Movies and TV shows were just recently added as a bonus feature to Amazon Prime subscribers in Japan. At first I gave up trying to watch it on my Android phone as it just wouldn’t. But they have a new app available. If you have English set as your operating system language on your Android device it might not be as simple as downloading and installing the Amazon Video app though.

Link: Amazon Video app

After you install the app and before you sign in, switch the Android OS language to Japanese and then open the Amazon video app and sign in.

You can then go back and switch the OS back to English.

Thanks to commenter Gabe Kiriakos for this information.

It also has a side effect:

Here is where it gets tricky… Once logged in, Kindle will be attached to it meaning that if you used the Kindle app with another Amazon account, you will need to merge the former account with the Japanese Amazon account. It’s ridiculous but if you follow my advice, you will be golden.

As I am more likely to read on my Kindle than watch TV on my phone and I’m not sure that I want to merge my accounts I will probably uninstall the Amazon video app.

Why do they have to be linked?

Is there a workaround?

Yes. Apparently. I just changed by email address on my US Amazon account. Then signed into the Kindle app with that address and now I have them both working on my phone.