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The story
According to statistics released on October 8, 2026 by Teikoku Databank and Tokyo Shoko Research, corporate bankruptcies in the first half of FY2026 (April–September) came to 5,362 and 5,373 cases respectively, marking the 10th consecutive half-year increase by both measures. Total liabilities also rose more than 20% year-on-year, with credit-settlement processor Zen Toshin’s collapse — carrying over ¥115.1 billion in debt — the largest of the period. On 5ch forums, commenters debated the causes at length: some pointed to the apparent contradiction of bankruptcies rising despite a supposedly booming economy, others argued it reflects the culling of low-wage businesses amid population decline, and the discussion also turned to criticism of foreign-worker policy and the government’s economic management.
Teikoku Databank (TDB) and Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR) announced on the 8th that bankruptcy figures for the first half of FY2026 (April–September) exceeded the same period a year earlier for the fifth straight year, by both measures. TDB’s count rose 4.2% year-on-year to 5,362 cases, while TSR’s rose 3.8% to 5,373. Looking at TDB’s data on a half-year basis, this marks the 10th consecutive half-year increase since the second half of FY2021. If the current pace continues, annual bankruptcies are on track to top 10,000 for the third year running.
Total liabilities for the first half came to ¥830.47 billion by TDB’s count, up 23.8% year-on-year, and ¥856.169 billion by TSR’s, up 23.5%. While this marks the first year-on-year increase for a first half in four years, total liabilities stayed below ¥1 trillion for the second straight year, with bankruptcies concentrated among small and micro businesses. The largest single liability belonged to Zen Toshin, a company that handled early-payment processing for credit card sales, at ¥115.164 billion. https://newswitch.jp/p/50492
Source: newswitch.jp / Original article here
What people said
The LDP widened the wealth gap and created a whole underclass too poor to marry or have kids.
The LDP barely cared about the birthrate problem to begin with. Kishida finally started taking it seriously, but even now, despite being supposedly cutting-edge, Japan's birthrate-related spending as a share of GDP is below the OECD average. It wouldn't be unreasonable to spend something like 5% of GDP on it.
So what happens to all that labor supply they force-grew with foreign workers? Will foreign workers really just quietly put up with it the way the Lost Generation did?
Today's labor shortage is because the LDP grew the underclass so people can't marry or have kids.
Japan has been completely wrecked by the LDP.
>The labor shortage in the Showa era happened because the economy was growing and jobs kept increasing
That's exactly why even a half-assed mom-and-pop shop could survive back then. Kids kept increasing on their own and demand across every sector kept growing, so you could make a living just picking your nose while selling vegetables or toys.
and convenience stores keep multiplying, even bringing in foreign workers to do it.
Just let them collapse already, they're a social evil.
Dear 7-Eleven Headquarters,
Across multiple stores averaging ¥600,000 in daily sales in September with a 31% gross margin, profit didn't even reach ¥300,000.
And that's BEFORE the minimum wage hike.
I was told that topping ¥600,000 in daily sales in your first year open counts as a 'winning' store.
But next month or the month after, thanks to the minimum wage increase, that's going to drop to ¥250,000 or even under ¥200,000, you know?
https://x.com/CSV_OWNER/status/2108757015791317089
Everybody already knows this, man.
how does that even happen?
Companies that only work if they pay low wages can't attract young people or foreign workers anymore, so they stop being viable and go under.
SMEs keep operating by taking out loans, after all.
Big companies don't borrow.
So even if an SME's business isn't actually bad, lousy government monetary policy can still sink it.
Meanwhile the Lost Generation (the 'ice age' cohort that came of age in the long post-bubble slump), despite being plenty old enough to know better, partied all night on dance podiums, popped the bubble, piled up mountains of bad debt and sent the country into a tailspin, never bothered getting proper jobs, fooled around in non-regular work, and ran from marriage and child-rearing — and that's why Japan can no longer grow economically.
Boomers were born after the war.
It was their parents' generation, born before the war, who actually rebuilt the country from the ashes.
Boomers didn't do a thing.
And yet bankruptcies keep rising lol
It's inflation plus a weak yen, so the numbers look bigger in yen terms. Real consumption keeps falling, though.
if both the owners and the workers move into fields like elder care and logistics,
we can also cut down on how many foreign workers we need,
and that's a win for the public.
You're really going to let 60% of them collapse?
60% of SMEs aren't even profitable, but if workers quit the company goes under, so they're raising wages defensively just to keep people from leaving.
Raise interest rates further and let the SMEs go under.
While we're at it, kill off the regional banks and credit unions too and consolidate them.
It's a job-seeker's market, so they can just switch jobs easily enough.
Even if bankruptcies are high, as long as new companies keep being born on the other side, that's just normal turnover.
As long as nobody ends up unemployed, the bankruptcy count itself doesn't matter.
But the debt loads of the companies going bankrupt keep ballooning too.
That's a huge problem for investors and lenders.
Japan is declining right now because owner-run shops and small/micro businesses that hired Japanese workers are disappearing, replaced by low-wage 'slave labor' businesses running on foreign workers.
The LDP, the Finance Ministry, and Keidanren have reshaped the country so that no matter how much corporate profits grow, the money never trickles down to ordinary Japanese people.
Convenience stores, restaurant chains, drugstores, the inbound tourism industry, Amazon warehouse staff & delivery drivers, bottom-tier ('F-rank') universities.
If the government regulated these down to a quarter of their current size, Japan could run fine without immigration.
Let those keep failing one after another,
and shift the workers into elder care, logistics, cleaning, etc. — that would be efficient.
The reason blue-collar work doesn't pay is that the government won't regulate the 'slave labor' businesses mentioned in Re: #114, so they can't attract workers — and likewise, because the government won't crack down on layers of subcontracting skims, the money never reaches the people actually doing the work.
Bottom line: politicians just do whatever Keidanren and the bureaucrats tell them, with zero vision of their own, and that's the real problem.
And the increase is almost entirely in useless jobs running on low-wage foreign 'slave labor.'
Unless jobs like the ones in Re: #114 get regulated, workers will never flow into genuinely necessary fields like infrastructure, transport, construction, agriculture/forestry/fisheries/livestock, and elder care.
If those understaffed companies were actually profitable as things stand, it wouldn't be a problem.
But they're not.
It's a job-seeker's market, so applicants get to pick where they work.
We need to pull in Chinese tourists and Chinese capital.
Both the country and individuals are sitting on more assets than they know what to do with,
so making money through investment really is the most efficient play.
Obviously from mediocre overseas parts, right?
That accelerates yen depreciation and degrades product quality,
and Japanese products sell even worse as a result.
The idiots going on about 'culling' clearly don't realize that SMEs are what's holding up the big corporations in the first place.
Big companies will just find new suppliers —
ones willing to keep the entire mold tooling they ordered in storage for them.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The statistics come from two separate credit research firms, Teikoku Databank and Tokyo Shoko Research, each using its own methodology — which is why the totals differ slightly. By TDB’s measure, this is the 10th consecutive half-year increase since the second half of FY2021, and at the current pace, annual bankruptcies would top 10,000 for the third year in a row. At the same time, total liabilities have stayed under ¥1 trillion for two straight years, indicating that the bankruptcies are concentrated among small and micro businesses. The thread’s recurring complaint — “bankruptcies are rising despite a supposedly booming economy” — can also be read as reflecting the gap between big corporations’ nominal profit growth, driven by a weak yen and inflation, and the harsher operating reality facing smaller firms as real consumption stagnates. The point raised repeatedly in the thread, that minimum wage hikes are squeezing SME profitability, is also worth keeping in mind as a factor behind the rising numbers.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Bankruptcies Keep Climbing — H1 FY2026 Tops 5,000 Cases.”
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