Kyotoruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Electronics & precision components
Kyocera, Murata Manufacturing, Rohm, Nidec, Omron
An extraordinary concentration of globally dominant component makers for a city this size — Murata and Nidec in particular hold commanding shares of markets most people have never heard of.
Games & entertainment
Nintendo, Q Games, Vanillaware, Skeleton Crew Studio
Nintendo has been headquartered in Kyoto since 1889, when it made playing cards, and remains one of the city's largest and most famous employers.
Scientific instruments & analysis
Shimadzu, Horiba, Nihon Kohden
Shimadzu was founded here in 1875 and one of its engineers won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 — a case of the city's research and industry overlapping directly.
Higher education & research
Kyoto University, Doshisha, Ritsumeikan, iPS Cell Research Institute
Kyoto University's CiRA institute is the world centre for induced pluripotent stem cell research, led by the Nobel laureate whose work created the field.
Traditional crafts & textiles
Nishijin weaving workshops, Kyo-yuzen dyers, ceramics and lacquer ateliers
Nishijin has produced silk textiles for over a millennium, and the surviving craft workshops remain economically significant as well as culturally central.
Tourism & hospitality
Hotel groups, temple and shrine organisations, ryokan operators
Enormous in scale and increasingly contested locally, with the city raising its lodging tax sharply from 2026 to have visitors fund the infrastructure they use.
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