Japans

Japan's Ministry of Finance (MOF) warned on Thursday of a fake account for its top currency diplomat Masato Kanda on social media X, formerly known as Twitter, as the market fears a currency intervention amid the yen's drop to a one-month-low.In a rare English-language post on X, the ministry said "Please don't follow the impersonation account and/or comment on the post", saying such an X account purportedly belonging to Kanda or his staff did not exist."MOF is currently requesting that X (formerly Twitter) suspends the…

Ten years ago, a group of game developers in Kyoto started up an indie festival with the aim of promoting and uniting the country’s fragmented independent scene. One hundred seventy people officially showed up to the inaugural BitSummit in 2013, and organizers said they’d aim for at least 200 people next time around. I went along to the second BitSummit the following year, and it turned out that more than 5,000 others had the same idea. It was an appropriately ramshackle affair, with little to the staging beyond rows of…

Japan’s largest automaker, Toyota Motor, is laying off workers in China as the company struggles to keep up in the world’s biggest EV market. Toyota lays off workers amid China’s EV transition Japanese automakers are stumbling in China’s evolving auto landscape. According to a new report from Reuters, Toyota’s joint venture with China’s Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) laid off workers this weekend, offering them compensation. Three workers who were affected said the move comes as the…

Japan's top liquefied natural gas buyer JERA will invest $300 million in green technology-focused start-ups through a newly created in-house unit, it said on Friday, as part of the country's efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.JERA, also Japan's biggest utility, would target start-ups which develop decarbonisation technologies including hydrogen, ammonia and other renewables, digital technologies as well as those focusing on women's health, it said in a statement. Venture capital funds which are linked to such…

Hundreds of people marched in Seoul on Saturday to demand that Japan scrap plans to release treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant as the United Nations nuclear agency's head met with senior officials to discuss food safety concerns.The protests came a day after South Korea's government formally endorsed the safety of Japan's plans, saying the contamination levels of water pumped out from the disabled plant would be within acceptable standards and wouldn't meaningfully affect South Korean seas…

Japanese automaker’s reluctance to go all-electric is already taking a toll on the nation’s auto industry. Mitsubishi Motors revealed this week it’s suspending operations in China due to its inability to keep up as EVs continue to take over the market. China continues to lead the industry in the transition to EVs. Information from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) shows battery electric passenger vehicle (BEV) sales reached over 2 million through the first five months of…

Koike is carrying the ball for Japan in a different contest, this one with tens of billions of investment dollars and global economic security at stake. After slipping near the bottom of the semiconductor-manufacturing league, Tokyo once again wants to field a championship contender. Koike heads a startup called Rapidus that plans to invest some $35 billion by 2027 building a factory in northern Japan to manufacture 2-nanometer chips, the current state-of-the-art design.…

Japan's military is testing Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service with an eye to adopting the technology next fiscal year, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Sunday, citing unnamed government sources.The ministry of defense already has access to communication satellites in geostationary orbit, but use of Starlink technology, operated by Musk's SpaceX, would add a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, the Yomiuri said. Countries around the world are seeking to build resilience against the risk of…

Looking into other Directs Nintendo Directs are always chock-full of information on games coming to different regions. And while the North American Nintendo Direct had a bunch of games to show off, today’s Nintendo Direct for Japan also had some surprising, intriguing games on display. I try to make a habit of watching the Japanese Nintendo Direct after the North American one airs. For one, it’s an interesting way to see how Nintendo organizes these shows for different regions; some games move further up in the rundown,…

A logo of Toyota Motor Corp. is seen at its dealership in Lakewood, Colo., on March 21, 2021. Toyota says it plans to make an all solid-state battery as part of ambitious plans for battery electric vehicles, amid mounting criticism Japan’s top automaker needs to do more to fight climate change. Credit: AP Photo/David Zalubowski Toyota plans to make an all solid-state battery as part of its ambitious plans for battery…