Tourist numbers up from 5,000 to 120,000 a year, sea ice at record lows, emperor penguins now Endangered. What ATCM48 in Hiroshima and Japan's Antarctic protection law amendment must confront.
On May 1, METI summoned executives from 24 critical infrastructure operators—covering power, gas, oil, chemicals and credit cards—and ordered emergency cybersecurity audits within one month. The trigger: Anthropic's Claude Mythos, an AI announced April 7 that found a 27-year-old flaw in OpenBSD. We compare Japan's response with the US CISA OT principles and the EU's NIS2 Directive.
Private estimates put Japan's April 30 yen-buying intervention at around 5 trillion yen ($32B). Here's what it means for the US-Japan rate gap, carry trade unwind, US Treasury monitoring list risk, and emerging market spillover.
Japan has procured Russian crude for the first time since the Strait of Hormuz blockade — a Sakhalin-2 spot cargo bound for Taiyo Oil's Imabari refinery in Ehime Prefecture, arriving May 4. Behind the move lies the controversial 'Sakhalin exception' to G7 sanctions, extended through June 2026. We unpack the structural vulnerability that no amount of moral diplomacy can hide, and compare Japan's response to Germany, South Korea, and India.
On May 2, Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi met Vietnam's new PM Le Minh Hung in Hanoi, agreeing to cooperate on crude oil and critical mineral procurement amid Middle East instability. The same day, Takaichi delivered a foreign policy speech at Vietnam National University announcing the evolution of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) doctrine. Inside the new economic security pivot, how it differs from US friendshoring and EU Global Gateway, and Vietnam's untapped rare earth potential.
Haruhiko Kuroda, the former BOJ governor who launched Japan's massive monetary easing in 2013, says the current weak yen has 'gone too far' and 130 per dollar would be appropriate. The Japanese public's reaction: 'Look who's talking.' We unpack the irony, the rate-gap mechanics, and the global market implications.
JBIC and Japan's three megabanks have signed off on $2.221 billion in loans for the first three projects of a $550 billion US investment package—the price Tokyo paid to bring Trump's tariffs down from 25% to 15%. We unpack the deal, the dollar-funding crunch, and why critics call it a 'vaporware' bet.
One day after Japan's 5-6 trillion yen intervention, Vice Finance Minister Mimura hints at more action with a 'just the beginning' line. But trade deficits, energy import dependence, ECB on hold, yen weakness against all majors, and a 40-trillion-yen carry trade time bomb suggest intervention can only buy time, not reverse the trend.
On April 30, Japan launched its first yen-buying intervention in 21 months — pulling the dollar from 160-plus to 155 within hours. Finance Minister Katayama's 'decisive action' line and Vice Minister Mimura's 'final evacuation warning' preceded the trigger. The dollar saw its largest one-day drop since December 2022. Two days after the BOJ held rates, the Finance Ministry decided to act.
The day after the Bank of Japan held its policy rate on April 28, the yen plunged to a 21-month low of 160.67 while 10-year JGB yields surged to 2.535 percent — the highest since 1999. We unpack what it means when a currency weakens and yields spike at the same time, and what it says about market trust in BOJ policy.
On April 23, PM Sanae Takaichi met five foodtech CEOs at the PM's Office: Oishii Farm, PlantX, FRD Japan, Regional Fish, and Toko Tekko. Why these five? This article decodes how each company's technology answers one of the world's four shared food crises—climate-driven farmland collapse, ocean depletion, population growth, and shrinking farmer populations—and the strategic logic behind Japan choosing to win in specific categories rather than competing across the board.