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This chapter looks at the sex trade in Japanese society and the manner in which it has been accepted for decades, both socially and legally, as a ‘necessary evil’. This passive and disinterested tolerance of the industry's quasi-legal state, neither banning prostitution completely nor ensuring that it follows the transparent rules and regulations expected of other industries, means that it fails to satisfy either of the primary views on transactional sex: prohibition or legalisation. The result is that the women involved in the industry are subject to various forms of exploitation and abuse that the Japanese government, by failing to take active steps to reform the industry in either direction, becomes complicit to. Shaped by personal interviews with members of the industry and the NGOs that provide them with support, the chapter provides an examination of the industry's historical development, its portrayal in popular media and the prevailing social norms regarding the industry. It then assesses the political and legal responses to the industry and the glaring oversights that exist in their failure to provide adequate support. Finally, it considers, based upon the self-expressed interests of the women working in the industry, in what areas meaningful reform might occur.

Among natural disasters, drought affected the most people worldwide during the past few decades (Obasi, 1994). Since the late 1970s, there has been a shift in El Niño-Southern Oscillation toward more warm events, closely related to a worldwide trend for intensified drought (Dai, Trenberth, & Karl, 1998). In particular, this trend was manifested as widespread droughts during 1999–2002 in the northern hemisphere (Lotsch, Friedl, Anderson, & Tucker, 2005), including Asia, and notably in Mongolia (Nandintsetseg, Shinoda, Kimura, & Ibaraki, 2010; Shinoda, Ito, Nachinshonhor, & Erdenetsetseg, 2007). The decade of 2000s has experienced increased vegetation degradation and wind erosion that resulted from decreased summer precipitation in wide areas of East Asia (Kurosaki, Shinoda, & Mikami, 2011a; Kurosaki, Shinoda, Mikami, & Nandintsetseg, 2011b). Furthermore, in general, projections of climate models have suggested that the frequency and intensity of extreme weathers will likely increase in the future (IPCC WG I, 2007). Given this background, it is vital to make an assessment of socioeconomic impacts of the extreme weathers and to develop proactive approaches to mitigating such impacts.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the motivation factors associated with American volleyball athletes' migration to Korea and to identify the constraints that interfered with their leisure pursuits away from their primary sport engagement. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 participants, four themes were identified under migration motivation: (1) career extension and longevity, (2) monetary compensation, (3) cultural experiences, and (4) coach/player recommendations, and three themes under leisure obstacles associated with acculturation: (1) language barrier, (2) lack of time, and (3) limited social networks. This study provides athletes with information on migration motivation and what elements prevent them from thoroughly engaging in leisure participation while they are stationed abroad.

Purpose: This paper presents a review of the current state and potential capabilities for application of robots, artificial intelligence and automated services (RAISA) in hotel companies.

Design/methodology/approach: A two-step approach was applied in this study. First, the authors make a theoretical overview of the robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) in hotels. Second, the authors make a detailed overview of various case studies from global hotel practice.

Findings: The application of RAISA in hotel companies is examined in connection with the impact that technology has on guest experience during each of the five stages of the guest cycle: pre-arrival, arrival, stay, departure, assessment.

Research implications: Its implications can be searched with respect to future research. It deals with topics such as how different generations (guests and employees) perceive RAISA in the hotel industry and what is the attitude of guests in different categories of hotels (luxury and economy) towards the use of RAISA. It also shows what is the attitude of different types of tourists (holiday, business, health, cultural, etc.) and what kinds of robots (androids or machines) are more appropriate for different types of hotel operations.

Practical implications: The implications are related to the improvement of operations and operational management, marketing and sales, enhancement of customer experience and service innovation, training and management.

Originality/value: This book chapter complements and expands research on the role of RAISA in the hotel industry and makes some projections about the use of technologies in the future.

As the sole Asian country in the DAC donor community until South Korea joined in 2010, Japan has been struggling with the pressure to align with the norms and modalities of the community, while having a different history of aid from Western donors and desiring to be unique. This chapter untangles the domestic and international factors that have affected policy making and implementation of the Japanese Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), particularly in education, at different times in its history. The philosophical foundations of Japanese aid policies are examined in the changing political, economic, and social contexts from the 1950s up to the present.

As the Education for All paradigm took the stage, Japanese education ODA has shifted from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s to primary education from technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education. However, in the post-2015 process, the policies have swung back to give equal emphasis to TVET and higher education as to basic education, reflecting the global trend to make the agenda more comprehensive. While the convergence with the global trend is clear in Japanese ODA, the hesitant desire to be unique always forces Japanese ODA officials and scholars to discuss and try to demonstrate the “Japanese model” of development and aid.

The chapter also points out that the increased presence of other Asian donors in recent years has made Japanese ODA policies driven more by national interests than by global humanitarianism, which is clearly seen in the Development Cooperation Charter adopted in 2014.

This chapter examines the effect of the division of labor from a Bayesian viewpoint. While organizational reforms are crucial for cost reduction in the Japanese water supply industry, the effect of labor division in intra-organizational units on total costs has, to the best of our knowledge, not been examined empirically. Fortunately, a one-time survey of 79 Japanese water suppliers conducted in 2010 enables us to examine the effect. To examine this problem, a cost stochastic frontier model with endogenous regressors is considered in a cross-sectional setting, because the cost and the division of labor are regarded as simultaneously determined factors. From the empirical analysis, we obtain the following results: (1) total costs rise when the level of labor division becomes high; (2) ignoring the endogeneity leads to the underestimation of the impact of labor division on total costs; and (3) the estimation bias on inefficiency can be mitigated for relatively efficient organizations by including the labor division variable in the model, while the bias for relatively inefficient organizations needs to be controlled by considering its endogeneity. In summary, our results indicate that integration of internal sections is better than specialization in terms of costs for Japanese water supply organizations.

Recent empirical studies have improved methodologies for identifying the causal effects of policies especially on a minimum wage hike. This study identifies causal effects of minimum wage hikes across 47 prefectures in Japan from 2008 to 2010 on employment, average hourly wage, work hours, full-time equivalent employment (FTE), total wage costs, average tenure, separation and new hiring in establishments using a micro dataset of business establishments in restaurant, accommodation, and food takeout and delivery industry. Various regression specifications including controls for time-varying regional heterogeneity are implemented by using the bite of the minimum wage in each establishment. First, this study finds that the effects of a revision of minimum wage on employment and FTE in the establishment are statistically insignificant, but the effects on hourly wages and total wage costs are statistically significant. Subsequently, it considers how the establishments react to the increase in total wage costs caused by the revised minimum wage, and finds that separation from the establishment may decrease, and average tenure of workers may increase.