Companies
Okuma Builds Its Own Brain
The machine tool maker that has designed its own CNC control since 1963 — and why that moat matters now
Keyword
The machine tool maker that has designed its own CNC control since 1963 — and why that moat matters now
How Japan's sheet metal machine giant is bringing lights-out fabrication to the world's smallest workshops
Why a state-backed fund paid roughly 900 billion yen to delist the world's leading photoresist maker
From the 1691 Besshi copper mine to the nickel-rich cathode powder inside Panasonic's EV cells
The 140-year-old copper house bought optical fibre at the top of the telecom bubble - two decades later the assets finally fit the market
How rollable ribbon fibre and fusion splicers turned a 140-year-old cable maker into a data-centre bottleneck supplier
From Himeji lamp maker to the ultraviolet and laser-driven light sources inside lithography, inspection and packaging tools
The Yokohama fastener maker earning strong margins on parts that cost a few yen - and barely care whether the car burns fuel
The strain wave gear is a public invention - and one Japanese company has spent 50 years owning the ability to build it
How a 2003 merger of a gear maker and a brake maker ended up supplying most of the world's precision robot reducers
How Japan's second-longest private railway anchors the Asakusa-Nikko UNESCO corridor — and how the Tokyo Skytree, Ikebukuro Tobu Department Store and Tobu Hotels build a ~150-group-company conglomerate.
How Tokyo's Shinjuku-Odawara private rail line became the dominant Hakone gateway — and how the Hakone Free Pass, Enoshima coast line and Hakone Tozan Railway anchor Odakyu's tourism-revenue mix.