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This paper aims to shed light on current initiatives of urban regeneration around the Shibuya Station area within the context of contemporary Tokyo’s place development strategies. The objectives are twofold: to illustrate the characteristics of the plans and the planning approaches framing the interventions; and to identify the strategies employed to reshape the cityscape.

Using a case study approach, this paper combines data from historical and archival research, as well as policy documents and plans. These are supplemented by data from extensive fieldwork undertaken between 2015 and 2019 to critically assess and interpret the implemented policies and the outcomes of the regeneration.

The paper provides insight into the ongoing urban regeneration around the Shibuya Station area and identifies five key themes that summarise the strategies employed to transform the urban landscape in the area. Despite the apparent success and some innovations introduced by the redevelopment project, critical issues remain–especially around the privatisation of public space and the lack of a holistic approach to sustainability.

The paper examines a significant and timely case of urban regeneration. By critically discussing the implications of the redevelopment around Shibuya Station in the context of Tokyo’s current place development strategies, the study highlights the importance of an inclusive notion of sustainable development and contributes to the debate around Japanese urbanism and urban regeneration.

Examining aspects of organizational identity, this paper revisits McLuhan's media theory in connection with W.R. Scott's insight that organizations themselves are the medium. The purpose of this paper is to consider the history of the Tokyo‐based urban developer/media organization Parco Co., Ltd, which emerged from a department store bankruptcy in 1969.

Through exploring the process of how a bankrupted department store transformed into Parco, a harbinger of Japan's consumer culture, the identity of Parco is sought in connection to its marketing strategies and managerial discourses.

Examining the identity of Parco provides two insights. First, there is a reflexive dynamism between an organizational identity and the organizational strategies. Parco exemplifies this concept as its strategies are defined and articulated by its organizational identity, which is in turn influenced by its organizational strategies. Second, Parco's organizational efficiency is found in its “organizational symbioticity”, a new construct which extends not only within but also beyond the firm.

The Parco case provides an important lesson. The medium that acts as an entrepreneur on the cutting edge can also be the message. For a medium that is ubiquitous, the message is the content of the medium. This appears to be the reason why Parco continues to successfully redefine its identities and strategies.

This paper uses the case study method to exemplify contemporary organizational identity and its marketing strategies. Furthermore, it demonstrates how an understanding of the social significance of the medium shapes consumer culture today.

The emergence of purely “street‐born” fashion styles in the 1990s in the young women’s casual wear market in Tokyo has revealed the limitations of the conventional framework of quick response (QR) approaches that have long been implemented by Japanese fashion houses. They were found to be incapable of responding to the need for fresh fashion designs in the extremely volatile and fast‐moving streets of Tokyo’s casual fashion scene. This, on the other hand, has initiated a Korean‐Japanese fashion connection, in which a large number of small fashion firms in the Dongdaemun fashion industry district in Seoul play an important role in the taking‐shape of the pronto moda (fast fashion) in Tokyo style, with their organic networking of small suppliers within the agglomeration. The linkage of fashion industries between Seoul and Tokyo has also been fostering an interactive partnership in that both parties learn the uniqueness of each other’s practices. On the basis of a review of industrial agglomeration theories, highlights the relationships between the casual fashion trends in Tokyo in the 1990s and the pronto moda formula in the fashion agglomeration in the Dongdaemun district. In addition to this, an analysis of the future implication of the Korean‐Japanese fashion connection in the context of the global fashion industry is projected.

Global collaboration, or the ability to collaborate with people different from ourselves or even across species, becomes increasingly important in our interconnected world to engage constructively with and across difference. As we face more complex challenges, both locally and globally, the need for the creativity and innovation made possible by diverse perspectives is only amplified. Through five stories from our work as consultants and practitioners helping organizations to collaborate, we explore the role of global leadership in collaboration during times of crisis in various sectors. We began by asking ourselves a series of questions about global collaboration that could also serve as future research directions for scholars. We argue that new forms of leadership are required in the global context where both tasks and relationship domains are characterized by high complexity. We conclude by providing insights and recommendations for global leaders to address those complexities through collaboration and help their organizations learn from their experiences in crises and beyond.

Comparative education research in Japan is strongly oriented toward emphasizing fieldwork, unlike Western methodologies that aim for theorization. For this reason, it is sometimes regarded as peripheral research without a theorizing orientation or as a counterstrategy to Western research. This study examines why Japanese comparative education research emphasizes fieldwork, focusing on discussions at the Japanese Society of Comparative Education from the 1990s to the present, and considers whether the discussion far from aimed at theorizing. It can be said that Japanese comparative educational research, while characterized by a field-oriented orientation, has been trying to analyze the subject with sincerity through more in-depth fieldwork and is aware of the back and forth between theorizing and differentiation. Furthermore, recently, an international, agenda-based approach and the concept of transboundary fieldwork based on triangulation and Border Studies as a new way of looking at the field itself have also emerged. Therefore, it can be said that Japanese comparative educational research, while characterized by a field-oriented orientation, is increasingly aiming for a multilayered and relative analysis of the field, which is an argument autonomously derived from a focus on the field rather than being a strategy or a challenge to Western universalization-oriented methodologies.

Based on a case study of the pre-2020 Olympics renewal project in the city-center of Tokyo, this chapter examines the nature and impacts of urban renewal conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) in relation to social housing.

A qualitative case study approach is used based on interviews (with different stakeholders), and participant observation (at various local events or public assemblies) to analyze the impact of such urban renewal on social housing and its community.

The TMG has promoted urban renewal of city government-owned land in public-private partnerships by defending these projects as “win-win-win strategy among residents-business-city.” However, at the same time it has worsened the housing conditions of residents by causing their displacement or the deterioration of their housing environment.

The chapter shows us that the TMG’s justification for the urban renewal — would produce trickle-down effects and help the residents — doesn’t reflect what is really happening to the community. This will help us to have a better understanding of the reality and to critically discuss a more just urban and housing policy.

The chapter provides a complex insight on the “super-residualization” of social housing in Japan, characterized not only by the decrease in its number but also urban renewal providing business services and amenities for the middle and upper classes. This provides an interesting comparison with Western societies.

ON THE AOYAMA‐DORI, an avenue in central Tokyo running from the Imperial Palace into the Shibuya district, is a building envied by all countries trying to increase exports to Japan. And, incredibly, it's British.

The purpose of this paper is to identify various individual factors and combinations thereof that can contribute to truck drivers’ occupational accidents, particularly connected to work performed outside the cab in various work environments.

In total, 74 accidents were analysed through in-depth interviews with truck drivers. These interviews were conducted employing the critical incident technique, and analysed utilising a qualitative content analysis approach.

The contributing factors identified were categorised into 14 categories. In all, 13 of these were grouped into four sections reflecting the drivers’ work outside the cab: “Goods and equipment”, “Loading/unloading area”, “Loading/unloading tasks”, and “Organisation”. A single risk factor was associated with 40 accidents while the other 34 involved combinations of factors.

Although the tasks performed by truck drivers in different countries are probably similar, one limitation might be that all the accidents characterised occurred in one country: Sweden.

The findings reveal that complex combinations of risk factors often contribute to accidents. In addition to the transportation company itself, other stakeholders, such as clients, and designers and manufacturers of technology, may influence the occupational safety of truck drivers. Different stakeholders who could contribute to managerial decision making that is designed to prevent accidents are identified and discussed.

This investigation contributes to an in-depth understanding of the causes of accidents in the transportation industry. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the stakeholders and safety management in an attempt to identify key stakeholders who can improve accident prevention.

Seam pucker is one of the most important aspects of garment quality in the sewing process. Recently, automatic sewing systems have been developed and seam pucker or other defects would have to be automatically inspected in these systems. Two systems of automatic, contactless measurement of seam pucker have been developed. One of the measurement systems, with which surface shape of seam pucker was measured, is based on laser technology. Intensity of reflected ultrasonic wave is measured using another measurement system. The laser measurement system has been applied to moderate or severe seam pucker and the ultrasonic wave system has been applied to the accurate evaluation of very small seam pucker. The result of the evaluation by machine has to match the result of subjective evaluation by humans. To verify this, samples of seam pucker were evaluated using five judges. With the measurement data of surface shape of these samples, the power spectra of the wave form of seam pucker are calculated. Analyses and correlates the relationship between objective measurement and subjective evaluation by discriminant analysis, with the result of subjective evaluation and the power spectra of the samples. Having obtained these relationships, the degree of seam pucker can be measured objectively by both systems.