The purpose of this study is to analyze, based on evidence, factors preventing the elderly from maintaining a healthy diet by using a revised food access indicator that takes food availability in stores into account. The area being studied is A City, a regional city in the northern Kanto region of Japan. The dependent variable in the study was dietary diversity score, which is a measure of the risk of adverse health effect caused by deterioration of diet. Multilevel analysis was used for the analysis of factors to allow individual level factors and group level factors to be analyzed independently.
Regarding the individual level factors, results of the analysis suggest that FDs problems are present in areas with reduced food access, reduced social capital, or both, which supports the previous finding of FDs study groups. Among the group level factors, the presence of a store within a close distance of 500m most strongly affected the diet of the elderly. However, when a supermarket with nearly 100％ food availability was located about 400m away or further, the condition for raising dietary diversity score from low to high was not met. In contrast, when the data was analyzed by assuming the shopping range to be 2km each way, the availability of a store as fully stocked as a supermarket within about 1.3km met the condition for raising dietary diversity score from low to high.

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We attended the seminar on the study of Geographic Indication held at Tokyo University on December 8, 2018. Speakers and commentators came from various academic backgrounds, such as agricultural economics, marketing science, laws, commercial science, and sociology. Many topics were discussed. We could add another approach, so-called pragmatic sociology to explain how tastes or holds mediate the relationships between the products and brand images. We think that for the Japanese GI systems to function well, it is necessary to connect the common representations or images of GI products with the physical demands for these products. It will be useful to share the common language through digitalized technology.

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The purpose of this study was to clarify the features and issues of the Geographical Display Protection System, which was launched in June 2015, from the perspective of the place branding theory. The Geographical Display Protection System aims to protect the name (geographical display) that can identify the connection with the area as intellectual property. In that sense, the geographical display is regarded as a type of place brand. Therefore, in this paper, the characteristics of the Geographical Display Protection System were compared with the Regional Organization Trademark System, which started operations in April 2006. The findings revealed that the Geographical Display Protection System differs from the Regional Organization Trademark System in the (1) presence of brand holder, (2) way of brand determination, and (3) type of brand structure. Although the Geographical Display Protection System still has some problems, it solved some of the issues of the Regional Organization Trademark System.

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This paper reviews the international rules for the protection of geographical indications, the EU-US conflict in the WTO, the WIPO, and regional trade agreements. It further examines the features of the EU, the U.S., and Japanese protection systems, as well as the recent change in the Japanese system.
The EU system differs from the US system in two ways: the notion of terroir and the quality assurance system with official compliance controls. The Japanese system is similar to the EU system. Japan has made many efforts to respond to the EU-US conflict and to enhance measures to increase the effectiveness of the protection of geographical indications.

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Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) that came into force on February 2019 outlined mutual protection of Geographical Indication (GI) products. Tariffs on some high-quality EU products were also eliminated, consumer literacy of “authentic” products rose, and agricultural production in Japan had to create competitive advantage. Following the adoption of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Cabinet Office of Japan aimed to achieve the goals with so-called smart agriculture and ICT. However, this paper argues that in order to continue agricultural activities while creating value for the economy, society, and the environment, it is necessary to achieve SDGs with terroir-oriented agricultural activities seen in South European countries rather than through increasing efficiency. The value of GI as terroir-oriented agriculture was recognized in this paper not by measuring its registration effects, such as elimination of counterfeit goods, expansion of distributions, and increased producers and premium price, but rather by measuring its contribution to SDGs.

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Based on a field survey of 12 products, this study reveals the objectives and effectiveness of the Geographical Indication Protection System (GI) and Regional Collective Trademarks, which promote regional branding of agricultural products. We evaluate the effectiveness of both systems from the viewpoints of “constructing a production management system,” “controlling imitations,” “expanding awareness,” “rising price,” and “expanding production scale.” Moreover, we examine the effectiveness of “rising price” for Tsurajima Gobou and Miyagi Salmon using the Price Premium Method.
The main results are as follows. First, the field survey reveals that GI-specific rules are useful. The government uses these rules to regulate imitation, and organizations that do not have corporate status can register their products under the GI system. Second, the prices of many agricultural brands remain unchanged after registration with brand protection systems. After registration, due to their strict production management systems or positive appeal to wholesalers, those prices are raised. Moreover, we confirmed that the price of Tsurajima Gobou and Miyagi Salmon are raised after registration using the Price Premium Method.

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