IN the United States, the backlash to artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be scaling almost as fast as the technology itself.<\/p>\n
Japan though, offers a different case study.<\/p>\n
The country has been slow to adopt AI, but it\u2019s unusually calm about it.<\/p>\n
From the outside, its late start is easy to dismiss as another sign of digital underperformance.<\/p>\n
It may instead prove a valuable opportunity to skip some of the messier, early phases of diffusion that have been marked by hype, risk and expensive experimentation.<\/p>\n
Japan can learn from the first-movers and skip to the impactful part of turning the technology into real economic infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Practicality over performance<\/p>\n
AI has the potential to be more practical than performative here; there\u2019s less angst about displacing workers when the labour force is shrinking.<\/p>\n
Some of the nation\u2019s constraints, from how to care for an ageing population to language barriers and software gaps, are exactly the kinds of problems AI can solve.<\/p>\n
Diffusion, meanwhile, is finally picking up.<\/p>\n
During the first quarter of this year (1Q26), AI adoption in Japan increased 3.4%, more than three times faster than the global average, according to Microsoft Corp\u2019s AI Economy Institute published 1Q26 report.<\/p>\n
Separate data from Tokyo-based telecommunications giant NTT Docomo Inc found that usage nearly doubled between this February and last.<\/p>\n
In a country long admired for hardware but less so for software, engineers are using AI to narrow the gap.<\/p>\n
The report found that developers in Japan uploaded 129% more code changes to GitHub than a year earlier, compared with the global average of 78% \u2013 a signal that the technology is already changing how coders work.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s tech companies have noticed.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a new wave of entrepreneurship taking place in Japan and \u201cwe want to be part of the story\u201d, Dmitry Shevelenko, the chief business officer at San Francisco-based Perplexity AI, told me at a recent event in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s far from alone as the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and others are opening offices.<\/p>\n
Yet, the country remains relatively insulated, and there\u2019s still hesitation about going all-in with foreign institutions.<\/p>\n
Companies that want to be part of Japan\u2019s AI transformation should act like long-term stakeholders, hiring local staff and offering serious partnerships.<\/p>\n
This could also mean fostering deeper collaborations with universities and research communities.<\/p>\n
Borrowing from local ecosystem<\/p>\n
Scientists remain one of the few groups in Japan that still command high public trust, according to an Edelman survey.<\/p>\n
AI firms that want credibility should borrow less from Silicon Valley\u2019s hype machine and more from Japan\u2019s institutional ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Still, as Shevelenko puts it: \u201cIf you\u2019re successful here, it\u2019s a real signal to the rest of the world that you\u2019ve built something of incredible quality.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s correct that this discernment is an edge.<\/p>\n
Business leaders should also focus less on promises of future abundance and more on urgent, practical problems (one reason Silicon Valley\u2019s pitch is no longer resonating so easily in the United States).<\/p>\n
In Japan, tourism is an obvious example.<\/p>\n
AI could do much more than translate menus.<\/p>\n
The technology can build smarter itineraries, redirect travellers to regions that still need visitors, smooth congestion and pretty much help spread the record inbound demand beyond the same crowded destinations.<\/p>\n
Tokyo has favoured a light-touch regulatory approach, with the goal of becoming the most AI-friendly nation in the world.<\/p>\n
But policymakers should also recognise the advantage of playing catch-up.<\/p>\n
Support for smaller firms<\/p>\n
Japan can watch, learn and adapt what works.<\/p>\n
This is especially true in higher-risk bets like agentic AI, where you hand off more autonomy to machines.<\/p>\n
None of this guarantees success.<\/p>\n
Japanese corporate culture remains cautious and the current consumer curiosity doesn\u2019t automatically translate into broader transformation.<\/p>\n
Business leaders and policymakers are right to encourage startups, but they must extend support to smaller and medium firms.<\/p>\n
In addition, mid-career and older workers are still less likely to use the technology though they remain a large swath of the labour force.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s most prominent tech investor, Softbank Group Corp founder Masayoshi Son, is making one of the world\u2019s boldest bets on the technology with a US$60bil commitment to OpenAI.<\/p>\n
Time horizon proves instructive<\/p>\n
Whether that proves visionary or reckless remains to be seen, but the time horizon is instructive.<\/p>\n
On Softbank\u2019s most recent earnings call, its chief financial officer said the company is looking at the next 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AI revolution has only just begun,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
For Japan, the long view is the right one. The current frenzy creates a fear of missing out or Fomo pressure to spend big now and justify later.<\/p>\n
But if AI is truly a transformative general-purpose technology \u2013 more akin to the steam engine that propelled the Industrial Revolution than a new smartphone app \u2013 the winners will not be the ones who sprint first.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll be those who do the marathon task of embedding it deepest across the economy. \u2014 Bloomberg<\/p>\n
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. The views expressed here are the writer\u2019s own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IN the United States, the backlash to artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be scaling almost as fast as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[22921,22918,217,215,785,22919,214,22917,216,10506,22920,909],"class_list":["post-29335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aiadoption","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-business-of-japan","tag-commentary","tag-digitaltransformation","tag-japans-business","tag-japanai","tag-japanese-business","tag-openai","tag-perplexityai","tag-softbank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}