panthea.live in Japan

Panthea establishes a presence in the Land of the Rising Sun

Since September 2025, Japanese audiences have been discovering smart glass solutions firsthand.

A Promising Start

Our new colleague Mirei Yamagata has shown remarkable energy in promoting and deploying Panthea’s solutions across Japan. As a result, the productions Yoroboshi at SPAC (Saragota Performing Arts Center) in Shizuoka and Death Note: The Musical at Brillia Hall in Tokyo have both benefited from personalised, individual surtitling in augmented reality.

These first successful projects show that the solutions developed by Panthea respond to a wide range of needs, across cultural and artistic contexts that are very different from one another. The system’s reliability, its advanced augmented reality technology, and the quality of the translations and stage management work provide a solid foundation for the ever-growing adoption of smart glasses.

Promising Projects for 2026 and an Enthusiastic Audience

Next year in Japan promises to be rich in opportunities. Smart glasses will continue to be rented for further theatre and musical performances; there will be offers for Kabuki (the 400-year-old Japanese theatre tradition) and Bunraku (traditional puppet theatre), as well as potentially long-term installations in the country’s most innovative theatres.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, both from international tourists (French, Chinese, American, and others) and from Japanese audience members with disabilities.

“Compared to on-stage translation, it’s significantly easier to see.”

“It was very easy to understand!”

“It was really great being able to see the stage and subtitles together.”

“It was lighter than I had heard about, and I was able to read the subtitles without any stress.”

“Before using it, I imagined it might be distracting, but once I tried it, being able to read the text simultaneously made it easier to understand the context and increased my immersion, so it was really great!”

“Amazing! So useful and worked great.”

Header Image: © Panthea l Brillia Hall Tokyo, Japan