Recently added articles from Japan Inc.:

Message from the Publisher.

May 01, 2008; Lloyd, Terrie ... As many readers will know, apart from publishing this magazine, I also write a weekly column (48 times a year for the last 11 years) called Terrie's Take. Writing this column takes dedication and forbearance--the dedication not to do a 'couch potato' impression on Sunday nights, and ...

Message from the Editor.(Editorial)

May 01, 2008; Harris, Peter ... Dear Readers While some sectors remain cautiously quiet, real estate in Japan has remained dynamic and vibrant--particularly from the point of view of foreign investment. Last year Morgan Stanley bought 13 ANA hotels and most recently they purchased Citibank's Tokyo ...

Letters to the Editor.(Letter to the editor)

May 01, 2008; Harris, Stephen ... Dear Editor Joseph Greenberg's fine article on The Father of Invention erred in one point, in the first paragraph. That is, the ownership of the famous blue LED patent was not at issue. The issue was how much money Nakamura was entitled to as compensation for an invention made ...

Morpho.(Business Break)

May 01, 2008; Lane, Greg ... Morpho exhibits a rare case of a Japanese tech company receiving attention from overseas investors. The Tokyo University spin-out received [yen]165m of funding from Nokia Growth Partners. This is the first deal for Nokia's Venture Capital fund in Japan. Founded ...

BETA gizmoz[TM] animate yourself.(Business Break)

May 01, 2008; Lane, Greg ... In a similar vein, Israel based Gizmoz announced that it has raised $US6.5 million in second round venture funding--NTT DoCoMo subsidiary DoCoMo Capital being the leading investor. GizMoz offers a service that allows users to upload their mug shot and create a life-like 3D animated avatar ...

Kobe steel.(Business Break)

May 01, 2008; Lane, Greg ... Monolithic steel maker Kobe Steel has shown that it can be as innovative as the next company with the announcement that they have developed a type of steel sheet that significantly reduces electromagnetic wave emissions. Tin-foil hat wearers will be pleased to hear that the additives in ...

Tata Motors.(IPO Watch)

May 01, 2008; Lane, Greg ... Producer of the US$2,500 'People's car,' Tata Motors of India announced that it will tap into Japanese capital markets with a listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Although it is not clear how much the listing is intended to raise, according to the Nikkei Shimbun Tata is set to list this ...

Photohito.(Business Break)

May 01, 2008; Lane, Greg ... Kakaku.com, a comparative shopping website that attracts more than 6 million users each month, has launched a photo sharing service 'PhotoHito.' Photohito.com differs in important respects to the myriad of other photo sharing sites on the web with its focus on connecting info about the ...

Seven-Eleven to sell Alcohol online.(IPO Watch)

May 01, 2008; Lane, Greg ... The convenience store operator has announced that they will begin selling an enormous range of alcohol online from late June. The offerings will include 1,200 varieties of sake, 900 brands of shochu and 1,000 different wines. Despite the extensive range, will a beer ordered ...

Trends in Japan.

May 01, 2008 ... When it comes to digital points of sale in Japan, the goal to increase efficiency and provide a better customer experience will always come first. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] At the street level, many supermarkets are already integrating digital price tags into their ...

Measure for measure; J@pan Inc's hard information on selected economic sectors and industries.(Statistics & company information)

May 01, 2008; Worsley, Ken ... The Environment * Estimated tons of greenhouse gases emitted by Japanese firms in fiscal 2006: 640 million * Percentage of that total emitted by the steel industry: 32.6% * Tons emitted by JFE Holdings, the largest single emitter: 60.29 million ...

Retail focus: QB House.

May 01, 2008; Noorbakhsh, Sarah ... A trip to the barbershop that was inundated with loads of extra services and carried a price tag to match was the original motivation for Kuniyoshi Konishi, founder of QB Net Co Ltd, to develop the wildly successful QB House. This no-frills bare-bones barber service offers a 10-minute ...

Exclusive interview: lan de stains OBE DipArb F.C.I.Arb.(British Chamber of Commerce)(Interview)

May 01, 2008; Harris, Peter ... J@pan Inc talks to the Executive Director of the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan. How do Anglo-Japanese trade relations stand at present? The trade and investment flows are very strong. A little under 50% of Japan's investment into Europe goes into Britain. This has been ...

CEO interview: Masahiro Ito, YAPPA Japan.(Design & Technology)(Interview)(Company overview)

May 01, 2008; Ashton, Hugh ... YAPPA was established in 2000 by Masahiro Ito, a 17-year-old high school student with an interest in design. After attempting to build a network to gather retail customer data using mobile phones and discovering that the mobile phone market at the time could not support his vision, he ...

Sending the right signals: in the Japanese consumer market, without the right marketing, even the most brilliant products and original ideas can fall flat on their face. J@pan Inc spoke to Kiyofumi Someya about marketing in Japan, and specifically of the hurdles facing small-medium enterprises.(Marketing & Technology)(Industry overview)

May 01, 2008; Greenberg, Joseph ... Marketing in Japan Last summer, a very strange product stood in the fridges of convenience stores across Japan for a period of about one month--cucumber Pepsi. Bloggers and media picked up on this curious item and it quickly emerged in headlines around the globe. ...

The long game; Graham Davis, director of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in Japan considers the conditions for foreign businesses in Japan based on EIU surveys and research.(Japanese Business Environment)

May 01, 2008 ... It is a marathon, not a sprint. And that might be just as well given the problems company heads seem to face in running their businesses in Japan. Whether foreign or domestic, the challenges of slowing sales, rising costs and turbulent hiring conditions would be enough to make any ...

Under the media's skin.(PR in Japan)(Company overview)

May 01, 2008; Hoel, Jon ... This article is based on a series of conversations with several leading minds in Japan's public relations agency business about how the industry continues to evolve. The author is indebted to Toshiya Takata and Robert Magyar for their groundbreaking 2005 article Embracing PR in Japan. ...

Safe from subprime?(Japanese Real Estate Market)

May 01, 2008; Frischkorn, Brad ... With the break of the subprime mortgage crisis in the summer of 2007 and the global scale of its spread, the parade of negative real estate related news has been relentless as financial institutions fall, central banks launch massive credit-easing campaigns, and home foreclosures put many ...

The capital of Asia: Capital Services Group talked to J@pan Inc about how their business has grown from Japan to the whole of the Asia region and about resetting the agenda in integrated loan servicing, real estate asset management and servicing technology solutions.(Capital Services Group)

May 01, 2008; Harris, Peter ... Asia at the center Writing in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis in a paper published by the Harvard Institute for International Development, authors Jeffrey Sachs and Steven Radelet comment, "History, Nehru observed, is written by the victors. Financial history, it ...

The end of architecture?(Architecture)

May 01, 2008; Kitanaka, Anna ... A common perception about Japanese architecture is that there is a extraordinary mix of old and new styles--from temples dating back a thousand years to Odaiba's infamous sci-fi Fuji TV building, there exists a unique blend of ancient and modern, Asian and Western, sublime and ridiculous. ...