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September 01, 2025
 

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INSURANCE

Representatives of four major nonlife insurance companies receive a notice from the Japan Fair Trade Commission regarding a cease and desist order, on Oct. 31, 2024, in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Jul 22, 2025
Scandals put Japanese nonlife insurers' business model at a crossroads
A series of recent scandals has brought to light deeply entrenched and problematic business practices within the industry.
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance said Thursday that it will sell to local governments a policy to cover property damage caused by bullets fired during wild bear extermination.
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2025
Japan insurer to launch policy linked to bear culling
The move comes as the revised wildlife protection and management law is set to take effect in September.
A delivery driver takes a break in the shade during high temperatures in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 21, 2024.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 2, 2025
How much does a heat wave cost? Insurers and CEOs want to know.
Some believe a new market for heat insurance — driven in part by artificial intelligence and the need to cool data centers — is around the corner.
Tokio Marine has made a string of big acquisitions in the U.S. in recent years to make up for limited growth prospects at home.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 24, 2025
Tokio Marine hunts for deals abroad and sees room for growth in U.S.
The insurer has the capacity for more deals overseas after generating record profits by selling shareholdings worth tens of billions of dollars.
Toyota has filed a lawsuit in a South African court over 2022 flood damages that shuttered its plant near Durban.
BUSINESS
Jun 20, 2025
Toyota insurer files $361 million South Africa flood damage lawsuit
The claim alleges that by failing to maintain waterways and drainage systems that carried the floodwater, the defendants shared responsibility for the damage.
The Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance headquarters in Tokyo. Paper losses on Japanese bonds held by the company expanded to about ¥1.386 trillion ($9.7 billion) in the year ended March, compared with ¥161.4 billion a year earlier.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 26, 2025
Japan's biggest life insurers post $60 billion in unrealized bond losses
The paper losses on their domestic bond holdings in the last fiscal year underscore the risks they face as interest rates climb.
Tokio Marine Holdings, MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings and Sompo Holdings posted record consolidated net profits for the second straight year in fiscal 2024, which ended in March, driven by gains from the sale of cross-held shares, according to their earnings reports.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 21, 2025
All three major Japanese nonlife insurers log record net profits
Net profit went up some 1.5 times to ¥1,055.2 billion at Tokio Marine Holding.
Nippon Life Insurance will stop the practice of temporarily sending employees to work in sales departments of other companies, such as banks, judging that the arrangements may distort fair competition.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 16, 2025
Nippon Life to stop sending staff to sales departments at banks
Critics have said the practice has led to misconduct, in addition to reducing competition.
Nippon Life Insurance is diversifying its investments to enhance yields, although it’s a tricky time to invest with U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war fueling global market volatility.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 14, 2025
Japan’s biggest insurer weighs riskier overseas CLO investments
Japan’s biggest life insurer is considering taking on a little more risk with its investments in collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), as it looks for ways to eke out better returns abroad.
MUFG Bank, a unit of the nation’s biggest banking group, is among firms that recently scrapped a clerical job category that consisted almost exclusively of women, a sign that the financial sector is finally getting more serious about reducing gender inequalities.
BUSINESS / Companies
Apr 23, 2025
Top Japanese firms scrap employment system that held women back
Abandoning the clerical job category may increase opportunities for women to advance to more senior positions.
MS&AD forecasts that net profit for its North American operations will reach ¥166 billion in the fiscal year ended in March, a 3.5fold increase from the previous fiscal year.
BUSINESS
Apr 22, 2025
Insurer MS&AD plans to invest $5 billion to double U.S. profits
The Tokyo-based casualty insurer has the highest market share in Asia among global firms, but it’s No. 3 among Japanese peers in North America.
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (above) and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance plan to merge in April 2027.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 28, 2025
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance to merge with Aioi Nissay Dowa
The merger will create the biggest nonlife insurer in Japan, overtaking current industry leader Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance.
Upper House Budget Committee chief Yosuke Tsuruho (right) and his Lower House counterpart, Jun Azumi, meet in Tokyo on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 12, 2025
Medical cap fumble paves way for unprecedented second revision of fiscal budget
While there have been cases of bills returning to the Lower House after amendments in the Upper House, it has never happened with the budget.
"It is an expanding field. We need more people,” said Kaoru Onishi, head of the global product division at Nissay Asset Management.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 6, 2025
Nissay Asset ramps up hiring as alternative investment booms
Japanese asset managers are trying to boost returns at a time when policymakers are encouraging households to shift their savings to investments.
In recent years, Japanese life insurers have increasingly entered contracts in which assets underwritten by reinsurance companies are invested to obtain higher returns.
BUSINESS
Mar 3, 2025
Japan’s FSA said to examine life insurers’ reinsurance risks
The Financial Services Agency is asking life insurers about the scale of the practice and the type of contracts they have in place.
The government will raise the out-of-pocket expense cap for expensive medical treatments this August as planned, but will reconsider plans for further increases, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told parliament on Friday.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 2, 2025
Japan to reconsider medical expense cap hike plan: Ishiba
The expense ceiling hike is slated to be conducted in three stages from this year to 2027.
Tokio Marine Holdings and other large non-life insurers are facing pressure to sell cross-held shares to improve their governance.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 17, 2025
Japan insurers sell $11 billion cross-held shares ahead of plans
The insurers are facing pressure to improve their governance after regulators fined them for coordinating adjustments in insurance fees in advance for companies.
Leaders of patients' groups submit signatures opposing the move by the government to raise the medical copayment ceiling on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Science & Health / EXPLAINER
Feb 14, 2025
Japan to rethink medical copayment hike amid patient outcry
Many patients, especially those undergoing costly but effective cancer therapy, say a hike might force them to abandon their treatments.
Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance will acquire Banner Life Insurance in the United States as it seeks to expand its business overseas amid sluggish domestic market.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 9, 2025
Meiji Yasuda to acquire U.S. peer Banner Life
Japanese life insurance companies are expanding overseas for growth as the domestic market shrinks.
Homes destroyed by wildfire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles earlier this month. Insured losses caused by this and other fires raging in the area in recent weeks have been valued at over $30 billion.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2025
Fossil fuel insurance is still way too cheap
Despite mounting losses from climate-induced disasters, insurers continue underwriting fossil fuels. Raising the cost of such policies would help cut emissions and benefit many.
Top Japan trade negotiator canceled U.S. trip over rice, report says
Ryosei Akazawa
‘Mount Fuji Lawson’ becomes a symbol of Japan’s overtourism problem
A couple poses for a wedding photo in front of a Lawson in the town of Kawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, on Aug. 25.
Philippine bid to acquire used Japanese warships gains steam
Tokyo is looking to transfer Abukuma-class vessels to the Philippines as part of broader efforts to boost the defense capabilities of like-minded neighbors amid growing Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
Japan to launch broad review of immigration policies amid rise in foreign nationals
Foreign tourists at Narita Airport in June. A report released Friday stresses that Japan is at a turning point and that current ad-hoc measures on immigration are no longer sufficient.
The Nobel Prize and a testy phone call: How the Trump-Modi relationship unraveled
U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greet one another at the start of a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington in February.
Japan to launch broad review of immigration policies amid rise in foreign nationals
Foreign tourists at Narita Airport in June. A report released Friday stresses that Japan is at a turning point and that current ad-hoc measures on immigration are no longer sufficient.
Sip a bespoke coffee for ¥4,000
At Kuro Mame, baristas customize the coffee according to the guest's preferences.
Japan is warming up to tattoos — just not permanent ones
Tattoos have a complex history in Japan, but new types of temporary ink are letting locals curious about body art experiment without the commitment.
YouTube Music Weekend is where Japan’s internet-born performers go global
Headlining the second day of YouTube Music Weekend is Vocaloid artist Kikuo, who, with 1.46 million YouTube subscribers, is one of the most popular artists in the genre.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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