Yahoo! Japan, the Japan biggest portal, has partnered with eBay in online auction services.

eBay Inc. once tried to open its popular auction service under its subsidiary eBay Japan established in 1999, retreated March 2002 without getting market share against "Yahoo! Auction" (so-called "Yafuoku").

Yahoo! Auction users will have translated eBay items listed by March 2008, whilst eBay will have Japanese staffs (such like "popular Japanese Manga, CD, character merchandise") by the end of 2008.

Two companies also opened standalone site "Sekaimon" ("Sekai" means "world"), on where Yahoo! Japan users can log in by Yahoo! Japan ID and purchase eBay items with Japanese menu and online agent support.

Other Japanese online auction players are Rakuten's "Rakuten Furima"("Furima" comes from "fleamarket") and "bidders", which is served by DeNA (DeNA also owns "Mobage-Town", the biggest cellular phone SNS).

On cellular phone web, "Mobaoku" (which stands for Mobile Auction) coworks with KDDI/au, "Rakuten Auction" affiliated with NTT Docomo, are two popular sites.

See also:

1. Yahoo! Japan Press Release [pdf]

Author Information  @akky(Akky AKIMOTO) is one of the first pro-bloggers in Japan [J]. He also leads Asiajin, writes for Japan Times, does consultation for foreign companies interested in entering Japanese web market.

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