March 16, 2026

Professor Stephanie Assmann-Terada published a new monograph, Food Education and Rural Resilience in Japan. Nourishing National Identity, Routledge 2025.
Food education initiatives exist worldwide, but Japan remains unique with its food education law known as shokuiku. The country’s impressive health metrics — high life expectancies, low obesity, and affordable health care — often lead observers to praise this approach. This book presents a more nuanced analysis. First, it challenges the assumption that food education is wholly a “good thing” by exposing underlying power mechanisms. Through food diagrams, food fairs, and school lunch programs, government ministries promote both nationalism and traditional gender roles. Second, it explores how food education operates in Japan’s rural regions, where educators champion resilience and food self-sufficiency to alleviate depopulation and economic decline. This emphasis on local food persisted even in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Using Foucault’s concept of governmentality, historical contextualization, and extensive fieldwork in rural Japan, this study reveals the complex political agenda driving food education in a non-Western society.
Key words: food education, school lunch program, governmentality, rural life in Japan
https://www.routledge.com/Food-Education-and-Rural-Resilience-in-Japan-Nourishing-National-Identity/Assmann/p/book/9789462985247

March 16, 2026

Professor Shinichi Kusanagi published the results of his most recent research in A Study of Some Impacts by the Demise of the Gross Bidding in Japan, 8. Dec. 2025 Technical Meeting on Power Systems Engineering at IEEJ Power Systems Engineering 25 at 25-30 (2025).
Contents: Because of the gross bidding in the Japan Electric Power Exchange by former General Electric Companies, many bids took place in the same slot. However, the gross bidding was suspended in October 2023 and finally abolished later. I will discuss the extent of the impacts by this demise and ideal electricity trading in the future.

Key Words: Gross bidding, Electricity wholesale, Japan Electric Power Exchange, Equal footing, Surplus electric power, Equilibrium point
https://ieej.bookpark.ne.jp/products/ieej-20251205b01001

March 16, 2026

The results of Professor Carmen Tamas and Professor Masanao Kawakami’s joint research on business and the sacred have been published in At the Intersection of Profit and the Sacred: An Analysis of Ise Dai Kagura from the Business Model Perspective, in SYNERGY Vol. 21 no. 2, 2025.
The current study looks at the Ise Dai Kagura group from the business model perspective, attempting to analyze the mechanism that ensured the economic survival of these groups across centuries. How did they develop a business model starting from prayer and performance? What type of profit generation does their business follow? How is it sustainable in the 21st century—is it self-supporting or is it based on government support? These are some of the questions that are addressed (and hopefully answered) in this paper, using both ethnographic and business model tools.
Keywords: business model, performance, profit, sacred, kagura
https://www.synergy.ase.ro/issues/2025-vol21-no-2/10.%20Tamas%20Kawakami..pdf

August 1, 2023

Associate Professor Saddam Khalid's research paper titled "Act or Wait-and-See? Adversity, Agility, and Entrepreneur Wellbeing across Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic" was published in the Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice journal, one of the most prestigious journals in the field of entrepreneurship. This was a collaborating study initiated by King's College London. Saddam Khalid contributed as a coauthor in the study conducted globally among 20 countries to see the entrepreneur's well-being during COVID-19. For this paper, he received the Award for Special Research Achievements from the University of Hyogo in July.

June 1, 2023

On March 13, 2023, Dr. Stephanie Assmann-Terada was interviewed about her research on rural Japan for the series 'Local Japan Podcast' by a team of researchers who explore strategies of starting businesses in Japan's more remote areas.
Episode 32: Sustainability in Contemporary Rural Japan

May 1, 2023

Assoc. Professor Nghiêm-Phú Bình and Professor Komiya Kazutaka of the Graduate School of Social Sciences have recently published a paper in the International Journal of Business and Society, Scopus Q3. In this paper, the two researchers examined Japanese consumers' opinions about products made by people with disabilities. They discussed the implications of their findings for enriching the cause-related marketing literature and better managing the involved businesses. You can access the paper here.

April 1, 2023

Dr. Bishnu Kumar Adhikary joins as a new faculty. He is researching crowdfunding, corporate governance, earnings management of family firms, venture capital, and foreign direct investment in Asia. He has published books on crowdfunding and FDI. In addition, he has scholarly publications in different reputed journals, which can be explored here.

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