Japan bought yen without warning on July 30, moving the currency five yen in an hour. The BOJ then held at 1% and warned inflation could overshoot, as Washington and Seoul moved too.
Japan's amended privacy law, passed on July 10, 2026, waives consent for acquiring and sharing personal data when the purpose is AI training or statistics. Medical and criminal records sit inside the exception. The design runs on the same logic as Japan's copyright carve-out, and that is what sets it apart from the EU and South Korea.
On July 24, 2026, Japan's chief cabinet secretary told ministers to speed up work on rules for foreign land purchases. Summer was already three-quarters gone. Meanwhile 20 to 40 percent of new apartments in three central Tokyo wards go to foreign buyers, the developers' association gave 40 million yen to the ruling party's funding body, and Japan holds no WTO reservation on land.
Tier IV, the company behind open-source self-driving stack Autoware, listed in Tokyo on July 22, 2026 and opened 7% below its offer price. How do you monetize software you give away?
On June 24, 2026, the UN's WP.29 forum adopted the first international standard covering Level 3 and Level 4 automated driving systems, with Japan serving as a co-chair. It takes effect around January 2027. Here is what the rules actually require, how much Japan really led, and why the US and China are not bound by them.
FANUC, Yaskawa and Kawasaki are teaming up with Fujitsu and NVIDIA to bring Physical AI to factories, warehouses and hospitals. What each firm is really after, how they plan to bridge simulation and real machines, and whether Japan can keep its lead against US and Chinese humanoid makers.
Japan's Diet passed the FIEA amendment on July 15, making crypto a financial product under the same law that governs stocks and bonds. Insider trading rules, tougher penalties, and disclosure duties arrive with it, and the preconditions for a 20% flat tax and domestic crypto ETFs are now cleared. Enforcement is expected in fiscal 2027, with the tax change from January 2028. Meanwhile, the US CLARITY Act remains stuck in the Senate.
Mitsubishi Gas Chemical has signed an MOU with Australia's Gold Hydrogen to study green methanol made from natural hydrogen in South Australia. Here is why a Tokyo chemical maker is going to the wellhead abroad, what the Toyota-ENEOS consortium is really buying, and how the global race for natural hydrogen is splitting along national lines.
Japan set targets to rebuild its reactors even as its utilities keep getting caught faking data and fixing prices. How the US, France and Korea arrange nuclear oversight, and why no model is scandal-proof.
Japan, the UK and Italy's GCAP fighter demonstrator is 75% built, and reporters have finally seen it. A third longer than a Typhoon, with weapons bays reportedly double the F-35's capacity, its sheer size reveals the program's priorities: range and payload for the Pacific. How it compares to America's F-47 and Europe's collapsed FCAS.
Hamaoka nuclear plant sits right atop the Nankai Trough megaquake zone. Its operator, Chubu Electric, shrank the key seismic-safety figure the plant is built against, and kept altering data even after regulators opened a probe, rewriting 69 of 225 datasets. On July 1 the NRA called it fabrication and a cover-up. The real test isn't the reactor's engineering; it's whether Japan's post-Fukushima watchdog has teeth.