ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced that it has reached an agreement for product merchandising rights of the characters appearing in the manga series HUNTERxHUNTER (by Yoshihiro Togashi) currently carried in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine (published by Shueisha, Inc.) and made into a television animation series with the Nippon Television Music Corporation (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Masatoshi Yoshioka, President) its rights holder, for a period of one year from the present. ITOCHU will begin product deployment through its nine sub-licensees in 11 categories starting with the spring-summer 2012 collection.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
HUNTERxHUNTER is a series geared toward boys that has been carried in Weekly Shonen Jump since 1998. With this wide-ranging adventure written by Yoshihiro Togashi, many young male and female readers strongly connect with Gon, the boy tackling the grueling Hunter Examination, as well as the strong passion and actions of other characters also taking on the exams. To date, a total of more than 56 million copies of comic books in the series have been printed, making it a huge hit. The series has now been made into a television animation series and is broadcast by 30 Nippon Television affiliate stations, earning high ratings.

ITOCHU will merchandize all the characters appearing in HUNTERxHUNTER. The sales channels will be focused on nationwide mass retailers, specialty stores and discount stores and sales of 2 billion yen (on a retail sales basis) are forecast over one year’s time. The sub-licensees and their products are as follows:

Sub-Licensees and Product Deployment