# Enhancing Japanese Large Language Models with Reasoning Vectors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02913 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02913/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 10 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Qwen3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09388/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [s1: Simple test-time scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19393/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-V3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19437/) (2024)
- [Continual Pre-Training for Cross-Lingual LLM Adaptation: Enhancing Japanese Language Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17790/) (2024)
- [Unlocking Efficient Long-to-Short LLM Reasoning with Model Merging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20641/) (2025)
- [LLM-jp: A Cross-organizational Project for the Research and Development of Fully Open Japanese LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03963/) (2024)
- [AnswerCarefully: A Dataset for Improving the Safety of Japanese LLM Output](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02372/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Post-training methods have improved the performance and enhanced the reasoning capability for mainstream large language models (LLMs), but the same is challenging for Japanese LLMs to achieve due to the amount of resources required. Inspired by task vectors that extract the change of weights before and after training, specifically for a certain task, we obtain reasoning vectors from reasoning LLMs and apply them to Japanese LLMs to boost their performance. While the resources available present a challenge to improve Japanese LLMs, we present a simple and effective way to obtain high improvement and hope to inspire for other languages.