Can startups cure Japan’s economic stagnation?

China, Mexico and Canada account for such a large share of US agricultural exports that it’s easy to forget about Japan, the country from which I’m writing this post. That’s a shame, because Japan is important to American commercial farmers.

From 2020 to 2022, Japan was the fourth largest market for US agricultural products, buying more than the Eurozone and Central Asia combined. In 2022, the US was the largest supplier of food and agricultural products to Japan and Japan was the largest market for US beef and pork and the second largest for US corn.

As important as it is to American farmers and ranchers, Japan is inordinately important to me. I spent eight years here in the 1980s and ’90s as The Wall Street Journal’s Tokyo bureau chief and have devoted many long hours to the study of the Japanese language.

In the past eight years I have visited Japan three times because, well, my friends here aren’t getting any younger. And because, having covered Japan as a journalist decades ago, I am fascinated by the ways in which the country has changed and is changing.

There are, of course, many things that haven’t changed, starting with geography. Japan houses a population of 125 million in an area smaller than California that’s 73% mountainous. Natural resources, including farmland, are scarce, which is why Japan imports 100% of its corn, more than 90% of its soybeans and more than 60% of its beef and veal.

Japan is situated uncomfortably close to China, a continent-sized country with more than a billion people, a big army and bitter memories of Japan’s invasion and persecution a century ago. Another neighbor, North Korea, has nuclear weapons, unpredictable leaders and a snarly attitude.

Japan has been able to overcome its