Japan's next-gen supercomputer Fugaku NEXT bets against the cooling consensus: warming water above 30°C to cool AI servers and cutting cooling power by 20%. It may also adopt 'ZAM,' a new memory developed by SoftBank and Intel that stands DRAM chips on edge with magnetic-field coupling. Why Japan is choosing efficiency over the gigawatt-scale arms race that defines US Frontier and El Capitan.
Sony Group's FY2025 results: record $9.2B operating profit on $79.5B in sales, but net income fell 3.4% as the Honda EV joint venture imploded. PS5 cumulative sales hit 93.6M units, the memory crunch forced Sony to throttle PS5 production, and a fresh TSMC deal cements its image-sensor empire. With Crunchyroll, Demon Slayer's $750M global hit, and a $3.2B buyback, this is the IP conglomerate Disney should be watching.
The BOJ released its March 18-19 meeting minutes on May 7. The deliberation sections are anonymous, but votes and dissenting opinions are published with names attached. The 8-1 split? Hajime Takata alone dissented. We trace the 9 members behind the March meeting, the shift to a 6-3 split in April, and the rebalancing coming when Nakagawa's term ends in late June.
On May 7, 2026, the Nikkei 225 closed 3,320 yen higher at 62,833, the largest single-day point gain in its history, surpassing the 3,217 yen record of August 6, 2024. Hopes of a U.S.-Iran ceasefire and an AI semiconductor rally drove it. Yet the 5.58% gain does not crack the all-time top 20, a sign that a higher index level has changed what a record means. Inside the 10.8 trillion yen session, the link to Korea's KOSPI passing 7,000, and how the index reached 70,000 by June.
Japan's Resonac (formerly Showa Denko) will switch its Kawasaki ammonia plant to 100% waste-plastic-derived hydrogen by April 2030, ending its reliance on natural gas reforming. The world's only long-running commercial gasification chemical recycling plant processes 70,000 tons of plastic waste annually to produce 120,000 tons of ammonia, with 80%+ CO2 reduction. Now backed by Japan's first CCfD-style price-gap subsidy. A circular alternative to urban mining.
Japan's vacuum equipment leader ULVAC is reshoring production of vacuum melting furnaces for rare earth magnets, with orders from US and European manufacturers projected to roughly triple. With over 70% global share in continuous vacuum furnaces, Japan's equipment dominance becomes a geopolitical asset.
Nissan, in the midst of its Re:Nissan recovery plan, will cut about 900 European jobs (10% of the regional workforce) and consolidate two production lines into one at its UK Sunderland plant. With utilization at roughly 50%, China's Chery is in talks to take over the freed-up line. We unpack what this means alongside Volkswagen and Stellantis restructuring, against the backdrop of Chinese EV pressure squeezing Europe's auto industry.
Saab Technologies Japan has named Akira Ukaji as its first Japanese country manager and representative director. The Swedish defense giant is positioning its GlobalEye AEW&C aircraft as the successor to Japan's aging E-767 fleet, with industry sources targeting a 2035 replacement. After Japan's April 21 abolition of the 'Five Categories' export rule, can a non-US contender finally crack Japan's airborne early warning market?
Seventeen years after Starbucks rolled out matcha latte globally, Japanese tea prices have tripled in a year and China now produces 5,000 tons of matcha—matching Japan. Inside the supply structure that pushed 38 major Japanese tea firms to issue an emergency statement.
With matcha scarce and prices soaring, an unglamorous Japanese herb called yomogi (mugwort) is being talked up as the next matcha. One Osaka supplier shipped a record 754 tons in 2025 and expanded cultivation 1.5x, while mugwort-steam salons grew 1.8x in three years. A trading-company veteran turned mugwort farmer is now branding the weed.
Sanrio, the global owner of Hello Kitty and Kuromi, is investigating whether a managing director who also led its U.S. subsidiary received hundreds of millions of yen in undisclosed compensation over multiple years. A special probe has been launched and the full-year earnings announcement postponed. The case exposes a structural gap in Japan's corporate governance: the parent's compensation committee never had jurisdiction over subsidiary CEO pay.
