All national papers highlighted a Toyota announcement on Thursday that it will start manufacturing electric vehicles at its Kentucky factory in 2025 and that it will commit an additional $2.1 billion to producing EV batteries at a plant being constructed in North Carolina, bringing its financial investment there to $5.9 billion in total. The dailies explained that the auto giant….Read more

Yomiuri front-paged the outline of a GOJ report on food security to be released shortly, saying that with the ensuing global food supply shortage triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in mind, the GOJ plans to “fundamentally bolster food security” based on the assessment that the nation will no longer be able to import food “at lower prices all the….Read more

The number of applications for international patents in the storage battery area is increasing. According to the Japan Patent Office, the number of patent applications filed to multiple countries and regions in 2020 increased by 70% from 2010 to more than 8,000.   By country and region, Japan led the pack by receiving the largest number of applications at 26,000….Read more

KEITA SEKIGUCHI, Nikkei fintech editor, and NATSUMI IWATA, Nikkei staff writer   TOKYO — Japanese banks small and large are on track to start issuing stablecoins this year under legislation taking effect Thursday.   Stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to legal tender, a commodity, or another underlying asset — are designed to buffer against major fluctuations in value. Examples include Tether….Read more

By Nakamura Shimpei    Iwatani Corporation has announced it plans to increase the number of hydrogen stations it operates in California by at least five during the fiscal year ending March 2024, thereby almost doubling the current number of stations from six to eleven. The company anticipates the use of fuel cell vehicles (FCV) will spread.   California is a….Read more

Ten years have passed since a system was adopted to provide research academics with long-term job security by setting their employment periods at 10 years (and transferring employees to unlimited-term positions after 10 years). Now, researchers are being terminated one after another, dealing a further blow to Japan’s research capabilities.   At RIKEN, the nation’s largest research organization for basic….Read more

TOKYO — Japan’s parliament passed a bill Wednesday that allows nuclear reactors in the country to be operated beyond the current limit of 60 years to help cut carbon emissions and ensure an adequate national energy supply despite lingering concerns over the safety of aging reactors.   The law on power sources for green transformation and decarbonization amends five laws….Read more

WASHINGTON — Some American governors are calling for more corporate investment and tourism from Japan, the top direct investor in the United States, hoping it would help local economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.   “We have great expectations for Japanese companies,” Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said at an event in a Washington suburb earlier this month to promote….Read more