Hokkaido Hamanasu Foods, a natto maker in Ebetsu, has grown its exports 60-fold in eight years, almost entirely to China, where Beijing supermarkets stock Japanese-labeled four-pack sets that take 80% of shelf sales. Prefecture-wide natto exports hit 640 million yen in 2025, five times the level seven years earlier. Back home, Mizkan suspended four natto products in May 2026 as Middle East tensions disrupted packaging supplies. Plus: the science of Bacillus subtilis and where to buy natto abroad.
Rohm posted a record 158.4 billion yen net loss for fiscal 2026 after writing down 193.6 billion yen on SiC power semiconductor assets. CEO Katsumi Azuma called it clearing out the pus, a blunt admission that Japan's biggest SiC bet was mistimed. With Wolfspeed out of Chapter 11 but smaller, Chinese rivals cutting wafer prices to a third, Denso's takeover approach withdrawn and a three-way merger under discussion, the silicon carbide gold rush has hit its reset moment.
Honda reported a 423.9 billion yen net loss for the year to March 2026, its first since listing in 1957, alongside 1.58 trillion yen in EV-related charges, most of them non-cash. The same day it unveiled a turnaround plan: 15 new hybrids by FY2029 and a 1.4 trillion yen operating profit target. We set it against Toyota's multi-pathway bet, the Tesla and BYD lead changes of 2026, and Hyundai-Kia's quiet rise.
Capcom announced FY2026 results with record net sales of 195.3 billion yen and operating profit of 75.3 billion yen, marking nine consecutive years of record profits across all earnings categories and eleven straight years of 10%-plus operating profit growth. Resident Evil Requiem sold 6.91 million units at series-fastest pace, while total annual game sales hit a record 59.07 million units. The dual-engine strategy of new releases plus catalog repeat sales is working remarkably well.
SoftBank Group has posted a record 5 trillion yen ($32 billion) net profit for the fiscal year ended March 2026, becoming the first Japanese company to ever cross the 5 trillion yen line. We unpack the 6.7 trillion yen OpenAI windfall, the Vision Fund comeback, the role of Arm as collateral, and how the figure stacks up against US Big Tech.
Japan's ruling LDP has asked the government to build a dedicated rare earth mining vessel for ~100 billion yen ($640M) at Minamitorishima, handing the proposal to Prime Minister Takaichi on June 12, 2026. Why JAMSTEC's Chikyu isn't enough, the roadmap from the February 2027 demonstration test to FY2028 industrialization, and how Japan's approach compares with the US, EU and Australia.
Calbee is switching 14 of its flagship snacks (including Potato Chips Lightly Salted, Consomme Punch, and Kappa Ebisen shrimp chips) to monochrome 'petroleum-saving packages' from May 25. The cause: ink shortages triggered by the Hormuz Strait crisis. A symbolic case of geopolitical risk reaching Japan's shelves, compared with parallel moves at Lindt, Lamb Weston and Smithfield Foods.
SEGA Sammy Holdings reported its FY2026 results: record revenue of 487.5 billion yen ($3.1B, +13.7％ YoY) was wiped out by 58.8 billion yen in special losses tied to Rovio Entertainment (Angry Birds) and Stakelogic, producing the company's first net loss in 11 years. We unpack the impairment, the international community's skepticism about the 776 million-dollar Rovio acquisition, the deprioritization of F2P, the redeployment of 100＋ developers onto full-game projects, and SEGA's bet on four new mainstay-IP titles ahead of Sonic's 35th anniversary.
Between March and May 2026, Japan launched a wave of perovskite solar cell demonstrations across the country—world efficiency records, rice paddies, mountain tea fields, skyscraper windows, highway parking areas, and Toyota's Woven City. We unpack for international readers why everything is happening at once.
Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck has partnered with telecom giant KDDI to launch au Coincheck Digital Assets, a joint venture offering a non-custodial wallet inside the au PAY mini-app to 39.7 million users. KDDI is investing roughly $65 million in Coincheck's parent company. How this differs from US (Coinbase, Robinhood) and Korean (SK Telecom T Wallet) models — and what it signals for the stablecoin era.
Japan's largest megabank MUFG partnered with Google on May 7, 2026, to build 'agentic banking' — AI agents that autonomously select products, choose the best payment method, and execute transactions. Unlike JPMorgan's employee-facing LLM Suite or BNP Paribas's sovereignty approach, MUFG is betting on consumer-facing autonomous finance.
