A Japanese research team led by Gakushuin University has discovered Mitorubin, a plant-derived compound that simultaneously increases mitochondrial quantity and function. The compound improved heart function in aged mice and extended median lifespan by about 40% in obese mice on a high-fat diet — a distinct approach from US longevity biotech, NAD supplements, and senolytics.
Terra Drone has unveiled flight footage of its fixed-wing interceptor drone Terra A2 — 75km range, 312km/h top speed, 40-minute endurance. CEO Toru Tokushige outlined the layered air defense vision in a United24 Media interview. Inside the modern methods of stopping Shahed-type kamikaze drones and the new air defense economics being shaped by a Japanese startup.
In 2012, the Sankei Shimbun reported a biofuel revolution centered on Enomoto algae, a hyper-growth Botryococcus bred by Kobe University spin-off G> under Professor Taira Enomoto. Heavy-industry giant IHI joined biotech venture Neo-Morgan Laboratory to commercialize it, with then-CEO Tomohiro Fujita declaring he wanted to cut the price to one-tenth within ten years. Fourteen years later, the joint venture has dissolved, but the algae fueled the world's first flight on SAF meeting ASTM D7566 Annex 7, and a Japanese-led 5-hectare facility in Malaysia is now the largest of its kind on Earth. Did the promise come true, or is the dream over?
On April 13, 2029, the 450m asteroid Apophis will pass just 32,000 km above Earth. Japan and Europe are joining forces on RAMSES, the next planetary defense mission after NASA's DART. JAXA provides the infrared imager, solar panels, and H3 rocket launch as a rideshare with DESTINY+, stepping up as US budget cuts threaten its own Apophis mission.
At a Fireblocks event in Tokyo, SMBC Group CDIO Kazuho Isowa and Mitsui & Co.'s Shinsuke Waka outlined Japan's on-chain finance strategy. January 2028 will bring simultaneous tax and financial-law reforms. ZipangCoin is going cross-border on public chains. And 95% of JPYC trades are now executed by AI. We compare Japan's cooperative model with JPMorgan's $5 billion-a-day Kinexys.
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.
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.
A Japanese team led by Prof. Takanori Takebe (Osaka & Science Tokyo) and Dr. Mureo Kasahara (National Center for Child Health and Development) plans the world's first pediatric clinical trial of UTOpiA, a bioartificial liver that perfuses blood through iPS-derived liver organoids. Animal trials showed 90% survival. How it compares with King's College London's HELP trial and Beijing's CiPS-BAL.
A Japanese team led by NAOJ has detected an atmosphere on a small trans-Neptunian object beyond Pluto for the first time, using a stellar occultation observed simultaneously from three sites across Japan. Here is how the pro-amateur collaboration worked, and why it rewrites textbooks on the outer solar system.
On May 1, Japan's METI met infrastructure operators from the power and gas sectors, and Economy Minister Akazawa asked electricity companies to run emergency system inspections and report within a month. The order covers 24 critical-infrastructure operators in the power sector. The trigger was Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview, announced April 7, which surfaced a 27-year-old bug chain in OpenBSD's TCP SACK code among others. The UK's AISI reached a more measured verdict. How Japan's penalty-free approach compares with CISA's OT principles and the EU's NIS2.
Researcher Yohei Kawai and Professor Shin Kaneko at Kyoto University's CiRA have established a way to induce helper T cells, the conductors of the immune system, from human iPS cells without mouse feeder cells. The paper ran in Molecular Therapy on January 20, 2026. Why this matters against the three structural limits of CAR-T therapy, and where Japan stands against Fate Therapeutics in the US and China's sheer trial volume.
