Japanese companies hurt by a weak yen
now outnumber those it helps.

Listed companies mentioning a strong or weak yen under Business Risks barely moved from FY2017 to FY2021, at 290–330 (just over 8%). In FY2022 the count reached 377 (9.65%), then 435 (11.03%) in FY2024 and 425 (10.88%) in FY2025. In FY2026, 313 of the 2,788 reports filed so far (11.23%) mention it. Fiscal year is the year the period ends; for a March year-end, FY2022 is the year to March 2022. Results after the yen's sharp fall from October 2022 mostly enter from FY2023.

When the yen falls, it is natural for more companies to mention a strong or weak yen. What this article looks at is what they write: which grew, and by how much, the companies a weak yen helps or the ones it hurts.

AI read each paragraph mentioning a strong or weak yen and sorted it by whether the company says a weak or a strong yen improves or worsens its own results, into the four types below.

1. Weak yen helps, strong yen hurts (exports, translating overseas sales)

2. Weak yen hurts, strong yen helps (imports, raw materials, fuel, costs in dollars)

3. Depends on business or currency

4. Other (mentioned only as background on the economy or prices)

* FY2026 is an early count (2,788 reports filed so far, mostly March year-ends).

Companies saying a weak yen helps them went from 166 in FY2017 to 162 in FY2025, almost unchanged. Companies saying it hurts them doubled from 99 to 199, drawing level with the first group in FY2022 and pulling ahead at 188 to 160 in FY2023.

Following the same companies, the helped side barely changed. Of the 164 companies that wrote only that a weak yen helps them in FY2021, 129 wrote the same in FY2024, 10 came to write both, and none switched to writing only that it hurts them. The 25 that stopped (15%) are fewer than the 26% that stopped over the same three-year span before the yen fell, FY2018 to FY2021. The growth came from companies newly writing that a weak yen hurts them: 99 of those writing it in FY2024 had made no mention of the yen helping or hurting them in FY2021. From FY2018 to FY2021, before the yen fell, only 19 newly started writing it.

In FY2025 the share mentioning a strong or weak yen is highest in nonferrous metals (7 of 33 companies), electric appliances (48 of 230), banks (16 of 82), precision instruments (9 of 51) and textiles (8 of 46): manufacturers earning abroad and banks holding foreign-currency assets.

TSE 33 industry groups. Only industries with at least 30 companies in FY2025, sorted by the FY2025 share. Counts are companies mentioning a strong or weak yen, whether as a gain or a loss.

The yen averaged ¥107–112 to the dollar from 2017 to 2021. On October 21, 2022 it hit ¥151.90, its weakest in about 32 years, and on November 5, 2026 it was still at ¥158. The Bank of Japan's yen-based import price index rose 31.3% in the year from April 2021 and 33.2% in the year after.

Of the 99 companies that newly wrote that a weak yen hurts them, 82 make less than 10% of their sales overseas. That compares with 54 of the 81 that had already written it, and 1,871 of the 3,183 companies writing neither: the newcomers lean most toward selling in Japan. By contrast, half of the 144 companies saying a weak yen helps them (71) make 50% or more of sales overseas.

Companies by share of overseas sales, among those filing for both FY2021 and FY2024. New: wrote neither in FY2021. The rest give no sales by region or are not in Katana's data.

Most cite imported goods, raw materials and fuel. United Arrows warns of purchase prices soaring with exchange-rate moves, mainly a weak yen, and Jason, a discount variety store chain, writes that electricity and fuel costs have risen with the prolonged weak yen, making its low-cost model harder to keep. A weak yen reaches not only companies selling imports but also those paying their stores' power bills.

Twelve of the 99 new companies cite payments abroad for servers and software. Yappli writes that because it operates in Japan, it sees its exposure to exchange rates as relatively limited, then adds that its server costs and some internal tools are affected by them. Hatena writes that the data centers it uses are paid mainly in US dollars. Japan's digital deficit, which includes payments abroad for cloud and software, hit a record ¥6.6 trillion in 2024 and was ¥6.7 trillion in 2025. A weak yen makes those payments larger in yen.

The side a weak yen helps is manufacturers that have long earned abroad. Their number has stayed nearly flat for nine years, and following FY2021 to FY2024, eight in ten are the same companies. Some on that side, like Nippon Steel, have added that the cost impact of a rapidly weakening yen could be larger than before. Those who joined the side it hurts have almost no overseas sales and pay for imports, fuel or servers abroad.

• Source：ecodb, USD/JPY exchange rate history (annual averages from Bank of Japan data; Japanese)
• Source：Tokyo Shoko Research, weak-yen bankruptcies in January 2023 (¥151.90 on October 21, 2022; Japanese)
• Source：NHK, yen market (November 5, 2026, Japanese)
• Source：Bank of Japan, Corporate Goods Price Index (April 2023 release; import price index history; Japanese)
• Source：Nikkei xTECH, Japan's 2024 digital deficit up 20% to ¥6.6 trillion (based on Ministry of Finance balance of payments; Japanese)
• Source：Institute for International Monetary Affairs, what the balance of payments shows about Japan's economy (July 8, 2026, Japanese)

We compared the results of companies writing that a weak yen helps them, and of those newly writing that it hurts them, each with companies in the same industry that make no mention of the yen helping or hurting. Peers face the same weak yen, so this shows only the gap at companies more exposed than their peers. The two sides are exposed in opposite ways, so effects common to both, such as inflation and the post-pandemic recovery, cancel out in the comparison. Periods are three years before the yen fell (FY2017–FY2020) and three years after (FY2021–FY2024).

The clear gap is in the helped side's sales. Before the yen fell they grew in line with peers; after, they grew 4.6 points faster. Ending the period in FY2025 gives 4.5 points, almost the same. The hurt side was slightly ahead of peers before and behind after, but the gap nearly disappears when the end of the period moves by a year.

Before the yen fell: FY2017–FY2020; after: FY2021–FY2024 (three years each). Helped: companies writing that a weak yen helps them. Hurt (new): domestic companies (under 10% of sales abroad) newly writing that it hurts them. Median gap after subtracting, from each company's sales growth and change in operating margin, the median for companies in the same industry with no mention of the yen helping or hurting (domestic companies for the hurt side).

Operating margins, by contrast, show no gap on either side. Even on the helped side, the change in operating margin was 0.8 points below peers. Overseas subsidiaries' sales and costs are both translated into yen at the same rate and grow together, so a weak yen may enlarge sales without raising margins.

• Scope: listed companies (with a securities code) that filed an annual securities report for the fiscal year. Fiscal year is the year the period ends. Source: annual reports on EDINET (Japan FSA).
• We counted whether the Business Risks section contains 円高 (strong yen) or 円安 (weak yen). Mentions of only exchange-rate fluctuations, naming neither a strong nor a weak yen, are not counted.
• FY2026 covers reports filed by late October 2026, mostly March year-end companies. December year-end companies are not yet included.
• Disclosure rules changed from March 2020 year-ends, and the risk section got longer (median length 2,272 characters in FY2017, 3,495 in FY2020). Even so, the share mentioning a strong or weak yen barely moved from FY2017 to FY2021.
• Whether a weak yen helps or hurts is classified from what each company wrote in its risk section; it does not show that the company actually gained or lost.
• AI read each relevant paragraph and assigned one of the four types; a company with several paragraphs can count in several types. Of 28 paragraphs from FY2024–2025 re-read against the original text, 24 were classified reasonably. The misses put paragraphs that do say whether a weak yen helps or hurts under Other (such as Pacific Metals, whose product prices rise with a weak yen), so types 1 and 2 may be slightly undercounted.
• Tracking the same companies uses the 3,626 companies that filed for both FY2021 and FY2024, with each company's paragraphs combined into one type (companies writing both types 1 and 2 count as type 3).
• Overseas sales use the ratio Katana calculates from sales by region in each company's latest annual report. "Under 10% abroad" includes companies with no overseas sales and those that give no ratio but state that over 90% of sales are in Japan.
• The comparison of results covers domestic companies (no overseas sales, over 90% of sales in Japan, or an overseas ratio under 10%) with figures at both ends of each period: before the yen fell (FY2017–FY2020) and after (FY2021–FY2024). From each company's sales growth and change in margins, we subtract the median for domestic companies in the same industry (TSE 33 groups) that write neither. The gaps include factors other than the yen.
• The FY2017 company count (3,391) is lower than the actual number of listed companies; some companies that later delisted may be missing.

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