每周六天，大滨健吾都在日出前起床。他花5分钟收拾妥当，随即出门骑摩托车约一小时，前往日本广岛县邻町三原。早上6点，他便停在一栋原木小屋风格的建筑外，这里是他与妻子自4月起共同经营的咖啡馆兼烘焙坊“Country Road”。他打扫场地、制作糕点、烘焙咖啡豆，并全天接待客人。等最后一桌客人离开后，大滨留下来为第二天做准备。等他回到家，已是晚上11点。
Six days a week, Kengo Ohama is up before the sun. He takes 5 minutes to get ready, and is soon out the door for an hourlong motorbike ride to the neighboring town of Mihara in Hiroshima, Japan. By 6 a.m., he pulls up outside a log-cabin-style building, home to Country Road, the café and roastery that he's been managing with his wife since April. He cleans the space, makes pastries, roasts coffee beans, and serves guests throughout the day. After the last table has cleared, Ohama stays behind to prepare for tomorrow. By the time he gets home, it is already 11 p.m.
大滨一直梦想开一家咖啡馆。当他在日本企业承继平台“Relay”上看到一家成熟咖啡馆挂牌转让时，觉得这是命中注定。店主是一对想要退休的老年夫妇，他们已没有体力继续经营。“他们最大的心愿，只是希望有人好好照看这家店，让它继续热闹下去，”31岁的大滨对《商业内幕》表示。接手条件很简单：他必须维持店铺运营，但可自由重新设计室内装潢。“这种灵活性让这个机会极具吸引力，”大滨说。
Ohama had always dreamed of opening a café. When he found an established one listed on Relay, a Japanese business-succession platform, it felt like fate. The café's owners, an older couple looking to retire, no longer had the physical stamina to run the business." Their biggest wish was simply for someone to take good care of the shop and keep it a lively place," Ohama, 31, told Business Insider. The terms of the takeover were simple: He had to keep the business operating, but was free to redesign the interiors as he saw fit. "That flexibility made the opportunity very attractive," Ohama said.
如今，大滨每月支付5万日元的房租。店铺本身——包括品牌、家具、厨房设备、配方和供应商信息——以零日元转让给他。
Ohama now covers 50,000 Japanese yen in monthly rent for the building. The business itself — including the brand, furniture, kitchen equipment, recipes, and supplier information — was transferred to him for zero Japanese yen.
大滨属于正在接手日本小企业的年轻一代，这些企业的老店主因年事已高却找不到继承人而不得不退出。日本低出生率和人口快速老龄化，导致许多企业主没有成年子女可继承家业。即便有子女，后代可能居住他处、已有稳定职业，或单纯不愿承担经营本地生意的重担。
Ohama is part of a younger generation taking over Japan's small businesses as their longtime owners age out with no successor in sight. The country's low birth rate and rapidly aging population have left many business owners without adult children to inherit their companies. Even when they do have kids, those heirs may live elsewhere, have established careers, or simply not want to take on the demands of running a local business.
2023年，日本金融公库在对小型和中型企业的调查中发现，57.4%的受访企业预计在现任所有者退出时将关闭，而2019年这一比例为52.6%。这一差距为Relay 和 BATONZ 等平台提供了机会，这些平台将希望交接企业的所有者与潜在继任者对接。Relay 的一位代表对《商业内幕》表示，平台迄今已列出约900家企业，其中约有350个为活跃挂牌。
In 2023, the Japan Finance Corporation found that 57.4% of small and midsize businesses it surveyed expected to close when their current owners stepped away, up from 52.6% in 2019. That gap has created an opening for platforms such as Relay and BATONZ, which connect owners looking to hand over their businesses with prospective successors. Relay has listed about 900 businesses to date, including roughly 350 active listings, a representative told Business Insider.
希望传承企业的所有者通常年龄在60至70岁之间，而继任者多为30至40岁。BATONZ 也处理企业为扩张而进行的传统收购，截至2026年3月，平台已列出超过42,000家企业，并促成了3,421对买卖配对，发言人同样对《商业内幕》透露。对于一些企业主而言，当突发危机迫使他们比预期更早面对继任规划时，这类平台可以提供救命稻草。
Owners looking to pass on their businesses are often in their 60s and 70s, while successors are often in their 30s and 40s. BATONZ, which also handles more conventional acquisitions by companies looking to expand, has listed more than 42,000 businesses and matched 3,421 buyer-seller pairs as of March 2026, a spokesperson told Business Insider. For some business owners, these platforms can offer a lifeline when an unexpected crisis forces them to confront succession planning sooner than they expected.
三井昭孝在成为户外导游多年后，于2011年在日本中部以其高山景观闻名的长野市开设了“Mori to Mizu Backpackers”。疫情导致旅游业停摆，他曾暂时关闭旅舍。即便安全恢复后，他仍不得不缩减经营规模并裁员。到2022年，游客数量再次回升，三井正考虑再次扩张。随后他中风。三井，现年67岁，对《商业内幕》说：“虽然不严重，但我必须住院。中风的原因从未查明，这意味着它可能再次发生。我开始觉得停止经营业务会更好。”
Akitaka Mitsui spent years working as an outdoor tour guide before opening Mori to Mizu Backpackers in Nagano, a city in central Japan known for its alpine landscapes, in 2011. When the pandemic brought travel to a standstill, he temporarily closed the guesthouse. Even after it was safe to reopen, he had to scale back the operation and cut staff. By 2022, visitor numbers were picking up again, and Mitsui was considering expanding once more. Then he suffered a stroke. "It was not severe, but I had to be hospitalized," Mitsui, 67, told Business Insider. "The cause of the stroke was never identified, which meant it could happen again. I began to think it would be better to stop running the business."
他转向 BATONZ 寻找家族之外的继任者。三井说：“我从未打算让我的孩子接手企业，我希望他们能按照自己的意愿生活。”于是出现了长野本地人藤泽浩太，他为上大学搬到东京，随后从事咨询工作。
He turned to BATONZ to find a successor outside his family. "I never intended to make my children take over the business," he said. "I wanted them to do what they wanted to do with their own lives." Enter Kota Fujisawa, a Nagano native who moved to Tokyo for university and later worked in consulting.
藤泽（音译）今年29岁，一直在寻找帮助振兴家乡的途径。他与两位青梅竹马的朋友一起，于2024年5月接手了一家旅馆，不过其中一人后来已退出经营。他们将其更名为“Local Knot Backpackers”。藤泽表示，他们收购该业务花费不足1000万日元，价格包含网站、预订系统和员工。建筑物不在移交范围内，他拒绝透露月租金。
Fujisawa, 29, had been looking for a way to help revitalize his home region. Along with two childhood friends, he took over the guesthouse in May 2024, though one of them has since left the business. They renamed it Local Knot Backpackers. He said they paid less than 10 million Japanese yen for the business, which came with its website, booking systems, and staff. The building was not part of the transfer, and he declined to disclose the monthly rent.
这与他过去稳定的办公室工作形成巨大反差，过去他只负责大型项目中的一小部分。如今作为小企业主，藤泽拥有更大的自由度，可以全权塑造整个运营体系，并决定未来的发展方向。“我以前的工作主要是伏案办公，但现在我花在现场的时间多得多，也有更多机会直接与各式各样的游客交流，”藤泽告诉《商业内幕》（Business Insider）。
It is a drastic change from his stable office job, where he worked on just one part of larger projects. Now, as a small-business owner, Fujisawa has more freedom to shape the entire operation and decide where to take it next. "My previous work was mainly desk-based, but I now spend much more time on-site and have more opportunities to communicate directly with a wide range of tourists," Fujisawa told Business Insider.
不过，这需要拿捏平衡：接手一家成熟的企业，意味着要决定保留什么、改造什么。“如果我们把一切都改了，它就会变成一个完全不同的地方，”他说。
Still, there is a balancing act: Taking over an established business means deciding what to preserve and what to rework. "If we changed everything, it would become a completely different place," he said.
除了整体移交企业，继承平台还能帮助有志创业者获得起步所需的基础设施。对于宫崎县29岁的前公务员大田原隆之（音译）而言，这为他打开了通往农业的大门，尽管他毫无农业经验。他在工作压力巨大的时期接触到了手工巧克力并深深着迷，从而对可可种植产生了兴趣。“我以前从未务过农，”大田原告诉《商业内幕》：“我唯一种过的东西，就是小学项目里的一小棵番茄苗。”
Beyond handing over entire businesses, succession platforms can also help aspiring entrepreneurs gain access to the infrastructure they need to get started. For Takayuki Otawara, a 29-year-old former civil servant in Miyazaki, it opened a path into farming despite his lack of agricultural experience. His interest in cacao farming began during a stressful stretch at work, when he discovered craft chocolate and fell in love with it. "I had never farmed before," Otawara told Business Insider. "The only thing I had ever grown was a small tomato plant for a primary-school project."
父母最初反对他放弃稳定的公务员工作去务农。朋友们倒是更支持他。“他们大多觉得这听起来很有意思，”他说。要起步，大田原需要大棚和农田，而他家两样都没有。
His parents initially opposed his decision to leave a stable government job for farming. His friends, though, were more encouraging. "They mostly thought it sounded interesting," he said. To get started, Otawara needed a greenhouse and farmland, neither of which his family owned.
在通过当地农户寻找未果后，他转向了 Relay 平台，发现了一条来自草莓种植家庭的信息，该家庭因年事已高打算缩减经营规模。根据一份业务继承协议，大田原以 300 万日元从原业主手中买下了一座温室和灌溉设备。他利用这些设施创办了自己的农场，如今在那里种植可可、草莓、香蕉、水稻等多种作物。他每天都在农场劳作，清晨 6 点开始干活，常常要到晚上 7 点左右才收工，通常晚上 10 点就上床休息。
After struggling to find one through local farmers, he turned to Relay and found a listing from a strawberry-farming family looking to scale back their operations as they got older. Under a business succession agreement, Otawara bought a greenhouse and irrigation equipment from the original owners for 3 million Japanese yen. He used the facilities to start his own farm, where he now grows cacao alongside strawberries, bananas, rice, and other crops. He is at the farm every day, where his work begins at 6 a.m. and often ends around 7 p.m. He is usually in bed by 10 p.m.
这份工作比他以前的办公室职位更辛苦，那份工作有周末和法定节假日休息。然而，务农给了他一种作为公务员时从未体会过的满足感。“我付出的劳动会直接以成果回馈给我，”大田原说。“在政府机关，你对退休前的薪资和职业前景有更清晰的预期。现在，我付出多少、赚多少都可能发生变化。我觉得这既刺激又有成就感。”
The work is more demanding than his former office job, which came with weekends and public holidays off. However, farming has given him a kind of satisfaction he never found as a civil servant. "The work I put in comes back to me directly as results," Otawara said. "In the government, you have a clearer idea of what your salary and career will look like until retirement. Now, how much I do and how much I earn can change. I find that exciting and rewarding."