2018

Miyazaki Prefecture's satsumaimo, or sweet potatoes, are selling fast in other parts of Asia thanks to Makoto Ikeda, the CEO of Kushima AoiFarm. Since he started this company with a staff of 4 family members in 2013, exports have been booming. Now the firm has 68 employees and annual sales of 700 million yen. Interestingly, the type of sweet potato that is popular in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan doesn't sell so well in Japan. We explore what Ikeda has done to achieve sweet potato success.

Up to the 1990's, Japan's home electronics giants led the global market. But recently, unwilling to implement key reforms, they have been slow to catch on to the digital revolution, and products without IoT compatibility are considered old hat. Takuma Iwasa is the CEO of one Japanese tech venture winning fans worldwide with unique, web-ready devices. Targeting the global niche market of early adopters has put this firm in the spotlight, as it strives to create unprecedented consumer electronics.

Kyoto is a long-established center of craft excellence. Hiroyasu Koma's 30-person start-up firm brought that power together to make a high-performance electric sports car. Unlike in the case of gasoline cars, parts for electric cars can be sourced from outside the insular supplier networks that serve major car makers, so even small start-ups can make cars. Koma sells the technology in completed cars to other companies, a feature of his business model where various firms share development costs.

Along Japan's northeastern coast, efforts to develop young fisheries workers by boosting recognition for local marine produce and organizing training have put one fishing collective in the spotlight. Sensing peril for local fisheries after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of 2011, founder Takuya Hasegawa teamed up with workers to reform distribution channels and pursue sales and promotion activities. Join a group aiming to rear 1,000 local fishermen and women by 2024.

Keiichi Yoshino left a career in finance to open a chocolatier in Kyoto, Japan's former capital. Only 4 years in, his brand has already won international awards and been picked up by an exclusive Kyoto hotel. He uses cacao from Indonesia, the world's number-two producer, boosting the economy by raising quality and prices via guidance for local farmers. Now pursuing a similar scheme in the Philippines, we follow a luxury chocolate brand transforming the fortunes of farmers in Southeast Asia.

Atsushi Yoshida runs a 70-year-old firm specializing in high-voltage lightning arresters. Its devices, produced via research at the world's largest lightning-test facility, protect homes and infrastructure, as well as Japanese icons like Shinkansen bullet trains, the TOKYO SKYTREE and Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera Temple, with a 70% domestic market share. Now Yoshida is taking this expertise to Rwanda, one of the world's most lightning-prone countries, conducting research and training local engineers.

The last decade has been tough for cattle breeders in Japan. Four-tenths of farms have folded, and the experience needed to succeed limits the influx of new talent. Shinya Kobayashi founded a business to address this situation through the Internet of Things. Cattle are tracked using sensors, and the data analyzed to give farmers powerful insights via their mobile devices, along with digital records on animals' breeding and health. Follow a business using IT to support Japan's cattle breeders.

The key to gold medal success at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games may just be held by Toru Ozawa, engineer with a specialist wheelchair manufacturer in Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo. Fine-tuned to match each owner's precise needs to the last millimeter, and trusted by top wheelchair athletes around the world, the firm's custom devices have helped win 122 Paralympic medals to date. With 2 years to go until the Tokyo games, we follow a pioneering Tokyo wheelchair maker with sights set on gold.

Across Japan, a decline in public transport and small retailers is said to have left as many as 7 million seniors unable to access basic daily necessities. 6 years ago, to address the needs of these "shopping refugees", former magazine editor Tatsuya Sumitomo set up a mobile supermarket service. Now with over 300 trucks, each offering up to 1,200 items, along with clothing and monitor services, his business regularly serves around 40,000 people nationwide, with an average age of 80.

With many up-and-coming nations undergoing rapid development, Japanese construction equipment is finding new popularity around the world due to its safety and reliability. Takayuki Aoki (32) founded an online service that offers overseas buyers affordable access to used heavy machinery from Japan, providing comprehensive information, detailed photos and even a refund policy. Follow a young entrepreneur using information technology to take Japanese construction equipment to the world.

Around the world, one sector relatively untouched by the IT-driven paradigm shift known as the sharing economy has been dining and catering. Miwa Okada is helping to change that with a service that introduces local users to Japan-based foreign nationals who open their homes to offer lessons on how to cook their own native cuisine. We follow an innovative business using food as the medium for cultural exchange and integration between Japan's growing foreign population and their host country.

In January 2018, at the Global EdTech Startup Awards in London, a Japanese firm came through a field of over 2,000 to claim the top prize. Goichiro Arai's company triumphed with an app designed to help students organize and share their study notes, and even create Q&A exercises. Allowing students to study together independently of teachers, and even helping to close the achievement gap between rich and poor, this cutting-edge tool is ready to carry success in Asia over to the global stage.

With 80% of Japan's regional bus routes operating at a loss, Masaru Yajima runs a firm working to revive these vital transport lifelines. GPS and sensors are used to track progress and passenger flow, and this big data is analyzed to optimize routes and departure times. Further innovations like waiting rooms and wholesale local produce at bus stops have helped to attract passengers beyond the typical user base. And this pioneering transport firm is now taking its successful template overseas.

Virtual reality: currently a hot technology in the world of video gaming, and now also on the brink of transforming the medical field. Surgeon Maki Sugimoto has developed a system that uses precise 3D modeling of patients' internal organs to help plan surgical procedures down to the last scalpel incision, maximizing safety. Currently used at over 50 facilities working across the medical spectrum, this groundbreaking technology is also revolutionizing the way young doctors are trained.

A trunk room is rented storage for items you don't often use but just can't throw away. But it's not always easy to keep track of inventory or pick up possessions when you need them. Hayato Matsuzaki launched a service using couriers and carefully photographed cloud-based galleries of stored items to give users round-the-clock access to possessions at the click of a mouse or the touch of a screen, and even letting you give new life to items you no longer want by putting them up for sale.

Long beset by depopulation and industrial decline, these days the town of Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture, northern Japan, boasts a science park that's a honeypot for tech startups and international researchers. Daisuke Yamanaka runs a local firm that has brought an innovative approach to community development. Frustrated by bureaucracy, he turned to partnerships between civil enterprises, also bringing researchers and local government on board to promote truly holistic regional revitalization.

Forced by a shrinking domestic market to venture overseas, Japan's sake brewers face stiff competition from the established dominance of wine. Takuma Inagawa heads a startup that's winning global plaudits with new sake varieties developed to complement global cuisines. From cask aging, to unorthodox additives, he uses various techniques to coax out flavors unlike any traditional rice wine. And having successfully expanded into several markets, he's now taking on the biggest of them all: the US.

For more than 60 years, we have been sending satellites and rockets into space. But this progress has polluted Earth's orbit with a host of man-made space debris, creating a fast-moving "junk belt" that poses considerable risk to probes and spacecraft exiting the atmosphere. One individual working to solve this problem is Nobu Okada, head of a startup harnessing the skills and expertise of universities and technical workshops to develop satellites ready to clean up the cosmos.

In Tokyo's upscale Ginza district is a rice ball shop so popular that lines of hungry office workers are a regular lunchtime sight. As well as the finest ingredients from all over Japan, founder Masayuki Habuki is committed to using rice from his home region, Niigata Prefecture. In fact, his work to promote Niigata rice also includes the production of sake and miso, along with outreach activities like brewery tours and tasting sessions. Follow a business working to preserve this regional food culture.

Woven rush tatami mats are a traditional element of Japanese homes. But a shift toward Westernized lifestyles has seen production drop to a third of its former peak, driving both makers and rush growers out of business. Yoshiaki Kagami is breathing new life into tatami by cutting out the middlemen to deal directly with growers and consumers. As well as creating novel tatami products, Kagami encourages the sharing of expertise within the industry, and organizes visits to one regional rush farm.