Uber’s quest to crack Japan leads through a rural hot-springs town
On a dreary morning in December, Uber’s boss, Dara Khosrowshahi, stood outside the faded concrete municipal offices of Kaga, a small hot-spring town in Ishikawa Prefecture, and hailed a car.Since Uber entered Japan in 2014, the country, one of the world’s largest taxi markets, has remained a fortress. Japanese officials have fiercely guarded the taxi industry with regulations that restricted Uber’s app to hailing only licensed cabs. Recently, however, demographic pressures have begun to force the government to change.Japan’s rural heartland is hollowing out as the country’s population declines, leaving the pool of public drivers dry and many of the remaining elderly residents without transportation. Kaga is among a handful of provincial areas where legislators have permitted the peer-to-peer ride-share operation that defined Uber’s global rise.
