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A key strategy for social development and sustainable urban expansion is building sustainable and affordable transport systems. In this study, we aim to test the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis and reveal the impact of infrastructure investment in transportation systems in China, Turkey, India, and Japan over the period 1995-2020 on environmental degradation. According to dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) method analysis, per capita GDP and per capita GDP 3 have a significant positive impact on per capita CO 2 emission, while per capita GDP 2 has a significant adverse impact on per capita CO 2 emission. These results confirm the validity of the N-shaped EKC assumption, while inconsistent with the results of the FMOLS technique, showing that per capita GDP is significantly positive, while per capita GDP 2 and per capita GDP 3 have a significant negative impact on per capita carbon emissions. Moreover, as clarified by the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and DOLS methods, road infrastructure investment (RO), aviation infrastructure investment, trade openness, and foreign direct investment (FDI) have significant positive effects, while railway infrastructure investment (RA) has a significant negative effect on per capita carbon emission. Country-level estimates of per capita carbon emission-based DOLS strategies in the model show that only China and Japan have N-shaped EKC hypothesis. Road infrastructure investment, aviation infrastructure investment, and trade openness have significant positive effects, while railway infrastructure investment has a significant negative effect on per capita CO 2 emission in selected central and east Asian countries. The latest electrified rail systems are well thought out and less polluting, so the contribution of rail infrastructure investment to the transport mix can support sustainable and safe transport systems at city center and intercity levels and reduce environmental pollution in central and east Asian countries. Moreover, the implementation of the basic environmental settings of trade agreements should be strengthened to condense the growing impact of free trade on environmental pollution., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

A key factor in social development and sustainable urban expansion is the establishment of sustainable and affordable transport systems. This study aims to investigate the impact of transport infrastructure investment on environmental degradation and economic growth and to test the validity of the EKC hypothesis in China, India, Russia, and Japan over the period 1995-2020. The results show that GDP has a significant positive effect, and GDP 2 and GDP 3 have significant adverse effects on environmental degradation, respectively. These results confirm the validity of the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis in selected emerging Asian economies. Rail infrastructure investment has significant adverse effects, while road infrastructure investment and aviation infrastructure investment have significant positive effects on environmental degradation. Likewise, the impact of investment in transport infrastructure system (roads, rail, and aviation) on economic growth is positive and statistically significant. Country-level estimates confirm the validity of the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis in China, India, and Russia, while the N-shaped EKC is only valid in Japan. Investments in rail infrastructure based on modern rail systems that run on electricity are believed to be less polluting in the transport mix, help create sustainable and safe transport systems, and reduce emissions at the urban and intercity levels in emerging Asian countries. In addition, the growing impact of free trade on environmental pollution should be strengthened to harmonize the strict enforcement of environmental conditions dominated by trade agreements., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a popular teaching approach that is being enthusiastically adopted across Japan (Ikeda, M. 2019. "CLIL in Comparison with PPP: A Revolution in ELT by Competency-Based Language Education." In "Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning: The Case of Japan," edited by H. Reinders, R. Hayo, and S. Nakamura, 23-45. Palgrave Learning). CLIL is built on a 4Cs framework: Content, communication, cognition and culture (Coyle, D. 2007. "Content and Language Integrated Learning: Towards a Connected Research Agenda for CLIL Pedagogies." "International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism" 10 (5): 543-562), addressing and nurturing all four domains. While CLIL has since extended its tenets beyond the 4Cs and now adopts a more holistic, integrated, multimodal pluriliteracies perspective (Meyer, O., D. Coyle, A. Halbach, K. Schuck, and T. Ting. 2015. "A Pluriliteracies Approach to Content and Language Integrated Learning -- Mapping Learner Progression in Knowledge Construction and Meaning-Making." "Language, Culture and Curriculum" 28 (1): 41-57; Meyer, O., and D. Coyle. 2017. "Pluriliteracies Teaching for Learning: Conceptualizing Progression for Deeper Learning in Literacies Development." "European Journal of Applied Linguistics" 5 (2): 199-222), the 4Cs ideals are still integral in understanding CLIL, and in this paper the author extends its importance and suggests the addition of the fifth C, that of criticality. Without the fifth C, CLIL remains a contentious teaching approach in Japan, given that it is framed within neoliberal goals and discourse. In the current framework, language is deemed largely as a tool that allows one to cultivate the four domains, assuring language/content learning and possibly socio-economic advancement. However, as is, incongruencies in ideologies and conceptualizations conveyed via different languages are not taken up sufficiently, and what's more, problematized and challenged. This paper addresses this lack and calls for the fifth C to make CLIL in Japan an even more robust, holistic and meaningful language teaching approach.

The current study projects the increase in surface temperature and CO 2 emissions using the EGM (1,1, α, θ) grey model for the six most significant CO 2 contributing countries, namely China, the USA, India, Russia, Japan, and Germany. The study uses time series data for surface temperature (in degree celsius) from 2010 to 2020, and CO 2 emission (metric tons per capita) data from 2009 to 2019. The empirical results show a downward trend in CO 2 emissions from Japan, Germany, the USA, and Russia by 2028. However, in the same time period, CO 2 emissions are expected to increase for India and remain nearly constant for China. This study indicates an increase in surface temperature at a significant rate in all the 6 countries: by 6.70 °C for China, 7.52 °C for Germany, 2.95 °C for India, 2.66 °C for Japan, 3.61 °C for Russia, and 13.48 °C for the USA by the end of 2028. The study compares the EGM (1,1, α, θ) grey model with the general EGM (1,1) grey model and finds that the EGM (1,1, α, θ) model performs better in both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting. The paper also puts forward policy suggestions to mitigate, manage, and reduce increases in surface temperature as well as CO 2 emissions., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Addressing global climate change has become a broad consensus in the international community. Low-carbon economic development, as an effective means to address global climate change issues, has been widely explored and practiced by countries around the world. As major carbon emitting countries, there has been much focus on China, Japan and South Korea, and it is of practical significance to study their low-carbon economic development. To further measure their trend of low-carbon economic development, this paper firstly constructs a low-carbon economic efficiency evaluation index system and uses the Slack Based Measure (SBM) model. This is a kind of data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, with undesirable output based on global covariance to measure the low-carbon economic efficiency of 94 provincial-level administrative divisions (PLADs) in China, Japan, and South Korea from 2013 to 2019. Subsequently, this paper uses 10 mainstream machine learning models and combining them with Grid Search with Cross Validation (GridSearchCV) methods, selects the machine learning model with the best prediction effect. The model predicts the low-carbon economic efficiency of PLADs in China, Japan, and South Korea from 2020 to 2024 based on the parameter configuration for the best prediction effect. Finally, according to the research results, this paper proposes targeted advice for regionalized cooperation on low-carbon economic development in China, Japan, and South Korea to jointly address global climate change issues.

The tourism environment is the basis of sustainable development in the tourism economy. Exploring the coupling relationship between tourism economy and ecological environment systems can promote not only ecology-based tourism, but also contribute to the sustainable development of tourism economy. Based on data from Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, from 2010-2019, this paper aims to introduce an indicator system and develop an integrated approach to assess the coupling and coordination between the tourism economy and the environment. The indicator system consists of two levels, six aspects, and eighteen indicators, based on entropy method. A Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model framework of the coupling and coordination mechanism of tourism economy and ecological environment was constructed based on the development status of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. Then, the degree of coupled coordination of its tourism economy and ecological environment is evaluated, providing a comprehensive evaluation index of the system. In conclusion, suggestions for promoting the sustainable development of tourism and environment in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, are proposed. The purpose of this research is to reveal dynamic trends that exist between the coupled development of tourism economy and the ecological environment. A further aim of this paper is to provide a reference for macro policy formulation in small and medium-sized cities regarding the sustainable development of the tourism economic system and ecological environment system.

In today's multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, tourism experience has an emblematic role because it can represent a place-occasion of meeting between different experiences and cultures, between different religions, as a tool of recognizing identities and as a producer of communities of affection, shared places and common memories. Analyzing tourism in the Muslim society, we can find a new niche called Muslim friendly tourism that seems useful to deepen. This paper focuses, in a first phase, the relationship between Islam and tourism through the considerations of doctrine and the Koran and then goes on to verify how relevant is, from a social and economic point of view, Muslim Friendly Tourism. The work will be conducted by analyzing the scientific insights and data relating to MFT in many Muslim and non - Muslim countries, in order to understand the peculiarities of this phenomenon, with some explicit references to Japan, Singapore and Italy (as examples of different attitudes towards MFT). As a recent phenomenon, Muslim friendly tourism is an ever-evolving field and the subject of many studies in relation to the size of this market, the needs of Muslim travelers, the critical success factors in tourism favorable to Muslims and its economic repercussions. A certain fact is its constant economic growth; in fact, Muslim friendly tourism is becoming a relevant business, with a turnover that records a constant growth rate, even if recently hit by severe limitations imposed by Covid 19 on the movement of people. In this panorama the Muslim friendly tourism is placed as an emerging and all-evolving sector. For these reasons it is and will be the subject of numerous future searches and projects, that will continue to focus and will delve into this market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many large structures have been constructed all over the world due to economic development. Especially in Japan, more than 50 years have passed since the intensive construction of large structures during the period of high growth known as the Japanese economic miracle. As these structures age, they need to be inspected, and numerous robots have been proposed for structural inspection. However, the technology for inspection of large structures by robots remains immature. This paper proposes a vibration actuator system that can move a robot over an iron structure having a complicated surface, such as a stepped surface. A prototype vibration actuator system was built, in which four vibration actuators and wheels containing magnets were combined with flexible silicone rubber “backbone.” Actual climbing tests showed that this actuator system can move smoothly over vertical steps. Further, this system can be equipped with an automatic tapping device, which might allow it to inspect the main towers of a large bridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, it was tried to study the effect of economic, social and political development of the country in improving the quality of financial reporting of companies by developing a comprehensive and scientific model by setting Japan as a model, emphasizing the efficiency and effectiveness of the technique--management accounting as a mediating variable. The mentioned model was developed through structural equation modelling with PLS software. This research aims to collect economic, social and political data from the data of international reports and to collect data related to the quality of the internal information environment (alternative index to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of management accounting techniques and tools) and The quality of financial reporting has been used from the financial statements of all companies in the automotive industry, parts manufacturing, electronic equipment and heavy vehicles in Tehran and Tokyo Stock Exchanges. The developed model and the results of the research hypothesis test showed that the main factors of development, including economic, social and political factors, have a significant positive effect on improving the quality of the internal information environment through the efficiency and effectiveness of management accounting techniques and tools, while the factors The main development, neither directly nor indirectly through the mediating variable of the quality of the internal information environment, has a significant effect on the quality of financial reporting of companies. The same result was repeated in the fourth hypothesis regarding the country of Japan, and it showed that economic, social and political factors in both Iran and Japan cannot lead to improving the quality of financial reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the repair works of Japan's infrastructure maintenance and management, there is a need to develop a technology that can easily remove coating and rust without a thermal effect on the base material, and the laser blasting technology, which can achieve this by only emitting laser beams, is a candidate for this goal. In various fields of infrastructure maintenance and management, we have been progressing on an agile system product development based on customer's feedbacks in accordance with our in-house systematized new business development process. In this report, we will describe the development of the "InfraLaser" system and the laser blasting technology, where we apply a high-power laser and the processing technology that we have cultivated. The laser blasting technology can remove coating and rust faster than existing methods without affecting the base material, and is expected to be friendly to both workers and environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the Bank of Japan is caught in a bind owing to both its quantitative easing policies of the last two decades and chronic inflation. In response to quantitative tightening abroad, the Bank of Japan is under pressure to raise interest rates and/or allow yields on ten-year government bonds to rise. This is because the response to inflation among G7 nations has undermined the yen, which have made clear the flaws of the Bank of Japan's approach to restoring economic growth, namely quantitative easing as any attempt to adapt to international efforts to address inflation, using monetary methods, runs the risk of triggering a cascade of loan defaults due to illiquidity issues both at home and in foreign markets. To demonstrate this, the article evaluates Japanese quantitative easing measures, including the Bank of Japan's yield curve control policy, and assesses the problems it faces due to inflation and the responses to it, including monetary tightening abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the research goal, the authors proposed to consider the thesaurus of the concept of "antifragile in the global economy" by revealing the categorical-conceptual apparatus, namely the concepts of "economy", "globalization", "antifragile" and "global economy". To delimit the defined definitions and further level the existing contradictions in the categorical-conceptual apparatus, the authors propose to visually demonstrate the relationship between the above-defined terms and the concept of " antifragile in the global economy " using graph-theoretic structures. In the work, with the help of analysis of modern sources, the authors attempted to provide their definition, considering all the pros and cons of the existing interpretations. The given definition differs from the existing ones by considering the critical features of antifragile, expanding the concept of the global economy, considering its purpose, and revealing the meaning of the economy. The study's authors revealed the economic content of global problems as a component of economic development to reveal which problems contribute to the development of the world economic system. The work analyzed the dynamics of the GDP volumes of three developed countries, namely France, Japan, and the USA, by constructing a diagram based on GDP indicators from 2014-2022. The impact of global financial crises on the world economic system is considered, namely the impact on super-large investment companies, whose financial crisis is the detonator of the global crisis. The work focuses on the trends in the functioning of the world's stock markets in 2020-2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of military bases for the economy and security of nations is enormous and serves different purposes. Thus, this study evaluates the impact of foreign military bases and economic security in Djibouti. This country in the Horn of Africa region was chosen because of its geostrategic location and because it currently hosts five foreign military bases in its small landmass. The specific objectives of the study are (i): to determine whether the geostrategic locations of these foreign bases in Djibouti are driven by the economic interests of the foreign countries and (ii) to ascertain whether the rent/premium on these bases has any significant impact on the economic development of Djibouti. The theoretical framework used in this study is the realist theory, while the method of data collection is the documentary method. The data collected were analysed using the qualitative descriptive method of data analysis that involves the explanation and description of the secondary sources of data. From this study, we observed that the geostrategic position of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa that hosts these foreign military bases drives its economy from premium and rent. Consequently, major findings include the locations of five military bases (US, France, Japan, China, and Italy) on the country's landmass which are driven by economic/national interests. Again, the premiums/rents paid on the military bases have not significantly increased the economic development of Djibouti. The study, therefore, recommends that Djibouti should explore other uses of its geostrategic location from hosting military bases to tourism. Again, the country should step up to take charge and control such regional economic routes around its maritime corridor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Japan's (1980s-90s) and China's (2000s-10s) overseas infrastructure promotion campaigns. We explain how developmentalism, i.e. the state's active engagement in economic development, has given rise to these two go-global campaigns, as the governments of both countries sought to expand industrial policy outward to compensate for domestic political economic problems. We explain how Japan, the go-global forerunner, influenced China, the go-global latecomer, and how China has formulated its own campaign strategies based on its distinct institutional and ideational settings as well as lessons derived from Japan's past policy practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's rapid post-war economic growth prompted Chinese leaders to look to their neighbour as they initiated market reforms from the late 1970s. How did movements of people and ideas between China and Japan occur, and what were their effects on Chinese enterprise policies? From the 1970s through the 1990s, Chinese officials, scholars, and enterprise representatives invited Japanese advisors to China, conducted myriad exchanges through associations like the Sino-Japanese Economic Knowledge Exchange and the Japan-China Economic Association, and actively studied Japan's economy and companies. Chinese policy-makers gained insights from Japan about market-responsive forms of corporate structure, organisational solutions to state ownership dilemmas, evidence that consolidation could aid economic performance and technological upgrading, and strategic commitment to building large state-owned enterprise groups. However, this episode of intense engagement between China and Japan generated neither unilateral 'diffusion' nor unitary influence. Instead, it reveals how China has developed its own path of economic development through what I term 'policy collaging': seeking, selecting, and creatively combining policy ideas and practices from international sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rapid economic development has caused considerable environmental problems in waste generation and treatment. One important reason for this is China's manufacturing exports to other countries such as Japan, a major trading partner. However, the contribution of such importing countries has not yet been fully explored. This study quantitatively examined how final demand in trade between China and Japan affects both countries' economies and waste generation. The results show that imports of final consumption goods from China to Japan induced enormous waste generation in China, while the wastes induced in Japan were negligible. Even if final demand exports from China to Japan are significantly economically beneficial to China, the cost to China from addressing the induced waste generation seems too much to make these exports worthwhile. To encourage constructive discussions, improvement of reliability and transparency of waste statistics in China that allows comparison with other countries would be significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide (CO2) traps heat from the sun, and thereby prevents oceans from becoming frozen solid to keep the earth habitable. CO2 emission also stimulates global warming and increases the pace of climate change. For such contradictory influences, researchers across the globe have shown interest in examining the relationship among energy, emission, trade and commerce, focusing on different regions, including the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Investigation from a developed country perspective is understudied. Hence, this research aims at analysing how trade and commerce, urbanisation, energy consumption, and economy affect the volume of CO2 emission in Japan. The World Bank database was used to collect data for 1960–2010. The findings suggest that the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic progress and carbon emissions follows the Environmental Kuznets Curve theorem. However, per capita energy consumption has no significant impact on emission in the long run; the trade volume does not directly affect the emission of CO2 in Japan. Besides, the ratio of the urban population shows a negative impact on carbon emission in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite competing strategical interests over Southeast Asia that have emerged in the last decade, with the launch of wide scope geopolitical strategies Chinese and Japanese initiatives have been characterized by a certain degree of implicit coordination, particularly in offering support to the Myanmar state's territorializing strategies for economic development. The case of the Thilawa Special Economic Zones (SEZ) is exemplary, as it was a Japan-led project which became a model and benchmark example for similar development initiatives supported by the People's Republic of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yoshikuni Igarashi argues that this transformation toward a mass consumer society spurred a crisis of masculinity, as men found themselves occupying a consumer role that was anathema to traditional models of masculinity defined through production. I Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism i presents a fascinating cultural history of Japan's era of high economic growth. Igarashi connects this to discourse on the emergence of a collective perception of Japan as a uniformly middle-class nation and how consumerism was foundational to this new national identity. [Extracted from the article]