Wages and prices in Japan have for decades struggled to break out of a low-growth loop. Pay has barely increased, and on some measures even declined slightly. As long as prices weren’t rising, that wasn’t so much of an issue for local workers, though it did make the country look less attractive from overseas. However,...

  Once the global leader in both photovoltaic (PV) panel manufacturing and power generation, Japanese makers have been undercut by lower-cost competition, while the country has slipped somewhat in terms of installation in recent years. However, it remains at the cutting edge of solar tech and is still the third largest generator of solar power....

Driven by changes in the business landscape, demographics, employment regulations, and pressure for more flexible work styles post-pandemic, mid-career hiring in Japan is reaching record levels, and set to keep on rising. According to a survey by the Nikkei, over 37% of job openings are expected to be filled by mid-career hires in the fiscal...

  Human civilisation has been through waves of disruption driven by catalysts from the printing press to electricity to the internet. It now seems probable however that artificial intelligence (AI) will be transformative on an entirely different scale. One element of these changes is set to be the turbocharging of science, including the revolutionization of...

Two fields in which Japan is seen as behind the curve are workplace equality and the IT sector as a whole. Against such a backdrop, a sharp rise in the number of female software engineers in Japan seems an unlikely phenomenon. And yet that is exactly what has been happening in recent years. Issues such...

  On the last day of June, the auction closed for the second round of offshore wind projects, totalling 1.8GW in capacity. Japan’s huge offshore potential — forecast at exponentially more than the nation’s entire energy needs — continues to attract attention both at home and abroad. However, challenges remain around supply chains, logistics and...

  Whichever way you stack the numbers, the human race is getting older. The median age of the Earth’s population was 20 years old in 1970. By 2022 that had jumped by 50％ to 30. Dealing with this ongoing seismic shift is unavoidable, and though all is not rosy, there will be silver linings to...

  From the launch of new platforms, to the latest fake image that fooled tens of millions online or calls for control in order to safeguard the future of humanity, AI is rarely out of the headlines these days. One of the few consequences of the rapid progress of this technology that can be confidently...

  Concerns about the imminent danger of environmental breakdown are no longer confined to activists and scientists. Half of CEOs see an impact on their costs from climate change in the coming 12 months, according to a recent survey of global business leaders by PwC. As calls for more sustainable business models, economies and societies...

  If we are in fact currently experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, then a core element of it is digital transformation (DX or DT). Determining whether such shifts are as seismic as they seem, and the names by which they will eventually be known, usually requires the perspective of time. As the late scientist and...