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June 30, 2026
 

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Gearoid Reidy
Passersby walk past a billboard atop a building featuring a giant 3D cat in 4K resolution in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 25, 2026
Hello, little kitty — Japan’s $20 billion cat boom
In recent years, Cat Day has exploded, as companies embrace a growing market for felines.
Prime Minister Takaichi should consider funding AI subscriptions because widespread use could help Japan overcome language barriers, programmer shortages and productivity challenges.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 20, 2026
Give everyone in Japan a subscription to Claude
Generative AI is transforming sectors across almost every country. But Japan is in a position to benefit more than most.
Sanae Takaichi’s historic win reflects Japan’s longstanding conservatism and practical policy priorities, but claims that she represents an extreme rightward shift or ultraconservative agenda are exaggerated.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 16, 2026
Sanae Takaichi is not who you think she is
Judge Takaichi for who she is. Watch what she says, and more importantly, what she actually does.
Sony has effectively handed control of its TV business to China’s TCL, allowing the Sony brand to live on screens made by others while the company concentrates on higher-value areas.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 2, 2026
Sony switches off the TV and that’s just fine
It is the end of an era as Japan’s iconic electronics giant, Sony, cedes TV business to TCL.
Japan’s Forex trading world, once symbolized by 'Mrs. Watanabe,' has moved on from investing housewives, with the young largely avoiding the markets.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 29, 2026
‘Mrs. Watanabe’, Japan’s FX investing housewife, gets an anime update
The stereotype has been out of date for years. In Japan, as elsewhere, housewives are a near-extinct breed with most households dual-income.
A monitor at the foreign exchange trading company Gaitame.com in Tokyo displays the yen exchange rate against the U.S. dollar at the company's dealing room on Monday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 28, 2026
Japan is getting creative with its response to the weak yen
But if Tokyo is indeed coordinating policy — or messaging at least — with the U.S. to strengthen the currency, it marks a new and more creative era.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s plan to cut the consumption tax on food to zero sent Japanese bonds into a meltdown, jarring global debt markets.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 22, 2026
Takaichi’s bad tax plan isn’t worth this freak-out
Temporary tax cuts have a habit of becoming sticky. What government will be strong enough in two years to let it expire, and hit consumers with an 8% increase at the checkout?
Members of the Vietnamese community take part in a Buddhist ceremony at Daionji temple in the city of Honjo, Saitama Prefecture, in August 2024. Just under half of the roughly 450,000 technical interns under Japan's Technical Intern Training Program as of June 2025 were from Vietnam.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 16, 2026
Japan is right to rethink its immigration approach
In the past decade, arrivals have surged as the population ages. The number of foreigners has doubled since 2012 to top 4 million.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi marks the end of trading in 2025 at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Dec. 30. If she can leverage her popularity into an election win, she could restore the LDP’s majority in the Lower House that it lost in 2024. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 15, 2026
Can Japan’s popular new leader beat the heat with a snap election?
The timing makes sense, and not just for the temperature. After three months in office, her polling numbers remain off the charts.
Japan’s measured response to Chinese coercion reflects over 15 years of efforts to diversify its economy and blunt Beijing’s ability to weaponize trade.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 14, 2026
Japan can keep calm and carry on decoupling from China
The goal isn’t to bring trade with Beijing down to zero — that’s impossible. It’s to dull Xi Jinping’s ability to weaponize it when he wants something.
Nintendo’s upcoming film, Super Mario Galaxy Movie, is positioned as a major 2026 soft-power moment for Japan, with expectations it could replicate the franchise’s 2023 $1.36 billion box office success.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 29, 2025
Takaichi, Mario, baseball and the Year of the Fire Horse
2026 marks the Year of the Horse in Japan. It’s one demographers have been awaiting for decades — the return of the Fire Horse.
Bank of Japan Gov. Kazuo Ueda attends a news conference in Tokyo on Friday. The BOJ raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 30 years and indicated more increases are in the pipeline if conditions allow.
COMMENTARY
Dec 24, 2025
Bank of Japan’s rate hike likely first of many
Today’s Japan is different. Friday’s decision is a milestone. To hear it from the bank, there is still some distance to go.
Japan has moved in a decade from pacifist protest to broad acceptance of stronger defense, driven by regional threats and doubts about U.S. protection.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 16, 2025
What’s left of Japan’s pacifism meets reality
Despite the ruling LDP’s struggles in recent years, it’s striking how little support has shifted to traditional left-leaning parties that oppose revising the pacifist Constitution.
A visitor to Osaka's World Expo 2025 wears Myaku-Myaku headgear in April. The mascot’s runaway popularity surprised many, turning what some expected to be a liability into one of the event’s biggest draws.
COMMENTARY
Dec 10, 2025
Myaku-Myaku and the year of the mascots
Myaku-Myaku was the event’s mascot and its breakout star. One report has the expo bringing in over ¥3 trillion to the area, some ¥300 billion ahead of estimates.
Japan’s "oshikatsu" culture is booming despite inflation, with fans spending heavily on idols and characters in a way that now drives a multitrillion-yen market.
COMMENTARY
Dec 2, 2025
Japan’s inflation-proof ‘stan’ economy is booming
About 10% of the Japanese population engages in “oshikatsu” — but importantly, more than 50% are those crucial arbiters of cool: teenage girls.
Currency forecasts can be unreliable, as the yen’s recent weakness highlights the limits of intervention and the influence of narratives over economic fundamentals.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 28, 2025
We need to shatter one big myth about the weak yen
That the PM’s extra budget, amounting to less than 3% of GDP, should trigger the weakening seen in recent weeks makes little sense — particularly given record tax revenue.
Microsoft's decision to bring Halo to PlayStation signals the end of the console wars, as both Microsoft and Sony adapt to a new gaming landscape with cloud gaming, cross-platform play and changing hardware models.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 23, 2025
The console wars end not with a bang, but a whimper
While game systems once featured bespoke hardware architecture, these days there’s increasingly little difference under the hood of a PlayStation, Xbox or mid-range gaming PC.
JR East is retiring the beloved Suica penguin as part of a rebrand to transform the contactless payment platform, used for both transit and retail, into a mobile fintech powerhouse.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 16, 2025
A beloved Tokyo penguin’s end presages Suica’s shift to payments giant
Since Suica’s introduction in 2001, the penguin has featured on transit cards and apps that are used daily by the tens of millions who traverse the world’s largest metropolis.
Rising bear attacks in Japan, driven by climate change, population decline and a shortage of hunters, have prompted intervention by the Self-Defense Forces as urban areas face growing threats from wildlife.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 7, 2025
Along with Japan’s urban bears comes fur and loathing
What’s unusual is that the majority of these incidents are happening not to unlucky hikers or mountain foragers, but to people in residential areas going about their daily lives.
The capital city's Harajuku district in December 2024. Tokyo’s “coolest” neighborhood is subjective and constantly shifting, as the city’s appeal lies in its diversity of areas, each offering a unique mix of trends, culture and hidden gems.
COMMENTARY
Nov 3, 2025
Tokyo’s coolest neighborhood? There isn’t one.
Tokyo can’t be reduced to a single trendy suburb: What’s appealing is precisely the incongruity of its locales.
Uruguay federation reportedly cancels charter flight after World Cup exit
Uruguay's Jose Maria Gimenez reacts after the team's loss against Spain at the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Friday.
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
India’s gig workers pay the price for exposure to New Delhi’s hazardous air
Rohit Kushwaha waits for a customer as he delivers his last parcel of the day, in New Delhi in January. His work as a delivery driver has helped pay the family’s bills, but has had a significant impact on his health.
Chinese and Russian bombers and fighter jets stage joint patrol near Japan
A Chinese Air Force H-6 bomber is seen during a joint patrol with Russian military aircraft on Saturday.
U.S. missile moves in Japan send China clear message: A new era has arrived
Soldiers conduct the first Typhon midrange capability live-fire exercise outside of the continental United States, firing an SM-6 missile in July last year in Australia's Northern Territory during Exercise Talisman Sabre.
Japan’s fertility system offers few safe paths for same-sex couples
A Tokyo Pride parade participant holds a sign that says "we want to be a married couple, not a couple."
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
A French ship with close ties to Japan combines arts and sciences on the high seas
Romain Troublé, the executive director of Tara Ocean Foundation, speaks to visitors aboard the Tara during a rare port call in Tokyo in April.
In Kyushu’s far south, Senti.U sparks a culinary destination
Chef Yasuhiko Uchida was born in Saga Prefecture but has made his home in Kanoya, Kagoshima Prefecture, since 2012.
‘The colors speak for themselves’: How Japan’s chroma bible went global
“A Dictionary of Color Combinations” is meant to function as a quick-reference guide for artists, designers and anyone with a passing interest in aesthetics as a quantifiable pursuit.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.
What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival
By Alex K.T. Martin

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