The cull you can't count: rate rises, trade-credit reform and Japan's small-firm squeeze
Japan logged 10,425 corporate failures in the year to March 2026, the second year running above ten thousand. Read the headline on its own and the story tells itself: the small-firm sector is finally cracking. The same dataset says something stranger underneath. Total liabilities came to ¥1.55trn, down for a second year from ¥2.25trn, and failures of firms with under ¥50m of liabilities made up 62.1 per cent of the count, a record in data back to fiscal 2000 (Teikoku Databank). The number of failures is climbing while the money involved shrinks. The two point opposite ways. ...