Tokyo firm brings together practitioners from Japanese diplomacy, investigative journalism, board advisory, cyber response and cross-border M&A

CSI Japan Inc., an independent, intelligence-driven strategic advisory firm in Marunouchi, Tokyo, today announced its public launch. Incorporated in 2025, the firm assembled its founding team and began serving clients in June 2026.

A decade of governance reform has made Japan legible on paper, and capital has followed: foreign investors were record net buyers of Japanese equities in the first half of 2026, and Japan-related M&A reached a record $385.9 billion in 2025 (Dealogic). Yet across much of the market, cash still defaults to buybacks over growth — a measure of how unevenly boards can originate and decide investment. Rules govern what is disclosed. They do not reach the conversations that decide a deal: the reputation of a founder, the real alignment of a board, the obligations that never reach a filing.

Corporate intelligence elsewhere grew out of talent moving from diplomacy, security and law enforcement into private practice — a flow postwar Japan never developed. CSI Japan was founded to work in that gap.

The firm advises boards, investors and senior executives across mergers and capital, markets and geopolitics, and crisis and resilience — from integrity due diligence on counterparties to reading how Washington's decisions land on Japanese business. For funds, banks, corporates and law firms engaged in Japan, it supplies the Japan-side context that filings do not carry; most engagements are retained relationships.

"The problem is not a lack of information, but a lack of intelligence," said Seigen Takano, Chief Executive. "Anyone can now read the filings. What decides an investment in Japan is what the filings leave out — and that has to be gathered from people, by people who are trusted here. Our standard has one word: honmono — the real substance of a situation, and the real thing in those who serve it."

The team: Seigen Takano, who began in investigative journalism at Nikkei Business and FACTA, founded cybersecurity firm Sprout and co-leads a crisis-management practice with former Tokyo Metropolitan Police officials — work rooted in Japan's most closed domestic networks; Takashi Kawamoto, formerly of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Brunswick Group's Washington, D.C. office, who led M&A strategy at Kansai Paint and heads the firm's U.S.-facing work; digital-forensics specialist Takamasa Mikuni; Koichi Tsuneda, a 17-year foreign-ministry Russia specialist; and Klevis Sevrani, a partner at a Japanese corporate governance advisory firm and formerly of Egon Zehnder, who has assessed the boards and CEO candidates of Japanese companies from the inside.

About CSI Japan

CSI Japan Inc. is an independent strategic advisory firm in Marunouchi, Tokyo, incorporated in 2025. https://csint.co.jp

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