Why Japan chose to promote AI rather than regulate it — and where that strategy hits its limits

KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.

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When governments around the world set out to govern artificial intelligence, most of them reach for rules. The European Union has adopted a binding, risk-tiered framework; China steers deployment through centralised directives; and the United States relies on executive orders and agency guidance that shift with each administration. In contrast, Japan took a different route. In May 2025, its National Diet passed the Act on Promotion of Research and Development, and Utilization of AI-related Technology — a law whose organising concept is not regulation or oversight, but promotion.

In a review published in the KeAi journal Risk Sciences, two researchers from Tsinghua University and The University of Tokyo asked why Japan made this choice, and what it has achieved so far.

“The instruments a government chooses reveal its assumptions about the nature of the problem,” explains co-author Hiromi M. Yokoyama from The University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe. “The urgency of Japan's governance problem comes not from the risks of AI being used, but from the economic and social cost of AI going unused.”

The researchers described a society in which AI adoption lagged well behind other advanced economies, public trust in AI was notably low, and an ageing population coincided with ageing industrial IT systems whose maintenance engineers were approaching retirement. Labour shortages run across agriculture, nursing, construction, retail and logistics. Against this background, AI is cast as a technology that can compensate for labour the demographic structure no longer supplies.

One finding stood out. Cross-national surveys by the team show that Japanese respondents score among the highest on objective tests of AI knowledge, yet rank lowest in confidence about their own understanding. Japanese reluctance, the authors note, concentrates in trust rather than acceptance.

The study also explains why promotion could work at all in Japan. The country's tradition of administrative guidance – in which agencies steer private behaviour through non-binding recommendation – together with a corporate culture attentive to compliance and reputation, and close coordination between ministries and organised business, allows voluntary guidelines to function as real constraints without legal compulsion. The Act's central organisational instrument, an AI Strategy Headquarters chaired by the Prime Minister, is designed to overcome the fragmentation of authority across ministries that has hampered Japanese policy in other fields.

As to whether it has worked, in the period since the Act was passed, personal use of generative AI rose sharply and trial use within firms approached international levels. However, the authors identified a second dimension that promotional instruments do not reach. That is, the gap between large firms and small and medium enterprises in actual deployment has not narrowed, and self-assessed transformation maturity remains near the bottom of the scale.

"Adoption is not a single quantity," says co-author Shuo Wang of Tsinghua University's School of Marxism. "Trial and organisational integration respond to different instruments. Promotional instruments lower the cost of trying. They do not supply the capital, technical personnel or managerial authority that system replacement and process redesign require — and these are precisely what smaller firms lack."

The Japanese government appears to have reached a similar conclusion: its second AI Basic Plan, adopted in July 2026, shifts the objective to organisational change in how decisions are made and work is organised. The authors also cautioned that voluntary compliance offers weak protection against rare, high-impact events, and that codifying a promotional orientation in statute may create path dependencies that resist regulatory instruments when circumstances warrant them. Yet the annual revision built into the Basic Plan mechanism — which held through a change of premiership — offers a channel for adjustment that does not require reopening the law.

“A governance model may succeed on its own terms while the underlying problem persists in a form its instruments cannot readily reach.” Yokoyama adds. “Japan's case shows that where adoption is low, the governance problem has a different structure from the innovation-versus-risk balance that dominates comparative debate, and it calls for different instruments.”

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Contact the author: Hiromi M. Yokoyama, Center for Data-Driven Discovery (CD3), Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan. hiromi.yokoyama@ipmu.jp

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 300 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

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Journal

Risk Sciences

DOI

10.1016/j.risk.2026.100062

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

"Promotion" as a policy instrument: The social roots and implications of Japan's light-touch AI governance

 

How one of Earth’s worst volcanic disasters affected societies

Lund University

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image: 

Kikai-Akahoya volcanic deposit in southern Kyushu. This is the “disaster layer” of volcanic ash that runs across the landscape. Archaeologists look at what life was like below this line and also above it to understand human impacts and responses.

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Credit: Lund University

A new international study led by Lund University examines what happened to population levels after the Kikai-Akahoya volcanic eruption in prehistoric Japan. The results paint a more complex picture than what has previously been believed. 

The Kikai-Akahoya eruption took place in Japan some 7,300 years ago.  At the time, Jomon foraging communities lived in Japan, surviving as hunter-gatherers.

”This eruption must have been devastating, exploding out of the sea bed with little warning. It battered the Japanese islands with powerful earthquakes and enormous tsunamis, and then blanketed the landscape with meters of volcanic ash,” explains senior author Peter Jordan, professor in archaeology at Lund University.

The consequences of the eruption have been widely debated by archaeologists for decades. Some argue that it was an ‘apocalypse’ in which all human life abruptly ended closest to the epicentre, while others have started to argue for a local population survival, even in areas quite close to the eruption. 

The research team found that both these versions  - total collapse or continuity - were too simplistic. 

On one hand, populations did decline, as ecosystems suffered and areas became uninhabitable. On the other hand, the researchers found evidence that humans were in fact resourceful in the face of dire circumstances. In some cases, the population actually increased in the period after the eruption.

”The disaster caused major loss of life. However, survivors migrated, forged new social relations, innovated new kinds of economy, and appear to have found creative ways to exist and later thrive in the new post-disaster conditions,” says lead author Enrico Crema, professor at Cambridge University.

According to Peter Jordan, the research demonstrates how unpredictable and complex the aftermath of a major disaster can be.

”This study helps in creating a deeper understanding of the contingent ways in which cultures and societies cope with sudden shocks and catastrophes. Even in the most impossible situations, survivors and communities have choices, however limited: they need to act and make decisions, they need to adjust, collaborate and find new connections and social networks,” he concludes.

Population patterns identified by the study:

- Jomon forager populations were already in decline in southern Kyushu long before the eruption, and so the disaster hit a region that was already sparsely populated and only being visited by highly mobile groups. 

- Populations were growing in northern Kyushu and this population growth trend actually continued right through the disaster and its aftermath, despite the massive and enduring damage to ecosystems. The authors suggest this resilient growth trend may be the result of ‘refugees’ moving out of the worst hit areas immediately after the disaster.

- Inland survivors appear to have moved away and clustered along northern coastlines, where marine ecosystems quickly recovered. Population growth may have been accelerated by new kinds of adaptation focusing on exploiting the abundant resources of the sea. 

- The more distant areas of Japan had experienced population growth prior to the eruption, but saw demographic stagnation or even decline after the disaster. These far-reaching effects have never been identified before, and may be linked to short-term climate change triggered by the eruption, or to catastrophic tooth attrition among the deer and boar that the Jomon relied on for their food supplies (possibly a consequence of the animals grazing in ash covered landscapes), or to a suite of other volcanic impacts on human health and well-being.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeh7197

Article Title

Divergent Demographic Responses to the Kikai-Akahoya Volcanic Catastrophe in Mid-Holocene Japan

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

 

Engineers make quality, low-cost carbon fiber from coproducts of paper, energy production

Iowa State University

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image: 

Iowa State engineers are turning the low-value ingredients in these beakers into the high-value carbon fiber on the lab bench. Left to right are Tannon Daugaard next to spools of carbon fiber; Abdulrahman A. B. A. Mohammed holding a beaker of bio-oil; and Xianglan Bai holding a beaker of lignin.

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Credit: Iowa State University/Christopher Gannon.

AMES, Iowa – Xianglan Bai illustrates her development of biobased carbon fiber with two beakers in researchers’ hands.

 

The first contains low-cost, low-value and plentiful softwood kraft lignin, the tough stuff that strengthens and waterproofs the cell walls of trees and plants. The natural binder is a coproduct of paper production.

 

The second contains a low-value, watery fraction of bio-oil, a liquid fuel produced by a thermochemical process called fast pyrolysis. The process uses heat to break down corn stalks, wood chips and other biomass to produce a bio-oil for heating that can be divided into fractions with various properties and performance characteristics. (The process also produces a solid biochar that can be used as fertilizer.)

 

“We’re taking lignin, considered a low-value byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, and aqueous bio-oil, also considered to be a low-value product, and putting them together to come up with a high-value product,” said Bai, an Iowa State University professor of mechanical engineering and an associate director of Iowa State’s Bioeconomy Institute.

 

“This is where chemistry and materials science beautifully meet,” she said.

 

‘Real-world solutions’

Carbon fiber is a strong and ultra-lightweight material used in aerospace, transportation, wind energy and infrastructure applications. You’ll also find it in sport and performance industries such as high-end bicycles and motorsports.

 

It is typically manufactured using petroleum-based materials. But the high costs of those precursors are raising the costs of carbon fiber and limiting its use to premium applications.

 

The U.S. National Science Foundation, as part of its Translation to Practice program, which aims to “turn scientific discoveries into real-world solutions,” is supporting further development of Bai’s biobased carbon fiber with a four-year, $2 million grant.

 

It’s the ‘thermo-mechanochemistry’

Bai and her research group have been researching the production of biobased carbon fiber since 2015, with much of the work focused on lignin as a potential source material.

 

This wasn’t a new idea. Japanese researchers started looking at lignin for carbon fiber back in the 1960s. But the performance of the resulting carbon fiber was inferior to petroleum-based versions.

 

Even after decades of trying, the biobased carbon fibers didn’t have the performance levels required for use in cars and other performance-critical industries.

 

With the support of several grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bai and her research team have developed several patented and patent-pending technologies “that enable the production of low-cost, lignin-based carbon fibers with exceptional performance properties,” Bai said.

 

One example is introducing “thermo-mechanochemistry” of lignin, a new material chemistry her group recently discovered. The process heats lignin and puts the spun fiber under increasing mechanical stress, fundamentally changing its chemical transformation and the evolution of its material structures. The result is much stronger carbon fiber while maintaining costs below $5 per pound.

 

Researchers measured a tensile strength, or stretching, up to 2.45 gigapascals in the biobased carbon fiber and a tensile modulus, or stiffness, up to 236 gigapascals. That easily meets U.S. Department of Energy carbon fiber recommendations for the auto industry of 1.72 for tensile strength and 172 for tensile modulus while keeping costs from $5 to $7 per pound.

 

Another example of innovation in Bai’s lab is using watery bio-oil to modify non-softening lignin into melt-spinnable precursors. The modified lignin reduced the stabilization time for spun fiber from tens of hours to two to four hours, reducing production bottlenecks and costs.

 

Commercial production

The new grant will allow Bai, her research group and industry collaborators to move from batch production in a lab to commercially relevant continuous production.

 

Additional leaders working on that transition include Tannon Daugaard, an engineer and faculty member for the Bioeconomy Institute and a co-founder of Rise Energy, an Ames-based startup; and Ryan Smith, deputy director of the Bioeconomy Institute, also a co-founder of Rise Energy, which is supplying bio-oil to the project. 

 

Major collaborators include Harper International of New York state, Latis Materials of Maine and Rise Energy.

 

The result could boost the value of paper and bio-oil production while providing the country with a domestic source of high-performance, biobased carbon fiber.

 

“Commercializing this breakthrough technology could significantly reduce manufacturing costs,” the researchers wrote in a project summary, “while securing a reliable domestic supply of a critical structural material, thereby strengthening U.S. economic competitiveness.”

 

  

Lignin, bio-oil and carbon fiber.

Credit

Iowa State University/Christopher Gannon.

 

Op-Ed: Aluminum’s calm belies lingering supply-chain stress

Reuters | October 14, 2026 | 

Emirates Global Aluminium is the world’s largest ‘premium aluminum’ producer. Credit: Emirates Global Aluminium | LinkedIn

 (The opinions expressed here are those of Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters)

 Iranian missile attacks on Gulf smelters and the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz have knocked out almost 3 million metric tons of aluminium production capacity. Yet, eight months on, the market is seemingly unconcerned.

Indeed, London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month aluminium CMAL3 is now trading just above $3,000 per ton, which is where it was in early February before the US and Israel unleashed Operation Epic Fury against Iran.

Traders are betting that a combination of rising output in Indonesia and higher product exports from China can tide things over until the Gulf smelters are repaired and shipping fully resumes in the Strait of Hormuz.

The surface calm, however, masks lingering stress in a physical supply chain that is still reeling from the unprecedented disruption.

Plugging the gaps

Gulf production of primary aluminium slumped by an annualized 2.8 million tons between February and May, according to the International Aluminium Institute.

The collapse reflected the forced shutdown of Emirates Global Aluminium’s Al-Taweelah smelter and damage to Aluminium Bahrain’s facility, as well as logistics problems at other Gulf operators.

Regional production has since been creeping higher as both plants undergo repairs and ramp production back up, but the August run-rate of 3.5 million tons annualised was still 2.6 million tons below pre-hostility levels.

China and Indonesia have stepped in to plug the gap.

China’s exports of primary metal are constrained by a hefty 30% export duty, but outbound volumes of alloy doubled year-on-year to 349,000 tons in the January to August period.

Exports of semi-finished products such as aluminium plate, sheet and strip surged by 774,000 tons to 4.46 million tons over the same period.

Indonesia’s new Chinese-owned smelters are also ramping up at speed. The country exported 114,000 tons of primary metal in July, a fresh monthly record.

Around half of last year’s Indonesian aluminium exports went to China but shipments since the Iran war have been dispersed across Asia, Europe and even the US.

Physical stress

Improved availability in Asia has caused physical premiums to ease from their June highs.

Japanese buyers have negotiated a fourth-quarter delivery premium of $255 per ton over the LME cash price, which marks a 35% decline from the previous quarter.

However, that’s still higher than the $200-per-ton premium that was trading at the start of the Iran war, attesting to continued tension even in this relatively well-supplied part of the market.

European buyers are paying significantly more for their physical metal.

The CME European duty-paid premium EPDc1 is trading at $559 per ton over LME cash, double the level at the end of February.

US buyers, of course, are paying more than anyone else for their aluminium with the US Midwest premium trading at an elevated $2,312 per ton over LME cash, though this is as much about President Donald Trump’s 50% import tariffs as anything else.

Low inventory

Elevated premiums are sucking available metal into the physical supply chain, leaving LME stocks at multi-year lows.

Registered inventory of 238,625 tons is the lowest level this century. Most of what remains is Russian metal, which reduces its appeal to most Western buyers.

LME off-warrant inventory has also been steadily shrinking since February and now totals just 73,509 tons, which is the lowest reading since the LME introduced this category of stocks reporting in 2020.

Time-spreads have eased considerably since June, when the cash premium over three-month metal CMAL0-3 jumped to over $100 per ton.

But there is lingering tightness in the front part of the curve. After a period of mild contango, cash has just returned to a small premium over three-month metal again.

Time-spread tension is likely to remain a feature of the London market as long as physical premiums remain so high.

The aluminium market has proved highly resilient to the sudden loss of so much production, but the stress lines are still there beneath the calm surface.

(Writing by Andy Home; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Russian aluminium’s share of available LME stocks almost 100% in September

Reuters | October 14, 2026 

Aluminum factory in Russia. (Reference image by uc_rusal_photo_gallery, Wikimedia Commons.)

The share of available Russian-origin aluminium stocks in London Metal Exchange warehouses rose to almost 100% in September from 95% in August, exchange data showed on Wednesday, leaving only a tiny amount of Indian metal as an alternative.

Total available, or on-warrant, aluminium inventories 6.5% to 226,675 metric tons at the end of last month, the lowest since March 2025, as conflict in the Middle East tightens global supply.

Available Russian aluminium stocks fell by 3,425 tons to 226,625 tons last month, but their share of total rose to 99.98% as Indian stocks, the only other origin material available, dropped by 12,400 tons to just 50 tons.

Many traders have shunned Russian metal even though material produced before April 13, 2024, remains eligible for trading. Aluminium made in Russia after that date was barred from the LME warehousing system to comply with Western sanctions.

“We’ve got to a place where I think the market has accepted that the (aluminium) stocks are where they are at this very low level and the quantity that is in there isn’t really wanted,” StoneX senior metals analyst Natalie Scott-Gray said on a webinar on Wednesday.

“It’s going to take time for these stocks actually to start to increase. If we look at even the queues for materials or cancelled warrants, there’s not a lot of orders for it.”

Meanwhile, the share of Chinese-made copper in available LME copper stocks fell to 28% at the end of September from 44% the previous month.

Total available copper stocks rose to 131,450 tons from 111,175 tons at the end of August as a drop in the arbitrage to ship metal to the US COMEX exchange incentivised more deliveries on to the LME.

The volume of available Chinese copper fell by 12,125 tons to 37,275 tons, while volumes from Chile and Democratic Republic of Congo increased.

The share of Chinese-origin nickel edged down to 69% of available LME stocks at the end of September from 70% the prior month.

(Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Alexander Smith)

 

NTT may build JPY1 trillion Anthropic data centre in Osaka

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By IntelliNews - Osaka Bureau October 15, 2026

Japanese telecoms group NTT Inc (TYO: 9432) is considering building the first core data centre for US artificial intelligence developer Anthropic in Japan, Kyodo News reported on October 14, citing a source familiar with the matter. The facility would be located in Osaka Prefecture, with NTT Data Group Corp handling the project.

Construction is expected to cost about JPY1 trillion ($6.3bn), which would place it among the largest projects of its kind in Japan. The plan comes as Tokyo courts AI developers to locate computing capacity on Japanese soil while worldwide demand for such infrastructure climbs. Anthropic opened its first Asian office in Tokyo in October last year, and a local data centre is expected to support the expansion of its Japanese business.

Because data centres process sensitive corporate and personal information, keeping facilities inside the country reduces risks tied to operations and cross-border data transfers.

Japan's Digital Minister Toshiharu Furukawa said on October 13 that the government had asked Anthropic to consider Japan as a location for a data centre. He made the request during a meeting in Tokyo with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Furukawa said Japan wants to use Anthropic's know-how to strengthen a Japanese institute's capacity to detect vulnerabilities. In October last year the two sides agreed to share information on how companies can assess the capabilities, limitations and risks of AI models.

The discussions also covered AI regulation. Furukawa said the government would keep consulting AI developers and industry representatives as it works out its approach. California's rules, which focus on safeguards and accountability measures, are among the models under review.

Furukawa said that developing computing capacity at home would allow Japan to capture more of the economic gains from AI and secure a firmer place in the technology's supply chain.

 

Wearable cyborg training linked to longer walking distances in people with ALS

Study finds increased walking distance while quality of life remains stable over the short term

Toho University

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Could a wearable robot help people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) walk farther? A new study from Toho University in Japan examined walking performance and quality of life in 30 patients with ALS who underwent training with the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL). After completing one course of treatment, participants walked nearly 12 meters farther in a two-minute walking test, while their quality-of-life scores remained largely stable. The findings suggest that walking performance may improve over the short term without a measurable decline in quality of life, although larger controlled studies are needed to confirm the benefits of HAL-assisted rehabilitation.

 

For people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), everyday movements can become increasingly difficult. The progressive disease damages the nerve cells that control muscles, gradually making activities such as walking, speaking, swallowing, and breathing more challenging. Although some medications can slow the progression of ALS, restoring lost muscle strength remains difficult. Rehabilitation therefore plays an important role in helping patients maintain their physical abilities and independence.

One promising approach involves a wearable robotic device called the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL. Unlike robots that simply move a person's legs, HAL is designed to respond to the wearer's own intention to move. Sensors attached to the skin detect faint electrical signals produced by muscle activity, allowing the device to provide assistance during walking exercises.

In Japan, HAL treatment has been covered by public health insurance for certain neuromuscular diseases, including ALS, since 2016. Researchers at Toho University have been providing HAL-assisted gait training to patients with ALS since 2018. Previous studies suggested that patients could walk farther after treatment. But an important question remained: would changes in walking performance be accompanied by changes in quality of life?

To investigate, the researchers studied 30 patients with ALS who completed one course of HAL-assisted training. The program included nine sessions over approximately four to five weeks, with each session lasting 20 to 40 minutes, including preparation and rest breaks.

Before and after treatment, the researchers measured how far patients could walk in two minutes. They also evaluated walking speed, cadence, and step length over a shorter, 10-meter distance. Quality of life was assessed using the SF-36 questionnaire, which measures physical, mental, and social aspects of health.

The most noticeable change was in the two-minute walking test.

Before training, patients walked an average of about 92 meters in two minutes. Afterward, that distance increased to about 104 meters—nearly 12 meters farther. The increase was statistically significant.

However, walking speed, cadence, and step length measured over 10 meters did not change significantly. This suggests that patients were able to cover more ground during a two-minute walk, even though their short-distance walking measurements remained largely unchanged.

 

Quality of life remained stable

The researchers also looked at how patients rated their physical and mental well-being. Before treatment, scores for physical health and social roles were lower than Japanese population averages. Mental well-being, however, was relatively well preserved.

After one course of HAL training, quality-of-life scores remained largely stable. None of the three main SF-36 component scores showed a statistically significant change. For patients living with a progressive disease such as ALS, maintaining quality of life is an important goal of care. Although this study cannot establish that HAL treatment prevented a decline in quality of life, the findings show that patients' reported quality of life did not change significantly during the short observation period.

The results also highlight an important point: improvements in walking performance do not necessarily lead to immediate changes in how patients experience their daily lives. Quality of life is shaped by many factors beyond physical function, including emotional well-being and social participation.

 

What comes next?

The researchers caution that the findings should not be interpreted as proof that HAL treatment alone caused the increase in walking distance. The study did not include a control group, and the clinical importance of an approximately 12-meter increase in the two-minute walking test remains uncertain. Nevertheless, the findings provide useful information about short-term walking performance and quality of life following HAL-assisted rehabilitation in patients with ALS.

Larger studies comparing HAL-assisted training with other rehabilitation approaches, along with longer follow-up periods, will be needed to determine whether improvements in walking performance can be maintained and whether repeated treatment affects patients' daily activities and quality of life.

For now, the study offers a hopeful but measured message: after HAL-assisted training, patients with ALS walked farther in a two-minute test, while their quality of life remained largely stable over the short term.

 

Publication information

Journal: Frontiers in Neurology

Article title: Impact of Hybrid Assistive Limb on Gait Ability and Quality of Life in Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Authors: Harumi Morioka, Takehisa Hirayama, Mari Shibukawa, Tatsuki Sugisawa, Junpei Nagasawa, Sayori Hanashiro, Junya Ebina, Ryuichi Okamoto, Makiko Ogawa, Ikuko Okuni, Yoshitaka Murakami, and Osamu Kano

Publication date: October 14, 2026

doi: 10.3389/fneur.2026.1823485

Article URL: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2026.1823485/

 

 

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Journal

Frontiers in Neurology

DOI

10.3389/fneur.2026.1823485

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Impact of hybrid assistive limb on gait ability and quality of life in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026