He quickly turned the publisher's direction, changing the company that had previously been known for its serious literary and educational works into creators of popular fiction.
His goal was to try to reap synergy benefits by creating film adaptations of the publishing house's most popular books and marketing them simultaneously.
[2] The company's first film was the 1976 release The Inugamis, directed by Kon Ichikawa and adopted from a Kadokawa Shoten published novel written by Seishi Yokomizo.
His company's pictures were usually large-scale epics with sizable budgets and matching advertising campaigns, aimed for mass audiences and box-office success.
His biggest failure came in 1992 when the 25 million US$ film Ruby Cairo starring Andie MacDowell failed to find a distributor in the United States.
[7] In 1993, Kadokawa was accused of instructing photographer Takeshi Ikeda, a close aide, to smuggle cocaine from the United States on several occasions.
[8] While Kadokawa continued to argue his innocence throughout the ordeal, in September 1994 he was convicted and handed a four-year prison sentence,[5] of which he ended up serving two and a half years.
He has since worked as an executive producer on Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea and a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro in 2007.