Society 5.0 and new capitalism: complementarities and contradictions

In a context of proliferation of concepts proposed by the Japanese government and major other stakeholders, this paper aims at determining whether it is the sign of an intellectual and political dynamism that would prepare the emergence of a new model or the symptom of a loss of bearings after years of neoliberalism. More precisely, it focuses on the relations between the Society 5.0 vision and the ‘new/sustainable’ capitalism one. In mobilizing the Régulation theory framework and a non-Schumpeterian approach to innovation, it put into their institutional context several reports that are advocating these visions. Our major conclusion is that, despite some conceptual similarities, several contradictions and dissonance between these visions are major impediments to the development of a new model. What is required is more coherent policies as well as the inclusion of a broader set of stakeholders to define the goals and the path of the reform.