What is their beef with full-EV? First it was hydrogen fuel cells and now limitation to hybrid. Seems odd at best.
Hydrogen fuel cell is more about diversification, and it is fully backed by the Japan gov so ROI would be through the roof even if it doesn't "win".
Also many countries aren't producing enough electricity (cough Japan and Germanycough) so EVs getting popular _at scale_ isn't going to happen tomorrow either.
Right now there's a plant that is stopped by the gov from getting back into production for safety issues, with the elec company trying to appeal for the nth time, and it sure doesn't help the overall image.
"This time it will be fine" is kinda hard to stomach for the impacted public to be honest.
For Japan to be that good at nuclear, there first needs to be a way to gracefully fail and retry, instead of making whole regions unhabitable for a century. We're clearly not there yet.
Japan probably has the technology to deal with many of the downsides (additional sysmic risk, pollution, volcanic activity straight destroying the installation etc.) but it might not have the initial money nor a decent enough ROI to maintain the system.