As a major economy with considerable influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has a key role to play in setting the rules in multiple regional free trade agreements, the head of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation secretariat said. In a recent interview in Tokyo, APEC ...

The technology chief of major U.S. robotics firm iRobot Corp. wants Sony Corp. to resume its robot business and hopes more Japanese makers will turn out commercial units to encourage investment in the industry. In a recent interview, iRobot Chief Technology Officer Paolo Pirjanian, ...

Japan’s entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations has significantly boosted the economic scale of the envisioned pact, but it has also brought new complexity to the multilateral talks that have been strongly influenced by the world’s leading economy, the United States. With Japan, ...

As the two-day ministerial meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum ended Sunday in Indonesia with calls to promote free-trade initiatives, Japan gained unanimous backing to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks from the 11 APEC economies involved. Yet, the green light obtained on ...

For Matsushita Toso, a small auto surface treatment company in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture, the shiny black metal parts hanging at its newly introduced line are a sign of the auto industry’s growth and recovery from the March 11 disasters. The company, with less than ...

A sunny weekend in Yokohama finds a small room packed with young visitors eager to get to the dozen metal cages lined up on a shelf. “Look, it’s getting all cozy and drowsy,” said a young woman to her husband as they sat on ...