THE BRIDGE

tag yahoo japan

Project Design Lab: Helping Tohoku’s reconstruction by crowdsourcing design

SHARE:

Two years have passed since the Tohoku earthquake hit Japan, and the region is still in the middle of reconstruction efforts. And just as in many other parts of Japan, there are many traditional crafts that have been nurtured there over hundreds of years. In order to support this kind of remarkable craftsmanship, as well as the region’s economy and reputation, a new website called Product Design Lab has just launched. A number of players are behind the initiative: Yahoo’s Tohoku reconstruction online mall, major crowdsourcing website Crowdworks, Daikokuya Business Consulting, and Yahoo Crowdsourcing. The four business aim to supplement the lack of design resources in the Tohoku region, marrying old craftsmanship with new consumer-generated ideas. Here is how a typical project will proceed. The details of the product will be decided based on a survey conducted on Yahoo Crowdsourcing, and product design will then be developed on CrowdWorks. After a vote on Yahoo Crowdsourcing, the item will be manufactured, and the final product can be bought at Yahoo’s Tohoku reconstruction online mall. At the time of launch, two companies from Tohoku will participate in the new initiative: a leather bag manufacturing company called Astro Tech in Miyagi prefecture, and…

Product-Design-Lab

Two years have passed since the Tohoku earthquake hit Japan, and the region is still in the middle of reconstruction efforts. And just as in many other parts of Japan, there are many traditional crafts that have been nurtured there over hundreds of years. In order to support this kind of remarkable craftsmanship, as well as the region’s economy and reputation, a new website called Product Design Lab has just launched.

A number of players are behind the initiative: Yahoo’s Tohoku reconstruction online mall, major crowdsourcing website Crowdworks, Daikokuya Business Consulting, and Yahoo Crowdsourcing. The four business aim to supplement the lack of design resources in the Tohoku region, marrying old craftsmanship with new consumer-generated ideas.

Here is how a typical project will proceed. The details of the product will be decided based on a survey conducted on Yahoo Crowdsourcing, and product design will then be developed on CrowdWorks. After a vote on Yahoo Crowdsourcing, the item will be manufactured, and the final product can be bought at Yahoo’s Tohoku reconstruction online mall.

At the time of launch, two companies from Tohoku will participate in the new initiative: a leather bag manufacturing company called Astro Tech in Miyagi prefecture, and the Kesenuma Dream Project which manufactures hand moisturizing cream that uses camellia oil from the region. Using Product Design Lab, Astro Tech will come up with an entirely new bag, and the Kesenuma Dream Project will design a new package for its popular hand moisturizer.

To see what kind of crowdsourcing projects might become available in the future on the site, take a look at Yahoo’s Tohoku Reconstruction online mall or check out the Fukko Department.

Japan’s subscription-based service ‘Box To You’ partners with Yahoo Japan

SHARE:

See the original post in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup ‘Grow’ has announced a partnership with Yahoo Japan today. This means that Yahoo Japan users will have access to the startup’s subscription-based e-commerce service Box To You. All items provided by the subscription-based service are also available on Yahoo Shopping, which is Yahoo Japan’s e-commerce channel. ‘Box To You’ was launched back in August of 2012, and it gives users a chance to purchase food products presented by celebrities or notable farmers, with products periodically delivered from food producers or farms. Users are able to interact with presenters via Facebook, which may encourage them to sign or update a subscription contract. Grow received seed funding worth $485,000 back in December of 2011, and subsequently completed a second funding round from three Japanese investors back in May of 2013. Details of that investment were not disclosed.

boxtoyou-top

See the original post in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup ‘Grow’ has announced a partnership with Yahoo Japan today. This means that Yahoo Japan users will have access to the startup’s subscription-based e-commerce service Box To You. All items provided by the subscription-based service are also available on Yahoo Shopping, which is Yahoo Japan’s e-commerce channel.

‘Box To You’ was launched back in August of 2012, and it gives users a chance to purchase food products presented by celebrities or notable farmers, with products periodically delivered from food producers or farms. Users are able to interact with presenters via Facebook, which may encourage them to sign or update a subscription contract.

Grow received seed funding worth $485,000 back in December of 2011, and subsequently completed a second funding round from three Japanese investors back in May of 2013. Details of that investment were not disclosed.

Gyao and GREE establish investment fund to develop anime film business

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Gyao, a broadband video distribution company and a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689), and Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) announced today that they have established a company to invest in animation content development. The team-up was first announced back in February with a tentative company name. Making the most of IT and information systems, the new company will be called AnimatiC (which they say is a combo of animation and systematic) and its goal will be to develop fresh new animation films and content that audiences have never seen before. AnimatiC’s portfolio films will be distributed via video distribution platforms including Gyao, and it is expected that business will extend beyond developing social gaming apps or collectible card game products derivative from anime. Accordingly, for film producers, if you receive investment from the fund, you can easily get a distribution channel for your film, and have an easy access to related businesses. On a bit of a side note, Japanese smash-hit mobile gaming app Puzzle & Dragons has recently partnered with animated film series Evangelion to offered a limited time promotion where users can win character items from the series. Similarly, a film…

logo_1000x278

See the original story in Japanese.

Gyao, a broadband video distribution company and a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689), and Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) announced today that they have established a company to invest in animation content development. The team-up was first announced back in February with a tentative company name.

Making the most of IT and information systems, the new company will be called AnimatiC (which they say is a combo of animation and systematic) and its goal will be to develop fresh new animation films and content that audiences have never seen before.

AnimatiC’s portfolio films will be distributed via video distribution platforms including Gyao, and it is expected that business will extend beyond developing social gaming apps or collectible card game products derivative from anime. Accordingly, for film producers, if you receive investment from the fund, you can easily get a distribution channel for your film, and have an easy access to related businesses.

On a bit of a side note, Japanese smash-hit mobile gaming app Puzzle & Dragons has recently partnered with animated film series Evangelion to offered a limited time promotion where users can win character items from the series. Similarly, a film distributor planning to release the anime Time of Eve with English subtitles on Blu-ray raised more than 7 million dollars in about four weeks on crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter. These results indicate there is much potential in anime content distribution over the internet.

I believe it is possible to empower many anime creators using IT and information systems. As seen in the recently launch of anime-focused crowdfunding site Anipopo, this space is the focus of very high expectations from the market.

Japan’s Crowdworks adds another big local partner

SHARE:

Crowdworks, which some readers may remember from its deal with Yahoo Japan back in January, added another big company, Benesse, to its list of partners. Benesse is a big player in the children’s education space but also runs a major female community site called Women’s Park, which has 4 million members. Through the partnership, there will be job and task postings on the community site from Crowdworks. Crowdworks envisions three major goals: to establish a new working style for women, local neighborhood revitalization, and globalization. Housewives being the biggest user segment at Women’s Park, the recent partnership aims to tackle the first goal in the hopes of promoting new or alternative work styles for women, especially those with children. As mentioned above, this is Crowdworks second largest partnership (behind Yahoo) with 300 billion yen in annual sales. The Yahoo tie-up didn’t take long to yield a positive effect, as within two days Yahoo brought in over 1,000 new user registrations.The two companies are searching for different ways to collaborate, such as promoting Crowdworks’ crowdsourcing via Yahoo’s advertisement business to crowdsource advertorial material. Crowdworks released a new feature this month called the Arigato button, which works similar to Facebook’s likes, allowing…

crowdworksBenesse-logo

Crowdworks, which some readers may remember from its deal with Yahoo Japan back in January, added another big company, Benesse, to its list of partners. Benesse is a big player in the children’s education space but also runs a major female community site called Women’s Park, which has 4 million members. Through the partnership, there will be job and task postings on the community site from Crowdworks.

Crowdworks envisions three major goals: to establish a new working style for women, local neighborhood revitalization, and globalization. Housewives being the biggest user segment at Women’s Park, the recent partnership aims to tackle the first goal in the hopes of promoting new or alternative work styles for women, especially those with children.

As mentioned above, this is Crowdworks second largest partnership (behind Yahoo) with 300 billion yen in annual sales. The Yahoo tie-up didn’t take long to yield a positive effect, as within two days Yahoo brought in over 1,000 new user registrations.The two companies are searching for different ways to collaborate, such as promoting Crowdworks’ crowdsourcing via Yahoo’s advertisement business to crowdsource advertorial material.

Crowdworks released a new feature this month called the Arigato button, which works similar to Facebook’s likes, allowing clients to show gratitude and appreciation to individuals who have done work for them. In two weeks after the release, there have been over 20,000 arigatos already. In an email, Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshida elaborated on the tie-ups:

The two companies we’ve partnered with, Yahoo and Benesse, are both 300 billion yen companies. After just a year since Crowdworks’ launch, we were able to accomplish this milestone. It clearly shows the exciting potential of the crowdsourcing industry.

Within a year, the total amount of client work posted on the site has exceeded 1.2 billion yen with over 6,000 companies using the site. The aging population of Japan is forcing for a paradigm shift to take place in the ways people work. This partnership between Crowdworks and Benesse will open new doors for people, and allow resources to be better leveraged.

Yahoo Japan to launch online ticket sales service, poised to shake up $10B market

SHARE:

Japan’s Nikkei reports that Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) will launch an online ticket sales service that will allow users to join live events by presenting e-tickets on their smartphone screen at the event venue [1]. So far in this space, convenience store chain Lawson, Sony-backed Entertainment Plus, and 7-Eleven-backed Pia already have a head start, and Yahoo Japan will to be the fourth major player. The ticket sales market in Japan is said to be worth about 1 trillion yen (or about $10 billion). Yahoo Japan is expected to launch its box office service, to be called Pass Market, in a couple of days. All Yahoo Japan users will have access to the service, and when you buy a ticket it will be deducted from your bank account according to the information in your registered user profile. The ticket will be sent to the user’s smartphone in the form of a unique QR code. After presenting the code to a ticket checker at the event venue, they can scan it using a smartphone camera to confirm its validity. With conventional ticket sales platforms, an event organizer usually pays several thousand dollars to starting selling tickets, as well as a 10% commission…

yahoo_logo

Japan’s Nikkei reports that Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) will launch an online ticket sales service that will allow users to join live events by presenting e-tickets on their smartphone screen at the event venue [1]. So far in this space, convenience store chain Lawson, Sony-backed Entertainment Plus, and 7-Eleven-backed Pia already have a head start, and Yahoo Japan will to be the fourth major player. The ticket sales market in Japan is said to be worth about 1 trillion yen (or about $10 billion).

Yahoo Japan is expected to launch its box office service, to be called Pass Market, in a couple of days. All Yahoo Japan users will have access to the service, and when you buy a ticket it will be deducted from your bank account according to the information in your registered user profile. The ticket will be sent to the user’s smartphone in the form of a unique QR code. After presenting the code to a ticket checker at the event venue, they can scan it using a smartphone camera to confirm its validity.

With conventional ticket sales platforms, an event organizer usually pays several thousand dollars to starting selling tickets, as well as a 10% commission on the ticket sales. But Yahoo Japan will take no set-up fee, and only a 5% commission charge of the ticket sales.

As Japan’s largest internet portal, with more than 27 million user accounts, this new service should represent a significant revenue stream for event organizers – and for Yahoo Japan too, of course.

On a related note, there are also many startups that provide simple ticket sales services for meetups and events, including Peatix, Tixee, Zussar, EventRegist, Everevo, and Atnd.

Our readers may recall that Yahoo Japan has recently acquired on-demand cinema service DreamPass last month.


  1. The Nikkei report can be found here, although it’s paywalled.  ↩

Yahoo Japan to bolster search results with NHN Japan’s Naver Matome

SHARE:

Today Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) and NHN Japan held a joint press conference to announce that the two internet giants would be working together to integrate NHN’s Naver Matome curated content into Yahoo Japan’s search results. The intention is to bring a human element into Yahoo Japan’s search, thus creating a sort of hybrid search experience. For those of you not familiar with Naver Matome, which began back in 2009, my colleague Yukari gave a wonderful overview of the curated service earlier in the month as part of our ‘Japanese internet in depth’ series. Yahoo Japan will also set up a specifically designed search engine for curated Naver Matome results. That engine will also be deployed to Naver Matome in order to provide a better search experience. Work on this project will begin in April. As you can see in the chart below, Matome’s growth has staggering, currently with 41 million visitors a month and over 1.2 billion page views per month. It’s growth over the course of 2012, in terms of monthly visitors, has out-paced even Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, today’s deal ensures that the platform still has some growing left to do.

nhn-japan-yahoo
Yahoo Japan president Manabu Miyasaka, NHN Japan president Akira Morikawa

Today Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) and NHN Japan held a joint press conference to announce that the two internet giants would be working together to integrate NHN’s Naver Matome curated content into Yahoo Japan’s search results. The intention is to bring a human element into Yahoo Japan’s search, thus creating a sort of hybrid search experience.

For those of you not familiar with Naver Matome, which began back in 2009, my colleague Yukari gave a wonderful overview of the curated service earlier in the month as part of our ‘Japanese internet in depth’ series.

Yahoo Japan will also set up a specifically designed search engine for curated Naver Matome results. That engine will also be deployed to Naver Matome in order to provide a better search experience. Work on this project will begin in April.

As you can see in the chart below, Matome’s growth has staggering, currently with 41 million visitors a month and over 1.2 billion page views per month. It’s growth over the course of 2012, in terms of monthly visitors, has out-paced even Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, today’s deal ensures that the platform still has some growing left to do.

twitter-facebook
Monthly visitors of Naver Matome, Facebook and Twitter.
(comparison of November of 2011 and November of 2012, in unit of 1,000 visitors)

naver-matome-growth
Monthly pageviews of Naver Matome (in unit of 100 million pageviews)

Yahoo Japan offers to rescue Google Reader refugees

SHARE:

A number of services are already reaping the benefits of the Google Reader’s impending retirement this coming July. Most notable among them is Feedly.com, which has seen half a million new users since Google made its announcement. But in Japan, the leading internet property YahooJapan (TYO:4689) is poised to capitalize on the opportunity as well. Currently when users log in to their My Yahoo pages they’ll see a link to a promotion of sorts by the company, whereby it explains step-by-step how to export their feeds from Google Reader to import them into My Yahoo. It also explains how to bring your data from iGoogle, which is being retired in November. Yahoo Japan’s ‘My Yahoo’ is much like the product of the same name from Yahoo proper, except for it probably has enthusiastic users. I took a quick walk though the process, and it works pretty seamlessly, although if you’re a heavy feed consumer you’ll likely want to try something a little more robust. Japanese users also have Livedoor Reader, although I’ve never tried that one myself. I suspect, like anywhere else, Feedly will be a popular choice in Japan too. I’m not certain which service I’m going to settle…

yahoo-japan

A number of services are already reaping the benefits of the Google Reader’s impending retirement this coming July. Most notable among them is Feedly.com, which has seen half a million new users since Google made its announcement. But in Japan, the leading internet property YahooJapan (TYO:4689) is poised to capitalize on the opportunity as well.

Currently when users log in to their My Yahoo pages they’ll see a link to a promotion of sorts by the company, whereby it explains step-by-step how to export their feeds from Google Reader to import them into My Yahoo. It also explains how to bring your data from iGoogle, which is being retired in November. Yahoo Japan’s ‘My Yahoo’ is much like the product of the same name from Yahoo proper, except for it probably has enthusiastic users.

I took a quick walk though the process, and it works pretty seamlessly, although if you’re a heavy feed consumer you’ll likely want to try something a little more robust. Japanese users also have Livedoor Reader, although I’ve never tried that one myself. I suspect, like anywhere else, Feedly will be a popular choice in Japan too.

I’m not certain which service I’m going to settle on for my own feeds, although I’m currently testing out Fever for no other reason than Gabe Weatherhead seems to like it [1].

What service you you plan to use for RSS feeds? Do you ever make use of RSS feeds at all these days? Let us know! (Via Impress Internet Watch)


  1. Gabe is cool. Note however that Fever is a self-hosted solution without much support. But so far, I like it too.  ↩

Japanese startup acquisitions: An interactive timeline

SHARE:

As I mentioned in a recent article about Yahoo Japan’s acquisition of Dreampass, the startup eco-system is gradually taking shape here in Japan. Incubators play a big role in the eco-system and off the top of my head I can think of maybe ten incubators. Many provide a Y-combinator model three month program with five to ten startups in each class. Most acquisitions have happened in the past year or two, so it is still far too soon to predict the fate of such startups. However, we have witnessed some encouraging exits in the last couple of years, so we thought we’d present an overview. Note that it’s not comprehensive, but it is a good general overview. Check out our interactive timeline of acquisitions above (feel free to share with the embed code below), or read on for more details below! Cirius Technologies (August 2010) ¶ Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) acquired geo-location enabled mobile advertisement technology company Cirius Technologies for an undisclosed sum. At the time of, it was rumored to be an acqui-hire for Yahoo so that it could obtain patents for the ad-technology in hopes of optimize its local mobile advertisement products. Atlantis (January 2011) ¶ Gaming giant GREE…

As I mentioned in a recent article about Yahoo Japan’s acquisition of Dreampass, the startup eco-system is gradually taking shape here in Japan. Incubators play a big role in the eco-system and off the top of my head I can think of maybe ten incubators. Many provide a Y-combinator model three month program with five to ten startups in each class. Most acquisitions have happened in the past year or two, so it is still far too soon to predict the fate of such startups. However, we have witnessed some encouraging exits in the last couple of years, so we thought we’d present an overview. Note that it’s not comprehensive, but it is a good general overview. Check out our interactive timeline of acquisitions above (feel free to share with the embed code below), or read on for more details below!

Cirius Technologies (August 2010)

Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) acquired geo-location enabled mobile advertisement technology company Cirius Technologies for an undisclosed sum. At the time of, it was rumored to be an acqui-hire for Yahoo so that it could obtain patents for the ad-technology in hopes of optimize its local mobile advertisement products.

Atlantis (January 2011)

Gaming giant GREE picked up ad-exchange platform Atlantis with an eye to winning an advantage over its competitors. Just a month after the acquisition, Gree began it’s own independent ad program. The acquisition price was rumored to be somewhere around two billion yen.

Nobot (July 2011)

Tokyo-based smartphone ad optimization and exchange platform Nobot was acquired by KDDI’s advertising unit Mediba for 1.5 billion yen (about $19.2 million). With this acquisition, KDDI became one of the largest local ad platforms, pitting it directly against Google’s AdMob.

Naked Technology (September 2011)

Mixi, one of the biggest and oldest social networks in Japan, acquired Naked Technology, a smartphone development company known for its talented engineers in hopes of enhancing its smartphone app development. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Conit (November 2011)

A few months later Mixi also picked up Conit, a startup that was founded in 2008 and focused on smartphone app development. It operated an in-app purchase platform for iOS and Android called Samurai Purchase.

Mars Ltd. (November 2011)

Gree acquired Tokyo-base startup Mars Ltd, a company known for its signature pet game ‘Megu.’

Pikkle (April 2012)

Online game and smartphone development studio KLab acquired social games Pikkle company for 175 million yen. This was an acqui-hire for the development team, also bringing in CEO David Collier, the current CTO at KLab America.

Decopic (September 2012)

Community Factory, the company behind this successful photo sharing app for girls, was acquired by Yahoo Japan for an estimated one billion yen. The six year-old startup (at the time) was the very first startup to be funded by a Mixi venture fund. Owning 40% of the total stocks, Mixi for the first time recorded a sizable chunk of income amounting to about 310.2 million yen(about $3,246,000).

Social Lunch (December 2012)

Social game company Donuts acquired lunch partner matching app Social Lunch for an undisclosed sum. Having operated for just a year and four months at the time of buyout, the app had 60,000 users. Social Lunch was a graduate of the KDDI Innovation Fund and the three members of the team joined Donuts to continue the operation of Social Lunch.

Kamado (December 2012)

Kamado was another Mixi acquisition. The company’s well-known CEO Yuichi Kawasaki was the former vice president of Japanese bookmarking site Hatena. Kamado runs a few web services including a social item exchanging website Livlis and a fashion photo curation site called Clipie.

Enter Crews (January 2013)

Mobile entertainment platform Mobcast went public in June of 2012 with over 2.7 million users (as of October 2012). It acquired online game development company Enter Crews (with 300,000 users in Japan) for roughly 600 million yen. Enter Crews was founded in September of 2009 and has opened offices in Korea and Indonesia as well. It’s a logical move by Mobcast who is eager to accelerate its expansion to other parts of Asia.

Dreampass (March 2013)

The most recent acquisition was made by Yahoo Japan for on-demand cinema service Dreampass, for an undisclosed amount. You can read more about the deal here.

This is not a complete list of startup exit stories from Japan, but you can get an idea that the money is moving around mobile ads and social gaming. Although the competition for talent (especially developers) is not as intense as Silicon Valley, social gaming companies are facing a talent acquisition war. I’m sure that these examples will only encourage and motivate creative young Japanese with their minds set on changing the world.


Feel free to share our graphic using the embed code below:

Japanese legal portal Bengo4.com raises $208,000 from Kakaku.com

SHARE:

Japan’s legal consultation portal site Bengo4.com, owned by Tokyo-based law office Authense, announced on Monday that it has raised about 20 million yen (approximately $208,000) from price comparison site Kakaku.com (TSE:2371). Prior to this fundraising, the portal site raised 100 million yen ($1.04 million) from DG Incubation, the investment arm of Japanese tech conglomerate Digital Garage (TSE:4819). Founded in 2005, Bengo4.com provides legal consultation services from participating lawyers for free, and allows consumers to get estimates from lawyers and compare them. As of March 8th, it has consulted on more than 246,599 cases and acquired 5,688 lawyers. To put that latter figure in perspective, that’s about 17% of Japan’s entire lawyer population. With this new partnership, the legal site expects to explore a sort of service integration with Kakaku.com site and its restaurant recommendation site Tabelog. On its website, Bengo4.com also announced it had partnered with Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) to provide legal and tax-related Q&A content to Yahoo Chiebukuro, one of Japan’s largest knowledge-sharing community services.

bengo4

Japan’s legal consultation portal site Bengo4.com, owned by Tokyo-based law office Authense, announced on Monday that it has raised about 20 million yen (approximately $208,000) from price comparison site Kakaku.com (TSE:2371). Prior to this fundraising, the portal site raised 100 million yen ($1.04 million) from DG Incubation, the investment arm of Japanese tech conglomerate Digital Garage (TSE:4819).

Founded in 2005, Bengo4.com provides legal consultation services from participating lawyers for free, and allows consumers to get estimates from lawyers and compare them. As of March 8th, it has consulted on more than 246,599 cases and acquired 5,688 lawyers. To put that latter figure in perspective, that’s about 17% of Japan’s entire lawyer population. With this new partnership, the legal site expects to explore a sort of service integration with Kakaku.com site and its restaurant recommendation site Tabelog.

On its website, Bengo4.com also announced it had partnered with Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) to provide legal and tax-related Q&A content to Yahoo Chiebukuro, one of Japan’s largest knowledge-sharing community services.

Second anniversary of 2011 Japan earthquake remembered online

SHARE:

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the tragic March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and on the internet a number of organizations in Japan are marking the occasion with some form of remembrance. Over on Yahoo Japan, there’s a extensive interactive display that presents general information about the disaster, some stunning photos of the aftermath, plus profiles and interviews of folks involved in the recovery effort. Amazon Japan is also pitching in by selling local foods from the affected areas as well as books [1] about the natural disaster. There’s also a Japan earthquake wishlist where you can buy goods needed by local organization, such as books for libraries, for example. Amazon was especially supportive of the recovery effort back in 2011, bringing a number of jobs to Sendai with a call center there. Softbank also has a page set up to highlight various reconstruction efforts, including its own Tomodachi program which we wrote about last month. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son contributed the sum of 10 billion yen (over $100 million) to help the relief effort in the month after the earthquake back in 2011. As we me mentioned last week, some other organizations are making an effort or digitally…

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the tragic March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and on the internet a number of organizations in Japan are marking the occasion with some form of remembrance.

Over on Yahoo Japan, there’s a extensive interactive display that presents general information about the disaster, some stunning photos of the aftermath, plus profiles and interviews of folks involved in the recovery effort.

Amazon Japan is also pitching in by selling local foods from the affected areas as well as books [1] about the natural disaster. There’s also a Japan earthquake wishlist where you can buy goods needed by local organization, such as books for libraries, for example. Amazon was especially supportive of the recovery effort back in 2011, bringing a number of jobs to Sendai with a call center there.

Yahoo Japan's earthquake commemoration
Yahoo Japan’s earthquake commemoration
Amazon Wishlist
Amazon Wishlist

Softbank also has a page set up to highlight various reconstruction efforts, including its own Tomodachi program which we wrote about last month. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son contributed the sum of 10 billion yen (over $100 million) to help the relief effort in the month after the earthquake back in 2011.

As we me mentioned last week, some other organizations are making an effort or digitally archive memories of the disaster, including the newly opened NDL archive which collects important photos, video, and other information. Google’s archival work – particularly its ‘Memories for the Future’ website – perhaps stands out above all other efforts, as its work has been pretty continuous in the two years since the quake.

Of course, while remembrance is important, Japanese broadcaster NHK reminds us that many people in affected areas are still struggling with recovery. As you can see in its infographic below, their survey indicates that there is still a lot of work to do, not only in terms of repairing physical damage in affected areas, but also in terms of emotional recovery.

Written with contributions from Masaru Ikeda

NHK


  1. For English speaking readers, you might want to check out the e-book Reconstructing 3/11, which is available as a free download today.  ↩