General Interest

A Japanese bank has joined forces with a major South Korean counterpart to help usher smaller Japanese companies into Asian markets, in the first such collaboration by financial institutions from the two countries.

Female directors are carving out careers in Japan's male-dominated banking sector.

Japanese companies, notorious for stockpiling cash, boosted spending to record levels last fiscal year, putting more money to work and betting on growth even as China's economy cools and other headwinds intensify.

The use of multilingual translation tools is expanding in Japan, where foreign workers are expected to increase in the wake of April’s launch of new visa categories.

The government said Wednesday it plans to submit a bill to the Diet next year to regulate global and domestic technology giants amid concerns some are stifling fair competition due to their overwhelming market share.

The net balance of external assets held by the Japanese government, companies and individual investors stood at ¥341.56 trillion ($3.11 trillion) at the end of 2018, remaining the world’s largest for the 28th consecutive year, the Finance Ministry said Friday.

Japan's ruling party is crafting legislation to protect consumers and smaller businesses from technology companies that operate dominant platforms, such as Amazon.com, Facebook and Rakuten, Nikkei learned Wednesday.

Japan is moving closer to requiring companies to stop using personal information for such purposes as advertising if requested by consumers, a government plan showed Thursday.

Japan will dispatch specialists and advisers in areas such as trade to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as part of a cooperation deal to be signed later this year.

Japan is considering giving individuals the right to stop companies from using their personal data, Nikkei learned Tuesday, as companies increasingly mine this virtual resource to build new businesses.