Less than a decade after stunning workers at his tech giant with an edict to learn English, billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani wants to do the same with computer programming. Rakuten Inc. may soon expect its more than 17,000 employees to know how a computer compiles a ...

After two decades in development, chipmakers are making a costly bet on a technology that will cram even more transistors onto silicon. Their success may hinge on a little-known company in Yokohama. Lasertec Corp. is the world's sole maker of equipment that tests glass squares ...

Line Corp. is betting that tie-ups with Japan's biggest financial institutions will help convince its 78 million users to entrust the free texting app with their money. The operator of Japan's most popular messaging platform plans to introduce the Line Securities equities trading service jointly ...

The surprise arrest of Huawei Technologies Co.'s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou is about to impact one of the Chinese company's suppliers in Japan. Yaskawa Electric Corp., which supplies industrial robots for Huawei's smartphone and telecom gear factories, saw all orders for its machines put ...

Panasonic Corp. has carefully cultivated a culture befitting its 100-year history, with many employees starting the day doing calisthenics and singing the corporate anthem. Now, Yasuyuki Higuchi is supposed to shake up those traditions. Higuchi, 60, last year took charge of the connected solutions business, ...

E-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. is offering a glimpse into its ambitious plan to build a cutting-edge wireless network to take on Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group Corp., stay in the lead in mobile payments and win back market share from Amazon.com Inc. The new mobile business, ...

Masayoshi Son has a lot going on these days. The SoftBank Group Corp. founder oversees the largest technology fund in history and is putting money into ride-hailing, e-commerce, digital payments, satellites, semiconductors, agriculture and cancer detection — just for starters. How to make sense of it ...

Mercari Inc. priced its initial public offering at the top of the range to sell ¥130.5 billion ($1.2 billion) worth of shares, a valuation that's set to make its 40-year-old founder a billionaire. The online marketplace plans to sell 43.5 million shares at ¥3,000 apiece, ...

The mobile phone industry may be in a midst of a slump, but a unit of Sharp Corp. is forecasting growth thanks to the race by smartphone makers to wow customers with high-quality photos. Kantatsu Co., a maker of camera lenses for Apple Inc. and ...

Self-driving cars will rarely have to deal with a pack of drivers who think they are in a "Fast and Furious" movie, but training them to do so might just be what it takes to reach true autonomy. Nonetheless, sending driverless vehicles drifting around curves ...