Online Databases and Information Services in Japan
There are thousands of databases, both domestic and foreign, accessible from Japan, and dozens of online services that provide access to them. This month, Associate Editor Steven Myers offers an overview of just a few of the better known and more useful online business information sources.by Steven Myers
A barrier that many English-speakers face when trying to get current and in-depth information about Japan is language. It has been estimated that less than 25% of Japanese business and technical information is available in English.
It isn't just the language barrier, though. Obtaining up-to-date information about Japan and the Japanese market presents some unique and challenging problems for market researchers. Japanese firms are constantly in the process of conducting market research and updating their information, but foreign businesspersons are often at a loss as to even where to begin their search.
The problem isn't a lack of information. There are numerous major Japan-specific databases, and dozens of smaller ones as well as hundreds of international data sources. The problem is knowing where to start, and deciding which of the myriad online databases have the type of information you need at affordable prices. As an introduction to what is available, this article touches on just a sampling of some of the larger Japanese databases, and the online service companies that provide access to them.
Japanese databases
The following companies are among the major database "producers" in Japan. Access to these databases is generally provided by a database service or an online service company, such as those mentioned in the latter half of this article. Many of the "producer" companies also combine their databases into their own services, with quick search and index features that can be accessed directly or from one of the "service" corporations. The combinations can be confusing, and it is frequently difficult to determine exactly which databases are available for search by an outside service.Comline Business Data, Inc.
Comline maintains three separate databases. "Comline Business Analysis" contains analytical articles on Japan's technology development and industry trends; it is updated weekly. "Comline Industrial Monitor" provides news on Japan's industry, technology, and marketing strategies, and "Tokyo Financial Wire" offers financial, economic, and corporate news about Japan; both of these databases are updated daily. This information is all in English, and goes back to June 1986.Japan Patent Information Organization (JAPIO)
JAPIO stores bibliographic information, distributed among several databases, about published patents, registered design, and graphic figures of published, public, or applied trademarks in Japan since 1964. English information about patents is contained on a separate database, and the rest of the information is in Japanese.Nichigai Associates, Inc.
Nichigai Associates offers four popular Japanese-language databases. "Book" contains information about the contents of books published in Japan since 1986, and "Magazine" provides an index to articles published in Japanese periodicals since 1981 (selected from over 1,300 business and economic journals). "Prize" lists information on 2,000 Japanese prizes (many of which are extremely lucrative) from various contests and competitions, along with data on the winners from the previous year. "Who" contains biographical information on over 330,000 writers in Japan, including bibliographical information about their publications.Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. (Nikkei)
Nikkei is one of Japan's largest information providers, with a multitude of bilingual databases providing a wide variety of business and financial information. "Corporate Profile," for example, contains descriptions of major Japanese companies; it includes such data as the names of the CEO's, addresses, telephone numbers, year established, major stock holders, and summarized financial information. "Personnel Data Bank" offers biographical data on executives and managers in major corporate and government offices.Teikoku Data Bank, Ltd.
The Teikoku databases provide descriptive information on 190,000 Japanese companies, including those with English trade names. This service is sometimes referred to as "Cosmos."The Yomiuri Shimbun
"Yomidas," the main Yomiuri Shimbun database, contains nearly all of the articles, in the original Japanese, from the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun since September 1986, including the Osaka, Central, and Western editions. A separate database, the "Daily Yomiuri Database," is a collection of articles from the English-language paper The Daily Yomiuri. "Yomiuri Report from Japan" offers a further collection of business news articles in English.The Japan Information Center of Science and Technology/JOIS
JOIS is Japan's largest science and technology database service. It contains bibliographic information, with abstracts, of literature in the fields of science, technology, and medicine, collected from scholarly journals, proceedings, technical notes, public literature, and other sources in 50 countries. Information from the JICST files on science and technology is also provided. JOIS also provides descriptions of research projects planned or in progress at Japanese public research institutions.Nomura Research Institute
Co., Ltd. (NRI)
NRI spreads its financial and corporate data over several Japanese databases.
Its English service, "NRI/E" offers numerical and text data from
NRI on Japanese economy, finance, and industry.
Online services
offering wide
database access
The following online service companies provide access to hundreds of databases
in Japan, including most of those listed above, and thousands more databases
from around the world. The cost of access can vary greatly depending on
the online service and the database. Some services charge an additional
flat-rate monthly fee, where the user signs up as a "member" of
the database service in addition to the online service. Other services charge
anywhere from ¥10 to ¥50 per minute for database use on top of
the standard rate for the online service.
Nifty-Serve
Nifty-Serve offers access to over 300 database services in Japan, including the Nichigai databases (through Nifty Service "Nichigai Assist"), Teikoku, and JOIS. The "Infocue" service provides connection to another 850 databases worldwide and includes search and index features and an online manual. The charge for access differs dramatically depending on the database service, and is added to the standard rate for accessing Nifty-Serve (¥10/minute at 1200/2400 bps, and ¥25/minute at 9600/14400 bps).PC-VAN
PC-VAN is NEC's online information service, and Nifty-Serve's major competitor. In addition to the "Nichigai Assist" service, PC-VAN also offers access to the Nikkei databases via a service called "Nikkei Telecom Biz." Another database service available to PC-VAN users is Dialine-PC, which draws business and marketing information from a large number of Japanese databases. In addition to the ¥3,000 fee for joining PC-VAN, the company charges either ¥20 per 3 minutes or¥2,000 per month (the user chooses at time of registration.) Use of Nikkei Telecom Biz requires an additional ¥30,000 up front, plus ¥15,000 per month.
G-Search
Unlike Nifty-Serve and PC-VAN, which offer many other online services (such as forums and shareware) in addition to database access, G-Search specializes in database services. G-Search provides access to 140 databases in Japan, and provides the "Infocue" service mentioned above for overseas databases. The company also offers a private service to help corporations create and maintain their own commercial databases. G-Search charges a ¥15,000 sign-up fee; after that, the cost depends only on the access rate of the particular database service being used through G-Search (i.e., it does not charge addi- tional access rates as do Nifty-Serve and PC-VAN).Marketing Data Bank
Marketing Data Bank (MDB) is a huge market information provider/research consultant that offers information services for all areas of Japanese market research to a large corporate clientele. The company boasts a network of over 3,000 Japanese and foreign sources, and an in-house library of over 100,000 published documents. In addition to online databases, such as JOIS and Nikkei Telecom, MDB also offers connections to G-Search and other large database services, and it will handle special requests from members for a diverse range of primary and secondary research on virtually any business or marketing topic. MDB charges a ¥100,000 membership fee (first year only) plus an annual research fee of ¥550,000.Information sources
This article has introduced some of the major online resources, but it barely scratches the surface of what is available. For those interested in exploring Japanese databases in more detail, the Database Promotion Center, Japan, publishes an annual English-language book entitled Directory of Japanese Databases and the annual Japanese-language Database Hakusho (White Paper on Databases). For more information, contact the Database Promotion Center, Japan, at 03-3459-8581, fax03-3432-7558.
For general information about Japanese databases, two other organizations that you may want to contact are the Japan Database Industry Association (phone 03-3235-5966, fax 03-3235-5976) and the Japan In- formation Service Industry Association (phone 03-3595-4051, fax
03-3595-4055).ç
Database service contact numbers
To find out more about the online services and databases described in this article, phone the appropriate service at the voice number listed here. (Be prepared to deal in Japanese, at least to the extent of indicating your interest and requesting an English-speaking representative. If you are calling from overseas, substitute "81" (Japan's country code) for the initial "0" of the phone number.)Phone Fax
COMLINE Business Data Inc. 03-5401-4567 03-5401-2345
JAPIO 03-5690-5555 03-5690-5566
JICST 03-3581-6448 03-3581-6446
Nichigai Associates 03-3763-5241 03-3764-0845
Nihon Keizai Shimbun 03-5294-2406 03-5294-2411
Nomura Research Institute 03-3249-9402 03-3639-2900
Phone Fax
Teikoku Data Bank Ltd. 03-3408-1108 03-3404-4339
Yomiuri Shimbun 03-3217-8217 03-3217-8979
G-Search 03-5442-4391 03-5565-4012
Marketing Data Bank 03-3578-1508 03-3437-1284
Nifty-Serve 03-5471-4854 03-5471-5890
PC-VAN 03-3454-6909 03-3798-9170
