SoftBank Group Corp. and video game-makers are emerging as rare beneficiaries of the weaker yen, which no longer offers the clear advantage to Japan's corporate sector that it did a decade ago. Automakers and electronics-makers including Sony Group Corp. once welcomed a softer yen to bolster their competitiveness abroad and inflate the value of their repatriated profits. But after shifting production overseas in recent years to secure growth and resilient supply chains, many of them see a mixed -- or mostly neutral -- effect from the yen's free fall to 20-year lows, according to industry executives and analysts. For some consumer-facing companies, including Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing Co., the latest slump in the yen is a negative factor, exacerbating the impact of surging raw materials costs and higher energy prices amid Russia's war in Ukraine. "It's no longer the case that the weak yen benefits many firms in the manufacturing sector," Morningstar Research analyst Kazunori Ito said.

Kioxia Holdings Corp. is preparing to go public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as early as September after heightened U.S.-China tensions led to the postponement of the Japanese chipmaker's planned debut last year, sources familiar with the plan said. The envisaged listing of Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory Holdings Corp., comes as robust demand for semiconductors is giving a boost to chipmakers and their share prices. The firm is expected to submit an application to the Tokyo bourse this month to list its shares, likely on the First Section, the sources said Wednesday. Kioxia postponed its plan to go public last October after the United States under then President Donald Trump restricted exports to Huawei Technologies Co., a buyer of Kioxia chips. Kioxia manufactures flash memory chips for personal computers and smartphones, and its debut, with an estimated market capitalization of ¥1.5 trillion ($14 billion) at the time, would have been one of the largest initial public offerings in Japan last year.

Z Holdings Corp., operator of Yahoo Japan online services, and messaging app provider Line Corp. merged on Monday to expand their online services globally as they aim to better compete with U.S. and Chinese tech giants. With a combined user base of about 150 million in Japan, the merger of Z Holdings, a SoftBank Group Corp. subsidiary, and Line will make it one of the biggest information technology companies in the country. "We would like to launch a global smartphone app" in the future to expand online services worldwide with the help of global tech firms in which SoftBank Group's nearly $100 billion Vision Fund has invested, said Takeshi Idezawa, Z Holdings co-CEO and former Line president, at a news conference. Kentaro Kawabe, the other Z Holdings co-CEO said, "We can offer a wider range of services, such as search engine, e-commerce and online financial operations, than those provided by GAFA -- Google LLC, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com The surviving entity is Z Holdings, under which Yahoo Japan and Line operate their respective businesses.

A new manga plotted and designed by artificial intelligence that learned the artistic style of "Astro Boy" manga creator Osamu Tezuka will be published this week, a project sponsor said Wednesday. The manga "Paidon" to be released Thursday in the weekly comic magazine "Morning" was created by AI, which analyzed 65 works by Tezuka, including such classics as "Phoenix" and "Black Jack," according to Kioxia Holdings Corp., a memory chip maker that launched the project. By analyzing Tezuka's works, the AI generated character designs and basic storylines before professional creators added such elements as clothing and dialogue to complete the work. "I always felt sad whenever Osamu Tezuka fans said they could no longer enjoy new works by him. AI creating his new work … that's exactly the kind of (technologically advanced) world depicted in Tezuka's manga," the late author's son and video creator Makoto Tezuka, who contributed to the project, told a news conference in Tokyo.