When Fortune released its first modern-day Global 500 list in 1995, the firm that beat everyone else on the ranking of the world’s largest companies wasn’t Walmart or Exxon or General Motors, the giants that would later dominate the list. Rather, it was Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp.
At $176 billion, “Mitsubishi’s revenues are bigger than those of AT&T, DuPont, Citicorp, and Procter & Gamble combined,” Fortune noted in 1995.
Five other Japanese conglomerates—Mitsui, Itochu, Sumitomo, Marubeni, and Nissho Iwai (which later became Sojitz)—landed alongside Mitsubishi in the top 10. Japan was the second-most common home of Global 500 companies then, with 149 compared with the U.S.’s 151. Japan’s Global 500 companies generated more combined revenue than any other major market, beating both the U.S. and Europe.
Fast-forward 28 years later, and it’s a far different story.
Japan is now home to 41 companies on this year’s Fortune Global 500, well below the totals of the U.S. and mainland China, which have 136 and 135 Global 500 companies, respectively. Japan’s Global 500 companies generated $2.8 trillion in revenue last year, a mere 6.8% of the global total. To compare, U.S. Global 500 companies are responsible for 31.8% of the total, while mainland China contributes 27.5%.
Toyota Motor is now the largest Japanese company on the list, ranked 19th with $274 billion in revenue.
And Mitsubishi? The conglomerate is now in 45th place with $159 billion in revenue, sitting immediately behind China Baowu Steel Group, the state-owned steelmaking giant.
How did a country that dominated the Fortune Global 500 less than three decades ago fall so far, so fast? The troubles that plague Japan’s economy as a whole are also weighing on its once-mighty corporate giants: a weak yen, too few disruptive up-and-coming companies, and the rise of China.
China’s gain is Japan’s loss
China’s rise on the Global 500, from three companies in 1995 to 135 today, has displaced many Japanese firms. Those Chinese firms are encroaching on Japan’s traditional strengths, too. Earlier this year, China overtook Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter, thanks in large part to its fast-growing EV sector and companies like Warren Buffett–backed BYD (No. 212) and battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (debuting this year at No. 292).
The fallout from a weak yen
Currency fluctuations also help explain the decline of Japan’s companies on the Global 500.
Fortune converts non-U.S.-dollar-denominated revenue according to a rolling 12-month average exchange rate for a company’s fiscal year. The Japanese yen dropped from about 112 yen to the dollar to 135 yen to the dollar between the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years. That 20% decline dragged down corporate revenues when denominated in U.S. dollars.
For example, Toyota Motor’s 2022 revenue of $274 billion would equal $331 billion using 2021’s conversion rate, enough to vault the company back into this year’s top 10, ahead of UnitedHealth Group.
The weak yen did more than just distort revenues. A weaker currency makes Japanese exports cheaper and imports more expensive. Japan has long celebrated a weak yen as a way to make its major companies more competitive overseas, but as Fortune noted last year, Japanese companies also faced high prices for energy and other imports owing to the weak currency.
“Japan is engaged in the business of importing raw materials from all over the world, processing them, adding value to them, and selling them,” Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing CEO Tadashi Yanai said in April 2022. “In this context, there is no advantage if the value of a country’s currency weakens.”
Surprisingly strong export data buoyed an impressive 6% annualized rate of growth last quarter, Japan reported Tuesday, in a sign of easing COVID-era kinks in supply chains. Still, domestic spending remains low, a worrying post-pandemic trend for the world’s third-largest economy.
Japan missed the Big Tech boom
Yet there’s a broader problem: Japan’s stagnant economy over the long term has meant fewer opportunities for growth for its existing companies and fewer disruptive upstarts shaking up the rankings.
Over the past decade, Japan’s economy has grown by 5.3%. The U.S. economy has grown by 23% over the same period. Mainland China’s? 83%.
Japan essentially missed the internet boom experienced by other major economies like the U.S. and China, says Norihiro Yamaguchi, senior Japan economist at Oxford Economics. He points to the country’s relatively low number of STEM graduates, particularly among women, and a more cautious investment culture. “Japanese firms trend to focus on cost/labor reduction,” rather than “increas[ing] the top line or start[ing] new businesses,” he says.
Japan thus doesn’t have a company among the Big Tech firms that now sit near the top of the Global 500, like Alphabet, Microsoft, Alibaba, and Tencent.
“Japan, unlike China, did not see the rise of new entrepreneurs like [Alibaba founder] Jack Ma and [Tencent founder] Pony Ma,” says Vasuki Shastry, an associate Asia fellow at think tank Chatham House.
Shastry blames “stagnant economic and structural reforms, which would have created new growth engines” for the lack of innovation.
Some Japanese companies have managed to stay on the Fortune Global 500 for decades, but there are hardly any newcomers. “The lack of successful emerging companies is leading to the smaller presence of Japan” on the list, Yamaguchi says.
The Japanese firm that debuted on the list most recently is Toyota Tsusho, the trading house attached to the Toyota Group; it returned to the list six years ago, and has been part of the Global 500 list for 15 years in total.
By comparison, the U.S. and China have many more rising stars. Take Tesla. The EV manufacturer debuted on the Fortune Global 500 list three years ago and has already shot up to No. 152 in the rankings, ahead of three-quarters of Japan’s Global 500 companies.
