This study focuses on Chinese seafood manufacturing enterprises that mainly serve the Japanese market amid declining exports of Chinese fishery products to Japan. Based on an analysis of the actual situation of cost reduction and diversification strategies through alliances with Japanese seafood importers, the research elucidated a primary factor in maintaining exports to Japan. Our main findings are as follows. First, the decline in exports to Japan by Chinese fishery companies not only resulted from growing demand in the American and European markets and the low difficulty in exporting to Japan, but also due to a significant increase in the purchase price in American and European markets in recent years. Second, the company managed to reduce the cost of raw materials for mackerel and procure large quantities of rare cod fish through the “full standard purchase” purchasing method at the procurement stage. Third, the partnership with Japanese-affiliated seafood exporter R Corporation at the sales stage enabled the company to implement strategies to diversify its products and sales channels. These strategies resulted in increased exports to Japan and a significant increase in export value to the EU and other regions.

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Japanese trading companies (sogo-shosha) invested their resources in the Brazilian grain business in the 2010s to ensure stable procurement of grain. However, while these sogo-shosha made similar patterns of investment in inland and port assets of the United States, which is a major grain market for Japan, in the case of the Brazilian market their entry patterns were different. This research considers the factors that influenced the decision-making of the sogo-shosha that were entering the Brazilian grain market business. Understanding these matters is extremely important in order to identify the characteristics of the Brazilian grain market that are important for stable Japanese grain procurement. Against this background, the present research focuses on the information cognition of each company regarding the Brazilian grain market and considers the reasons for the difference in the scope of entry business.

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The wholesale market in Japan remains a primary vegetable sales channel, but in response to external environmental changes, transactions in the wholesale market are increasingly complex. The present research examines the buyer-seller relationship so as to capture the actual state of buyers’ transactions in the wholesale market. A questionnaire survey of 74 cabbage and lettuce buyers was undertaken regarding response to unpredictable obstacles occurring in the Ota market of the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, Japan. The major findings of the research are that diverse buyers enable cooperation within and outside the market and that the buyers’ correspondence with their customers enables the wholesale market to deal with unpredictable obstacles.

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