Japan Business Decoded

On 31 March 2023, the Tokyo Stock Exchange sent a request to every company on its Prime and Standard markets: if your shares trade below book value, explain what you plan to do about it.

By the exchange's own count, about half of the Prime market qualified. Half of Japan's largest listed companies were valued by the market at less than the assets they already owned. (Tokyo Stock Exchange, March 2023.)

Note the word: request. Not a rule. Not a fine. A letter.

And it worked. Within nine months, 815 of 1,656 Prime companies had published a plan or said one was coming. (JPX disclosure list, January 2024.)

In most markets, shame is a side effect. In Japan, it's the enforcement mechanism.

12 hours ago | [YT] | 0

Japan Business Decoded

On 21 December 1929, in Oldham, England, Kiichiro Toyoda signed away his family's automatic-loom patents to Platt Brothers - the largest textile-machinery maker in the world - for £100,000. About a million yen. Every market except Japan, China and the United States. (Toyota, 75 Years of Toyota.)

The world's best loom-maker had looked at the Japanese loom and decided buying it was the better option.

Kiichiro went home and quietly started an automobile programme inside the loom factory. His father died the following October, having told him to spend the money on cars.

The company that came out of that programme is called Toyota.

Toyota didn't start by building a car. It started by selling the one thing it already knew how to build.

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1 day ago | [YT] | 0

Japan Business Decoded

2,371 Japanese companies celebrate their 100th anniversary in 2026. Another 17,939 turn 50. (Teikoku Databank, data as of November 2025.)

One of them is Toyota Industries - founded in November 1926 to build a loom. Not a car. A loom.

Here's the thing about a centenary in Japan: nobody treats it as remarkable. There's a whole calendar of them. Companies order the commemorative sake years in advance.

And that says something about the 1920s, not just the 2020s. A financial crisis, a war, an occupation, a bubble… and two thousand three hundred businesses simply kept opening the shutters every morning.

Elsewhere, a centenary is an achievement. In Japan, it's a calendar entry.

2 days ago | [YT] | 0

Japan Business Decoded

On 1 October, Japanese companies may give next spring's graduates their first formal naitei, 内定, the job offer. One date, set on a government schedule, for an entire cohort at once.

Naitei means, literally, decided inside. Firm enough that a student stops searching. Informal enough that the company keeps a door open.

So when is a naitei really given? As of 1 May 2020, Recruit Career counted 45.7% of students due to graduate in spring 2021 as already holding one, five months before the official date.

The calendar governs the paperwork; the promise runs on an earlier, quieter clock that no schedule mentions.

The offer becomes official in October. The decision was made in spring.

3 days ago | [YT] | 0

Japan Business Decoded

Japan took an American convenience store concept, perfected it beyond recognition, and then bought out the bankrupt original company.

Today, Tokyo has more 7-Elevens than the entire state of Texas. Japanese konbini aren't just stores. They're government-recognized infrastructure where you pay bills, print documents, and shelter during disasters.

The twist? The model works perfectly in Asia but completely fails in the West.

New video breaks down why the most successful retail model in history might be fundamentally untranslatable.
https://youtu.be/18pEcxN3wjo


What's the most "Japanese" thing about konbini in your opinion? 👇

7 months ago | [YT] | 0