Japan's talent market,
in English
The data, the law and the analysis for anyone hiring or leading people in Japan: what 30,364 employers, listed and unlisted, disclose about their workforce, every employment-law change and when it bites, and a newsletter every other week on what it all means.
Try Toyota MotorSonyRakutenMitsubishi UFJ
The newsletter is free, every other week.Japan Human Capital Data
Pay, women in management, fathers on leave and the gender pay gap for all 3,789 listed companies and 26,575 unlisted employers, in English and Japanese.
Company data →Labour Law Tracker
Every Japanese employment rule change with its effective date, who it covers and what employers have to do. Next: Corporate DC and iDeCo.
Law tracker →Japan HR Glossary
Japanese HR and employment terms explained for employers, with how each one plays out in hiring and at work.
Glossary →The newsletter
Japan's talent market, read from inside it. Latest: Fractional Executives Aren't New in Japan. Fractional Execution Is.
Newsletter →Everything on the site
- A page for every listed company and unlisted employer
- Rankings and quotable statistics
- The Labour Law Tracker and the HR Glossary
- The HR Service Directory
- The newsletter, every other week
The full dataset
- Every company's figures with industry and size benchmarks
- Excel and CSV downloads, a members' dashboard and an API
- From $990 (¥165,000) a year; the State of Japan HR report $149
women in management at the median company with 5,000+ employees
Japan's biggest employers have the fewest women managers
The share falls with every step up in company size. Smaller, younger companies lead; the large manufacturers and builders that dominate Japanese employment trail.
Company size by number of employees. Median share of women in management positions, 3,789 listed companies, parent-company figures from each company's latest annual securities report (EDINET). Data as of 14 October 2026.
Look up any company · More Japan HR statistics · The State of Japan HR 2026 report
Fractional Executives Aren't New in Japan. Fractional Execution Is.
Japan has rented senior judgement for decades under the title of senior adviser. What's new is renting senior execution, and that needs a different contract, a different price and a different search.
The Hardest Market in the World
A field guide to executive recruitment in Japan: why hiring leaders here breaks the global playbook, and what to do about it.
Talent is always a differentiator for business success — even more so in Japan.Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
Yan Sen Lu is Managing Director of Makana Partners K.K., an executive search firm in Tokyo and Yokohama, and has spent two decades hiring senior and bilingual leaders in Japan. The Hardest Market is where he and his team publish what they learn. More about Yan Sen