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Gems, precious metals and art sold through Japan's department stores jumped 19% in the first half of 2026 to ¥330 billion, the…
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Japan's gross government debt is famously about 250% of GDP. That number counts every liability and none of the assets — the…
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Honda started work on a walking robot in 1986 and unveiled ASIMO in 2000. The closest it ever came to a business…
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Sony sold about 150,000 AIBO units across seven years, then shut the line down in 2006. Twelve years later it brought the…
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Hasbro's 1984 Transformers toys were Japanese toys in new packaging. Takara had already invented the transformation engineering — and had already failed…
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An 18-meter, 25-ton machine that could kneel, wave, and take assisted steps — but never walk on its own — pulled 1.78…
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A 1952 comic drawn by a former medical student taught Japan to treat robots as family rather than threats, and Japanese engineers…
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Twice a year, Japan's leading business daily ranks the six months' biggest consumer moments using sumo wrestling's rank names. The 2026 first-half…
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Japanese creators film companion robots waking up for the first time, then keep filming them for years — one-week updates, one-year retrospectives,…
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