Why Selective Disclosure Matters for Blockchain Adoption in Japan

Japan’s blockchain endeavours have taken on a more practical tone over the past couple of years, with major institutions now assessing where the technology genuinely fits into day‑to‑day financial and industrial workflows. Some of the clearest signals are coming from the banking sector. In late 2025, the Japanese government confirmed its support for a project led by the country’s three largest banks to issue stablecoins for payments and settlement, under the oversight of the Financial Services Agency. It’s a revealing direction. The work is centred on moving money and settling trades, not chasing volatility. That caution comes from experience. Large Japanese institutions rarely move until they’ve weighed the operational and reputational implications, and blockchain still raises uncomfortable questions on both sides. It offers traceability and clean audit trails, but it also surfaces information in ways many organisations have never had to manage before. This lands very differently inside a large organisation. On a public chain, transaction details are visible by default, and impossible to contain once they’re recorded. For teams used to controlling how information moves, and who sees what, that challenges long-standing expectations around confidentiality, trust and responsible data handling. There’s a reason that kind of exposure makes people uneasy. It changes how risk is assessed and whether projects move forward at all. The Cost of Transparency Privacy sits at the centre of Japan’s digital strategy, and it draws a clear line around how far institutions are willing to go with blockchain. That sensitivity becomes hard to ignore once projects move beyond pilots and start brushing up against real operations. On public blockchains, very little stays isolated. A payment here, a settlement there; before long, patterns begin to emerge. Volumes, timing and counterparties can quickly reveal more than the original transaction was meant to convey. That way of working feel...