Japanese Firms Agree on Building Japan Metaverse Economic Zone

A consortium of renowned Japanese tech companies agreed on the establishment of the Japan Metaverse Economic Zone, according to Cointelegraph.

The Japanese companies are JCB Co., Ltd., Mizuho Financial Group, Inc., Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc., Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc., Resona Holdings, Inc., Sompo Japan Insurance Inc., Toppan Inc., Fujitsu Ltd., Mitsubishi Corporation and TBT Lab Inc.

Under this agreement, the tech firms will build an open metaverse infrastructure called “Ryugukoku,” which reflects the creation of a new metaverse development. This open metaverse infrastructure will help to boost the interactivity and collaboration among metaverse platforms in addition to serving as a new social infrastructure for enterprise DX such as information dissemination, marketing, work style reform for domestic enterprises, marketing, as well as consumer DX and consumer EX.

The agreements targets deploying these companies’ respective technologies and services, including ICT, FinTech, and gamification. It also pointed to the possibility of providing companies and government agencies outside Japan with this infrastructure.

Inside Ryugukoku, each metaverse service and content presented takes on the form of a moving “city,” “castle,” or “vehicle” that moves around in this virtual world. Users will be able to engage in a role-playing game (RPG) experience with their avatars as they can travel through various realms and benefit from a variety of content and services.

Earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can help Japan’s national strategy titled ‘Cool Japan’ to lure investment and expand the economy.

This month also, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announced the launch of the pilot stage for its digital CBDC, digital yen, in April.

BoJ Executive Director Shinichi Uchida said the pilot phase will continue to test the technical feasibility of the digital yen and extend the experiment to modeling a CBDC ecosystem with the participation of private companies. Uchida pointed out that the pilot phase would see no actual retail transactions but only simulated ones.