ABOUT YOKOHAMA


Chinatown

German Industry Park

Yokohama City University

Economic Environment in Yokohama

Yokohama Station Area
Yokohama Station area
© The City of Yokohama

The most important economic feature of Yokohama is its role as a port city, which has led to bustling activity in the fields of trade, commerce, marine transportation and shipbuilding. Its residents are rated among Japan’s most affluent, and Yokohama ranks top among Japan’s six largest cities in terms of real income per household and second in terms of consumer spending, just behind Tokyo and far ahead of the others.

The industrial belt covering the eastern part of the city and continuing north along Tokyo Bay, is one of the best-known in the world. It is home to a variety of manufacturing businesses, including electrical equipment, machinery, and automobiles.

Shin-Yokohama station area
Shin-Yokohama Station area
© The City of Yokohama

Many of these companies are world leaders in hi-tech manufacturing, and are setting global standards for the research and development of advanced technologies.

Yokohama is also cooperating with Tokyo and other local authorities in the area in the joint Tokyo Bay Genome Project, to maintain the first and biggest biotechnology cluster in Japan, with the RIKEN Yokohama Institute as its nucleus. Tokyo Bay is already considered to be the area with the highest concentration of biotech companies and R&D facilities in all of Japan.

Biotechnology and IT in Yokohama

Yokohama Station Area
© Umberto Savagnin / Creative Commons

Information technology and biotechnology are expected to develop as leading industries steering the Japanese economy from now on. Yokohama is in the comfortable position to be home to already a great number of high-tech companies of both fields. In fact, in the case of biotechnology, the whole area of Tokyo Bay with Yokohama in its very centre is without doubt the most advanced area with the highest concentration of companies all over Japan.

In IT, Yokohama as a business location has been playing a dominant role in Japan for a long time (look at Prominent Companies in Yokohama for a short overview of high-tech companies in Yokohama). Yokohama is making efforts to further foster these two key industries. 

More information

Joint Research Center
Joint Research Center
© The City of Yokohama

To create a big biotechnology-cluster in Yokohama, the city set up the Yokohama Science Frontier in the Keihin Waterfront Area. Yokohama Science Frontier is centred on the world-famous RIKEN Yokohama Institute and the Yokohama City University Graduate School of Nanobioscience, which is conducting research in biological supra-molecular systems. The institute and the graduate school are situated next to each other and cooperate closely. The area features also facilities to enhance the exchange between industry and researchers, like the Yokohama Joint Research Center.


Joint Research Center
Leading Venture Plaza
© The City of Yokohama

In order to further nurture IT and biotechnology business and research in Yokohama, the city also released a special incentive programme, the Targeted Industries Program, for companies who plan to relocate their business from outside of Yokohama to Yokohama Science Frontier itself or in the surrounding Keihin Waterfront Area.

In order to foster high-tech industries it is of high importance that Yokohama's residents boast one of the highest education levels in Japan, enabling companies to hire from a highly talented local labour pool.