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July 04, 2026
 

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AI

The Rapidus booth at the Semicon Japan exhibition in Tokyo on Wednesday. The exhibition is scheduled to continue through Friday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 18, 2025
Rapidus announces new artificial intelligence design tools
The chipmaker, which already uses artificial intelligence in certain aspects of its business, expects its integration to enable it to cut design time and cost.
A Huawei store in Shenzhen. While the project to build an extreme ultraviolet lithography machines (EUVs) to produce cutting-edge semiconductor chips is run by the Chinese government, Huawei is involved in every step of the supply chain.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 18, 2025
How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
Ex-engineers from ASML reverse-engineered its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines and built a prototype using parts from older ASML machines on the secondary market.
Generative AI models are trained on publicly accessible creative content yet offer little to the artists, musicians, coders and others who produce it.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 18, 2025
AI thrives on unpaid creative labor
Generative AI models are trained on publicly accessible creative content yet offer little to the artists, musicians, coders and others who produce it.
The National Police Agency plans to warn against the obscene use of AI at delinquency-prevention lectures at schools and other events.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Dec 18, 2025
Over half of deepfakes of underage victims made by schoolmates, Japanese police say
The National Police Agency for the first time has released information on minors who became victims of sexual deepfakes, or obscene fake images created using generative AI.
Resonac Holdings Chief Executive Officer Hidehito Takahashi
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 17, 2025
Chip-sector linchpin Resonac seeks to tap China’s AI ambitions
Tokyo-based Resonac, which supplies crucial chemicals used to make cutting-edge chips, has bolstered production capacity in China.
Recruit Holdings and Indeed.com CEO Hisayuki Idekoba
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 17, 2025
AI-assisted hiring will drive Indeed’s growth, Recruit CEO says
The job-search portal’s head said the business is using AI to help companies optimize their talent-acquisition approach.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman in San Francisco in June
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 16, 2025
Despite soaring valuation, uncertainty clouds the outlook for OpenAI
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry has likened OpenAI to Netscape, which ruled the browser market in the 1990s only to lose to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Women comprise the majority of workers in more than half of the 40 occupations that are most at risk of displacement by artificial intelligence.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 14, 2025
The AI labor shock is coming for women
While AI is out to eat everyone’s lunch, it’s women’s lunches the technology looks likely to gobble up first — and fastest.
Orix is among those in the next round of bidding for Macquarie Capital’s majority stake in a Dutch hyperscale data center.
BUSINESS
Dec 13, 2025
Macquarie’s Dutch data center stake attracts Igneo and Orix
Infrastructure has emerged as a key theme for investors seeking to profit from the AI boom, setting off an arms race among the world’s largest alternative asset managers.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son speaks during an event in Tokyo on Dec. 1.
BUSINESS
Dec 13, 2025
SoftBank billionaire Son trims share pledges after AI rally
Son trimmed his committed shares by 19.4 million to around 154.2 million, according to a filing earlier this month.
Cardinal Stephen Chow, the bishop of Hong Kong, speaks during Mass in Hong Kong in November 2023. During the opening Mass a three-day event to draft guidelines for the clergy’s use of artificial intelligence in the region Asia, he described AI as a "gift from God."
ASIA PACIFIC
Dec 12, 2025
Calling AI ‘a gift from God,’ Catholic bishops draft usage guidelines for Asia
Catholic bishops and priests from across Asia drafted pastoral guidelines for AI usage among the churches in the region.
OpenAI has announced changes to make ChatGPT better at recognizing and responding to different ways that people may express mental distress.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 12, 2025
OpenAI and Microsoft sued over murder-suicide blamed on ChatGPT
The case is the first to blame OpenAI for a homicide.
SoftBank Group Chairman Masayoshi Son speaks in Tokyo earlier this month. Sources have said the group is considering acquiring data-center operator Switch. The move would give it outright ownership of a large portfolio of the facilities at a time when demand for their computing power is growing rapidly.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 12, 2025
SoftBank may acquire Switch data-center group deal in AI infrastructure bid
The Japanese company has also been in advanced talks on a potential purchase of one of Switch’s main private equity backers, according to recent reports.
Nvidia head Jensen Huang speaks in Washington in October. The CEO said earlier this year that when its Blackwell chip was released, nobody wanted the previous generation anymore.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 11, 2025
AI’s $400 billion problem: Are chips getting old too fast?
With chipmakers releasing new, more powerful processors faster than before, estimates regarding how fast these chips become obsolete may be overly optimistic.
Nissan Motor CEO Ivan Espinosa (left) Wayve Technologies CEO Alex Kendall shake hands at a signing ceremony for a collaboration agreement between the two companies in Tokyo on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 10, 2025
Nissan to deploy tech from AI self-driving startup Wayve
While fully driverless cars remain some way off, the two companies said that their tie-up would help develop systems in real-world conditions.
Keio University President Kohei Ito (left) and OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon sign a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday in Tokyo.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 10, 2025
Keio and OpenAI sign MOU on integration of AI into university
The maker of ChatGPT will work closely with the Japanese institution on a range of projects.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo's Chuo Ward. Unlike conventional keyword-based search tools, the AI service for searching through disclosure materials allows for prompts such as "companies whose dividend predictions rose at least 20%."
BUSINESS / Markets
Dec 10, 2025
Japan exchange launches AI-powered disclosure search service
With around 150,000 disclosure documents filed each year, the service is aimed at improving investor convenience by enhancing search functions.
Until now, Tokyo police had identified suspicious posts on social media platforms by manually searching for them using keywords.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Dec 10, 2025
Police in Tokyo use AI to spot shady job offers on social media
Thanks to the AI tool, Tokyo police can write about 150 warning replies per day — compared to some 25 before its introduction — to messages considered to be offering shady jobs.
A coal-fired power plant in Shanghai. China’s on track for another year of record mine output.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Dec 10, 2025
Energy demand boom keeps Asia tethered to coal
Concerns over energy security and costs are trumping the climate agenda in the region’s high-growth, high-polluting economies.
Jensen Huang, president and chief executive of Nvidia, delivers a keynote address during the Nvidia GTC conference in Washington on Oct. 28.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 9, 2025
U.S. to allow Nvidia H200 chip shipments to China, Trump says
The U.S. government will collect a 25% fee on such sales, an approach the U.S. president says will apply to other AI chipmakers.
‘My dream is broken’: Japan visa rules push out foreign residents
A man orders from a kebab shop in the Okubo district in Tokyo.
Japan triples departure tax in push to combat overtourism
Tourists in Yanaka Ginza, Tokyo, on Wednesday. Japan tripled its International Tourist Tax (departure tax) to ¥3,000 from ¥1,000 on Wednesday for all travelers leaving Japan, regardless of nationality.
Japanese-language education is at a turning point
The country is gradually transforming Japanese-language education from a volunteer-driven system into a professional, government-supported network to better serve its growing foreign population. 
More facilities in Japan placing sanitary bins in men’s restrooms
A sanitary bin with an awareness sticker placed in a men's restroom in the Nagasaki Municipal Government building
Japan plans to sharply raise fees for residence permits from October
Foreign tourists walk on the path leading to the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in May.
Six of the best: rikishi of note in each sumo division
Kazuma (right) faces off against future <i>yokozuna</i> Onosato during the All Japan Amateur Sumo Championships at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo in December 2020.
Some startups see opportunity in an aging Japan
Yasmin Baba, CTO of Amilis, wins the Grand Prize at the Pitch2Tokyo Grand Final on Feb. 19.
Japan’s fertility system offers few safe paths for same-sex couples
A Tokyo Pride parade participant holds a sign that says "we want to be a married couple, not a couple."
Life inside Japan’s largest prison for women
Western-style rooms spanning the size of four tatami mats with hardwood floors, a toilet and soft mattresses on bed frames are designated for foreign nationals and those with health conditions at Tochigi Prison.
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.
What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Digital marketer Netyear zeros in on generative AI
Digital marketer Netyear zeros in on generative AI

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