Akira Negishi is a Professor Emeritus of Kobe University, where he was the dean of the faculty of law, and Konan University where he was a vice president. At these institutions he taught competition, consumer and other economic laws. He has published numerous scholarly books, articles and commentaries and led a number of research projects and academic groups in these fields. Professor Negishi was also the president of the Japan Association of Economic Law and the Japan Association of International Economic Law, the chair of the Telecommunication Business Subcommittee, the Information Communication Council, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and the Antimonopoly Forum. He served as a counsellor for the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), a member of the Advisory Panel on Basic Issues Regarding the Antimonopoly Act, and as the bar examiner for the Ministry of Justice. He has chaired countless expert and advisory groups at the JFTC, MIC and the Ministry of Economy,Trade and Industry. He became a member of the Japan Academy, an honorary organisation that accords special recognition to researchers with eminent academic and scientific achievements in 2018.Masako Wakui is a professor at the Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University and a visiting scholar at Newcastle University, UK. She has previously taught at Osaka City University and Rikkyo University. Her fields are competition law and policy. She has published books and articles on these subjects. She has served as a chief researcher for the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) Competition Policy Research Centre, as a commissioner at the Osaka Prefecture Labour Relations Commission and as a member of the Interconnection Policy Committee, the Information and Communications Council, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication and various other advisory and study groups at the JFTC and other administrative bodies. Currently, Dr Wakui is a board member of the Japan Association ofEconomic Law and the co-head of the Asian Chapter of the Academic Society for Competition Law. Naoko Mariyama has taught at Tokai University since 2014 and has served as an associate professor at its Undergraduate School of Law since 2017, where she teaches the Japan Antimonopoly Act. She received her master’s from Doshisha University, where she majored in competition law. She was a visiting researcher at King’s College London in 2019–2020. She lectured at group training courses held by Japan Fair Trade Committee and Japan International Cooperation Agency on the Antimonopoly Act and on competition policy for developing countries during 2011–2016. Her main research interest is competition law and policy in pharmaceutical industry and she has published articles on this theme both in English and Japanese. Professor Mariyama has been a member of bid audit committees in two Japanese cities. She is also a regular speaker at the Antimonopoly Study Group and leads the pharmaceutical study group for the Kobe University Innovation and Platform research project.
