Companies
Nidec: One Man’s Obsession With Motors That Now Power the World
In 1973, a 28-year-old engineer named Shigenobu Nagamori founded a motor company in a converted barn in Kyoto with three employees and…
In 1973, a 28-year-old engineer named Shigenobu Nagamori founded a motor company in a converted barn in Kyoto with three employees and…
In a small workshop in Sakai, a city renowned for centuries of blade-making craftsmanship, Shozaburo Shimano began manufacturing bicycle freewheels in 1921.…
When physicists at CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, completing the Standard Model of particle physics, the detection…
Every smartphone you have ever owned contains over a thousand components made by a single company most people have never heard of.…
With an operating margin above 55%, a market capitalization regularly placing it among Japan’s top five companies, and virtually zero public advertising,…
Everyone knows Nintendo. Everyone knows PlayStation. But behind the iconic brands lies a $25 billion technology ecosystem that most outsiders never see…
In a windowless room at a Fanuc factory in Yamanashi Prefecture, a row of robotic arms assembles components with sub-millimeter precision. Nothing…
While the rest of the world debates whether hydrogen will ever be economically viable, Japan has already placed its bet. It was…
Japan builds some of the most resilient infrastructure on Earth — skyscrapers that sway through magnitude-9 earthquakes, tunnels bored through active volcanic…
Japan’s farmers are disappearing. With an average age of 68 and no generation waiting to take over, the country faces an existential…
For decades, Japan’s government ran on paper — mountains of it. Forms required personal seal stamps, municipal offices kept records in filing…
The electric vehicle revolution has a bottleneck, and it is the battery. Today’s lithium-ion cells are heavy, slow to charge, prone to…