April 13, 2022 Yuka Yoshida Why was Shirakawa-go, a World Heritage Site, chosen as one of the 100 Most Sustainable Tourist Destinations in the World? There is sustainability's spirit inherited from Japanese ancestor. What Is Shirakawa-go? Shirakawa-go was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 1976 by the Japanese government and was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage in 1995. The main point of interest is the Gassho-zukuri sty

April 9, 2022 Mizuho Kakiuchi There are many famous sceneries in Japan. For example, Mt. Fuji, the historic cityscape of Kyoto, and the skyscrapers of Tokyo. However, Japan’s cityscape is not only like that. One of the sceneries that you often see in Japan is that the many houses are densely adjacent to each other. This landscape is deeply related to the history of Japan and is often seen in urban areas of Japan, but various problems have been pointed out. "Wooden densely bui

April 21, 2022 Yuna Inoue In Japan, the birth rate has been decreasing and depopulation is progressing. To solve this problem, a lot of local municipalities have been integrated. However, local people are sad to lose their hometown because they feel their culture fades away. Not only adults but also children are worried about that. Current Situation in Japan Japan has been faced with the serious concerns of rapid aging and a very low birth rate. Moreover, local areas in Japan

April 20, 2022 Miyu Iwamoto There is one unique activity in Japan called “a village with 700 citizens turns into one hotel.” In Kosuge village in Yamanashi Prefecture, the woodland accounts for around 95% of whole village area. The villagers have been carrying out activities to protect the natural environment for over 100 years. The reason why the mountain village started such an innovative service is because of the depopulation. They wanted to save beautiful natures, wild a

October 11th, 2021 Arisa Nokuo and Rena Katsumata Through the interview with Mr. Toda, who is engaging in building a risk management system at Taiyo Nippon Sanso Co., Ltd., about the relationship between BCP and CSR, we could learn some interesting case studies as below. The Risk of Mine Operation Palette: Even though the African continent is famous for copper or gold, why does the JX Nippon Mining & Metals have no base in Africa? We suspected that conflict minerals were the

June 10, 2021 Arisa Nokuo & Rena Katsumata Do you know what the word “BCP” means? It stands for Business Continuity Plan, meaning to ensure that business processes could be properly continued even at a time of emergency or disaster. Japan often suffers from natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons and Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash floods, this is why many companies set BCP as a part of ESG (Environmental, social and governance) administration. Palette randomly asked

“The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” Helen Keller wrote it on her book published in 1902. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Japanese agriculture got damaged seriously. If Keller is trueーwhen are Japanese farmers full of overcoming? This Is The Hardest Ever According to Tokyo Meat Market Co., the price of meat fell down by 700 yen from April 2019 (see Figure 1). That was because of the decrease of going-outs and of inbound tourists. “This is the

Naito, an amusement machine company, has begun to manufacture and sell the face guards for newborn babies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections since late April. Naito is located in Aichi prefecture and develops pachinko, a Japanese gambling game of pinball. That is one of the few companies which supports the Japanese entertainment industry. In late April, the pachinko manufacturer began producing and selling face guards to support medical institutions as a social cont

July 31, 2020 NATSUHA AKIYAMA To counter COVID-19, Fujitsu group, a Japanese information and communication technology giant, has started many supportive services for free including offering it’s intellectual property rights for free. Freeing 40,000 Patents To Counter COVID-19 The medical crisis is becoming a great issue by COVID-19 and the vaccine and yet drugs for the terrible virus are not innovated. Fujitsu has suggested to supply it’s patents under the project of Open COV