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The article discusses the marketing practices of Japanese businesses. The focus of the Japanese government has been to shorten and widen the marketing channels in the country from small traditional retailers to more large food and discount stores, and though it has succeeded in many ways, the expansion of large department stores has slowed in recent years. Furthermore, with changes in economic and social patterns in Japan in the 30 years following the Second World War, methods have been implemented to trace the consumption patterns in consumers. Many aspects of marketing management theory in Japan have been borrowed from the U.S. Also, the author points out that while Japan relies heavily on international trade, international marketing research is not an active field of study.

Since the nineteenth century, the survey of people’s way of life were the basic method to study big cities. Even though the surveys were motivated by social awareness, the result was mainly analyzed by scientific, political and economical interests, and often was devided from the cultural and psychological research of urban phenomena. However, as it is obvious that these are closely integrated, the method and idea of the urban survey reflect the bilateral relationship between perceiving and conceiving urban space. This study will explain how urban surveys transformed and reflected the ideas and interests in urban space and its study in Japan from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1980s. Especially in examining a research named “Modernology” by a Japanese architect Wajiro Kon from 1925 to 1930, and the works of later Japanese architects inspiered by “Modernology” after 1960s, this study will explain how they tried to create urban studies with cultural identity by conducting surveys and integrating with international theories. “Modernology”described the emerging urban space and people’s way of life in Tokyo, and was often recognized as a method of popular culture. However, Modernology represented critical aspects of social space and encouraged people to be more engaged with it. While modernist architects distanced from urban realities to solve its problems scientifically, Modernology was often recognized as their counter part. When we recognize its primal objectives and influence on later generation in seeking the social ethos in the dialectical progress with the bilateral approaches between surveying and planning, we can understand the alternative aspect of Japanese urban studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folk epistemology is a study of the commonsense knowledge and internalized beliefs of ordinary people. This paper discusses consumer knowledge in the context of consumption rituals in Japan. Studying the development of local knowledge is imperative in consumer research, despite accelerating globalization, because knowledge and reasoning cannot be separated from the history in which they are embedded. Prior research tended to treat knowledge projects and consumption rituals as sequential conceptions. The purpose of this study is to propose a model of transcendental consumption rituals, underpinned by cultural pragmatics and ontological liquidity. The proposed model entails a holistic approach to consumer rituals, synthesizing both synchronic and diachronic aspects of the rituals. Metaphors in language and tacit knowledge influence folk epistemology of consumption rituals. Ontological viscosity and the spiritual center of gravity are proposed to better explain the dynamism of consumer rituals in a relatively monolithic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]