ABSTRACT
This chapter is a historical account of a Japanese regional supermarket chain, Yaohan, and of its venture into Hong Kong's retail markee. Following Sahlins (1990), I see this venture as a dialectic between human practice and social structure, on the one hand, and between Yaohan and Hong Kong society, on the other. Each of these mutually affects the others in such a way that three methodological implications follow. Firstly, Yaohan's Hong Kong venture should be regarded as a multi-faceted historical process which takes into account not only the socio-cultural endowments of both Yaohan and Hong Kong, but the consequences for both of such endowments. Secondly, we cannot treat Yaohan as just another anonymous agent in the global expansion of Japanese companies. Its peculiarities need to be spelt out because their interaction with the local socia-cultural context very much orchestrated Yaohan's venture into Hong Kong. Finally, as this suggests, a comprehensive study of such a venture needs to begin in Japan.
