Japan’s annual wage negotiations kicked off on Wednesday, with a focus on whether the momentum for pay raises growing among the country’s large companies will spread to smaller firms amid historic price rises. Leaders of the Japan Business Federation, the country’s top business lobby known as Keidanren, and the largest labor union, Rengo, joined a forum held in Tokyo to herald the official start of the annual “shunto” spring negotiations. “It is the social duty of private firms and Keidanren to pursue wage hikes that beat soaring prices with stronger resolve than last year,” Masakazu Tokura, t…