For Takashi Amano's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
More than four years after a much-ballyhooed entry into mobile gaming, industry giant Nintendo Co. remains bereft of a monster smartphone hit. But the wait may finally be over. Mario Kart Tour, set to launch this summer, has had gamers' attention since it was announced ...
Amid strong expectations that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may reappoint Haruhiko Kuroda to another term as governor of the Bank of Japan, at least one key voice is calling for fresh blood at the top of the BOJ to lift the nation's flagging inflation ...
Nintendo Co. might have scored a hit with the explosive debut of "Pokemon Go" this year. On its home turf, however, Sony Corp. has quietly dispatched its rival with a popular mobile game called "Fate/Grand Order." The game, based on an anime TV series called ...
Japan's obsession with robots isn't just a cliche. Companies have been trying to drum up enthusiasm for them for years, with little success. Pepper, a humanoid machine carrying the hopes of SoftBank Group Corp.'s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, was supposed to change that. Promoted as ...
Naruatsu Baba, the 39-year old billionaire and founder of mobile game developer Colopl Inc. breaks the mold of your typical Japanese executive: he's completely immodest about his success. "Professionally, I've never really made any mistakes," Baba said in an interview, sitting next to a life-size ...
Pick up a high-end smartphone these days and chances are it will have a crisp, energy-sipping organic LED display — unless it's an iPhone. That will change next year, when Apple Inc. plans to adopt the technology for the next major upgrade to its flagship ...
Trace the roots of most modern Japanese tech companies back far enough and there's a good chance you'll stumble across a little-known venture capital firm called Jafco Co. Since its inception in 1973, Japan's oldest and largest VC (venture capital firm) has quietly backed almost ...
When massive tsunami swept away entire towns in northeastern Japan five years ago, Taizo Son filled three shipping containers with emergency supplies and sent them to help the relief effort. Later, he bet almost $100 million of his own money on startups, seeking to ...
Nintendo Co. shares plunged by the most since 1990 after the company said late Friday that the financial impact from the worldwide hit "Pokemon Go" will be limited. The stock sank 18 percent to ¥23,220 at the close in Tokyo, the maximum one-day move allowed ...
Five years ago, Olympus Corp. was caught up in the oddest of corporate scandals. Its then-CEO, Michael Woodford, uncovered an accounting scandal at the company that went undetected for years, besmirching the name of a once-proud Japanese maker of digital cameras and medical equipment. The ...
