"The only Japanese companies I know that are geared for automation for the new economy are companies like Mujin, LeapMind and Preferred Networks."

I've worked closely with one of these companies... Perhaps they were just not suited to the project we were working on, but I found them quite dis-organized, lacking in focus and mostly buzzwords and fakery. Kind of sad.

I really can't see, at least the company I worked with, as "the future of automation"... a lot of it just seems to be neat but impractical toys.