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Japan Tobacco International (JTI) is the international division of Japan Tobacco Incorporated, and the world’s third largest transnational tobacco company. Founded in 1999, JTI’s rapid growth has been the result of a global business strategy that potentially serves as a model for other Asian tobacco companies. This paper analyses Japan Tobacco Incorporated’s global expansion since the 1980s in response to market opening, foreign competition, and declining share of a contracting domestic market. Key features of its global strategy include the on-going central role and investment by the Japanese government, and an expansion agenda based on mergers and acquisitions. The paper also discusses the challenges this global business strategy poses for global tobacco control and public health. This paper is part of the special issue ‘The Emergence of Asian Tobacco Companies: Implications for Global Health Governance’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the critical actors (herein called Driving Actors) and their activities to promote sustainable energy policies and businesses in cases where renewable energy facilities are gradually installed in a local area by changes in lifestyle from one based on fossil fuels to a sustainable one. This paper aims to 1) evaluate activity to promote renewable energy in local community using analytical approaches as an iterative approach and stakeholder analysis, and 2) to propose an analytical framework for the RE implementation process and to describe the important roles of the Driving Actors. We investigated the case of Bizen city in Japan by participant observations. Consequently, Driving Actors are responsible for encouraging RE implementation in the local area. They coordinate and run the RE (Renewable Energy) program to gain experience and know-how as well as create a business scheme, which has business risk due to the absence of effective policies by the national government during the middle phase to promote local success of RE. If the national government implements effective policies to disseminate RE facilities during the middle phase, then the Takeoff phase is ascertained and existing big companies and financial organizations would begin to participate RE businesses. On the other hand, if the national government does not change its policy, Driving Actors must initiate a creative RE project using their expertise in the middle phase. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: To discuss measures to promote reuse in society, a holistic understanding of reuse businesses and markets is indispensable. This paper presents a simulation model for reuse businesses. To formulate the model, first, prerequisites for reuse businesses are outlined. The simulation model includes these prerequisites as its parameters, and its outcomes yield patterns of reuse markets. The paper presents the formulation of the model and simulation outcomes under four parameter settings. The correspondences between the simulation outcomes and case studies of reuse businesses in Japan are discussed to verify the propriety of the model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

While the Japanese business community continues to be perceived as male dominated, the majority of students of Business Japanese in Australian universities are female. This paper examines Business Japanese textbooks from both macro (social practices) and micro (linguistic discourses) level perspectives, using critical discourse analysis as an analytical tool, to assess the adequacy of the textbooks to be used in a primarily female student community. The analysis reveals that the textbooks present a stereotypical and exaggerated version of social practices of the Japanese business community, based on idealised native-Japanese norms. Female characters in the textbooks have less access to managerial positions, and fewer opportunities to participate in business, than in reality. The analysis also highlights the invisibility of non-Japanese female characters in the textbooks. Female students using the textbooks are not provided with role models or spaces to acculturate into. These textbooks do not grant adequate learning tools for non-Japanese female students. The paper calls for textbooks which provide more diverse perspectives of the Japanese business community, where non-Japanese female students are able to construct their own social identities accompanied by relevant use of the Japanese language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to increase the trading volume with Latin America, Japan had signed trade agreements with major local economies. However there is a lack of studies regarding the trading flow between those two regions. This paper has the main objective to estimate a cointegration relation between Japan and the four biggest economies in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, by the most traditional Johansen procedure and the Lütkepohl's which allows to deal with structural breaks. Regarding Johansen main results, only the Argentinian trading flows are cointegrated, however by Lütkepohl approach, the Brazilian and the Chilean imports equation are also cointegrated. As the estimated structural break is related to main monetary events in Argentina and Brazil this fact increases the significance of those results and the importance to deal with these break for international trade econometric modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]