices and residences but various landmarks such as Venus Fort, and it became a launching pad for Heisei-period (1989-2019) trends and culture. 
 Redevelopment of Odaiba and the Tokyo Bay area is significant to continuing to share the appeals of Tokyo as a city that can compete with anywhere in the world. Immersive Fort Tokyo is expected to lead the world in the fields of tourism and entertainment, attracting numerous visitors from Japan and overseas. 
Katana Inc. recognizes that theme park development has wide-ranging effects related to public transportation, dining, product sales, attracting visitors and creating new employment and investment opportunities, making it an economic multiplayer (an amplifier). In Katana Inc.’s mission of creating sustainable business in different geographic areas and invigorating Japan as a whole, Immersive Fort Tokyo is considered crucial to affecting the Tokyo metropolis, starting from the Odaiba area.
Also, it repurposes Venus Fort—which attracted about 200 million visitors over 22 years of operations from its 1999 opening until March 2022—and achieves sustainable development in the theme park field by not developing new land or buildings. And successfully developed and opened in a convenient location at an impressive speed, it is positioned to serve as a new development model for entertainment.

About Katana Inc.
An elite professional marketing group launched by famous Japanese marketing strategist Tsuyoshi Morioka. Morioka began this group in 2017 after completing his business reconstruction mission for Universal Studios Japan. Utilizing his renowned and extensive marketing expertise, such as unique strategic theories applying to higher mathematics, innovative ideas and marketing theories developed over the course of his career, along with his Katana Method systemizing strategic human resources management that creates sustainable marketing organizations to function from the consumer’s point of view, Morioka has worked to accelerate business growth and generate new business development by emphasizing marketing-focused value creation. 
Also engaged in achieving Katana-style regional development to create sustainable businesses in various regions, he has resumed the northern Okinawa theme park project temporarily disbanded during his years at USJ and is working hard to prepare for its opening in 2025.

Website: https://katana-marketing.co.jp/