Tokyo International News Agency

Japan's Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has launched an on-site investigation into six of the country's major ice cream manufacturers on suspicion of violating the Antimonopoly Act by colluding to coordinate retail prices. The companies under investigation include industry giants Meiji, Lotte, Ezaki Glico, Morinaga & Co., Morinaga Milk Industry, and Akagi Nyugyo. With ice cream prices rising steadily under the guise of soaring raw material and energy costs, the revelation of a potential cartel among top brands has sparked widespread public anger and disappointment. A Coordinated Price Spike Behind the Scenes According to reports, the companies are suspected of pre-arranging wholesale price hikes, coordinating both the timing and the margin of the increases to align with one another. While consumers have been continuously squeezed by rising costs across the food sector—usually justified by companies as unavoidable due to logistics and ingredient inflation—this investigation sug...

On February 25, 2026, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) conducted an on-site inspection of Microsoft Japan on suspicion of violating the Anti-Monopoly Act. This action stems from allegations that the company unfairly impeded competition in the cloud market by restricting or imposing high fees for the use of its own products, such as “Windows” and “Word,” on other companies' cloud services. According to reports, this on-site inspection targets suspicions that Microsoft made it difficult or more expensive to use Microsoft 365 (including Office/Teams) and Windows on competitor cloud services (such as AWS) to secure an advantage for its own cloud service, “Azure.” This marks the second major investigation of Microsoft by the JFTC, and the first in 28 years since January 1998. On social media, “on-site inspection” became a trending topic, with many users paying attention to the news. Voices praised the JFTC's firm stance as “an extremely important step to protect the health of ...