Message for Solidarity: A Japanese Perspective on the Payment for Forest Ecosystem Services Developed over Centuries of History

Payments for ecosystem/environmental services (PES) have emerged internationally as a new environmental conservation concept over the past two decades. By contrast, Japan has a centuries-long history of using various forms of PES. These schemes can be understood as solutions to interregional problems with forest ecosystem services that have been agreed upon and accepted by the society. This paper aims to consider the significance of PES with respect to cooperative relationships by examining historically formed solutions in Japan. The Japanese experience shows that rather than simply being a demonstration of monetary value, PES in upstream forests were a means of communication across regions, expressing interregional solidarity as a core concept. As connections among communities became less visible, the government artificially created solidarity through payments. The payments gradually shifted from having a socioeconomic meaning to having a psychological meaning. The government sought to substantiate the sense of solidarity by making individual users more aware of the meaning of payments. We can find the significance of this type of PES in the fact that payments can be a way to approach the issue of building solidarity by focusing on the function of payments as messengers rather than them merely having an economic value.

Learning the Narrative Characteristic: Perspective Taking in Written Japanese as a Foreign Language

Narratives written by L2 learners are often awkward even after linguistic elements such as grammatical errors and vocabulary choices are corrected. This unnaturalness may be caused by not exploiting the appropriate cultural and language specific aspects in the target language. The current study focuses on a narrative characteristic of Japanese; perspective taking consistency in writing a story, and the uses of its associated structures. By examining intermediate L2 learners of Japanese whose L1 is English, this study seeks to prove whether classroom instruction helps to overcome unnaturalness caused by the inappropriate uses of perspective taking and not using its associated structures in the short- and long terms. The results of this study show that instruction helps L2 learners to maintain the consistent perspective both in the short- and long-terms. However, the instruction seems to have not affected the L2 learners’ utilization of a variety of perspective taking structures. Taken together, this study offers implications for earlier instruction on the learning of the narrative characteristic.

IT services offshoring from Japan: a multi-dimensional comparative analysis between India and China

Purpose This paper aims to carry out a qualitative analysis to compare India and China as a choice of service-provider from the perspective of Japanese MNEs for information technology (IT)-IT enabled services (ITeS) offshoring destination, using the four dimensions of the cultural-administrative-geographic-economic (CAGE) distance framework by Ghemawat (2001). Design/methodology/approach This exploratory study used a mix of primary and secondary evidence to carry out a comparative evaluation of the challenges and synergies existent between India and Japan relative to China and Japan, in the context of IT-ITeS offshoring industry. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with multiple stakeholders and the findings were classified using the CAGE framework. Findings The paper discusses that for IT-ITeS industry, owing to its characteristics and the changing global order in the post-pandemic world, the “distances” that matter the most for business engagement between countries are – cultural, administrative and economic. Based on the comparative analysis, it was seen that China fares better than India, from a Japanese perspective, for the case of cultural and geographic distances while India had an advantage in the case of administrative and economic distances. Thus, India and Japan seem to have higher synergies and potential mutual gains by expanding engagement in the IT-ITeS industry in future. Research limitations/implications One of the limitations of this paper was the lack of comparable secondary data source concerning the size, growth rates, exports, employment figures for China that could have helped establish the contrast in the structure of IT-ITeS industry of India and China. Originality/value This study provides a framework for a comparative analysis of multiple facets of “distance” between competing service providing nations at bilateral, as well as unilateral level, in a holistic manner for the IT-ITeS offshoring industry. The results thus provide the gaps that shall be bridged by the policymakers for realizing mutual benefits.

How to Prevent Peritoneal Dialysis Catheter Tip Migration: A Japanese Perspective

The prevention of peritoneal dialysis (PD) catheter complications is essential to achieve a successful outcome. In recent years, nephrologists have performed more PD catheter insertion surgeries in Japan. The prevention of catheter complications is crucial for nephrologists who do not have all-around surgical skills. PD catheter tip migration is a common complication and a significant cause of catheter malfunction. Several preventive techniques have been reported for the PD catheter tip migration. This perspective described the following: (1) surgical technique in laparotomy, (2) laparoscopic surgery, (3) peritoneal wall anchor technique, and (4) catheter type selection. We hope that more effective methods of preventing catheter complications will be developed to ensure the success of PD treatment.

Transnational Law and Conflict of Laws: A Japanese Perspective

This chapter reflects on the relation between transnational law and conflict of laws. Whereas the methodology of transnational law is, to a certain extent, in line with new approaches on conflict of laws seeking to find solutions for conflict of laws in a context of increasing global governance, the transnational method seems less compatible with classical choice-of-law methodology used in Japan and would therefore bring serious challenges to Japanese conflict of laws. To respond to these challenges, the chapter proposes identifying the specific situations in which a classical approach might still work and those in which it might bring an undesirable solution for global governance, before considering a complete change of the choice-of-law method. Finally, the chapter suggests that conflict of laws as a methodology could provide transnational law with fresh techniques to resolve conflict of norms in an era of global legal pluralism.