Leaving home Japan’s big companies are shipping production abroad

Japanese firms do 30% of their manufacturing overseas—twice as much as in the early 1990s. Toshiba’s foreign-made share has grown from 52% to 56% in the past year alone. Fuji Xerox and Yamaha Motor boast levels of 80% and 94% respectively. As the yen hits 15-year highs on a nominal basis, there is more pressure to ship operations abroad. “We want to keep domestic production,” sighed Satoshi Ozawa, Toyota’s chief financial officer, this month. “But we are quickly losing competitiveness.” The carmaker already produces 58% of its vehicles abroad.