Time was when Japan Inc. shunned the heady world of corporate raiders as a vulture club anathema to the country's consensus culture.
When stomached at all, Japanese takeovers typically preyed on foreigners, most notoriously gobbling up U.S. icons like Firestone, Seven-Eleven and Columbia Pictures.
But in a sign of new openness in the world's second-largest economy, merger mania has gripped the nation and homegrown firms are now among the hunted as well as the hunters.