

This is basically what happens in Brasil. We have a government funding program for a few decades now. The big names (ie. Friends and family) get up to a million to make their bad movies and the small folk never get approved.
I worked in the ministry of culture. We were petitioning for funding on EU programs to open libraries in small cities (50k EUR) while singers got that from the ministry for a single performance. Not to pay for the stage and lights, that was just the singer.
Every publisher has to send copies of every book to the national archive. There isn’t enough budget to catalogue or correctly store them, so they lay in gigantic warehouses gathering dust and being eaten by mites. It is so bad it is considered hazardous environment so it is super expensive to fix it.
But the famous director gets hundreds of thousands every year to make shitty movies nobody sees, because that one time 20 years ago he did something good.
Counter point: I loved osaka and kyoto, would skip tokyo before them. On kyoto we went up to the main temples using side streets and small foot paths and down on the main road.
We stayed in a regular neighborhood in osaka, drank and had fun on small 5-people bars with the locals and visited the city center occasionally. Made me appreciate the quiet japanese life even in a big city. Very charming city