I agree, we had heard so many times big corporation will adopt bitcoin but it never happened, and if its happened then they still used the third party, it will be good if they really implemented bitcoin without any third party, and we are waiting for bitcoin to become their payment option, it will show that bitcoin still got influence

If Rakuten adds Bitcoin as a form of payment on their platforms, it's going to have a huge effect. If I am not wrong, Rakuten is the 13th or 14th largest company in the world by sales, with a revenue of 6 to 7 billions per year. Besides that, Japanese people are very technology friendly, I believe Bitcoin will thrive on Rakuten and we will see the effects in the increase of adoption and price.

there are a ton of companies in Japan that have been integrating bitcoin in their systems for over a year now. to put simply ever since Japanese government accepted bitcoin as a legal way of payment and also removed all taxes from bitcoin when people use it as a currency, it created a big inventive for ever merchant and big company to start looking into accepting bitcoin. in fact that was one of the biggest reasons for the price rise of 2017.

Sounds fun but it won't make much difference to anyone or anything. Bic Camera which is a big electronics retailer in Japan has accepted BTC payment for ages. You don't hear much about that. As ever merchant adoption is great for existing users. It does zero to attract new ones for assimilation.

 That is one of another way of making progress in business;  when companies or individuals has a lot of options to pay for your services, it will bring more customers to your door step, we are in digital world, for you to operate successful business world wide, I think addition of bitcoin is a good idea,
 If Mr Rakuten finally introduced bitcoin as part of payment, it going to be good news to bitcoin family.

In Japan, Bitcoin or other crypto currency are defined as "Virtual currency" as you say, but that definition will be changed as "Crypto asset" in some years later.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/japan-crypto-classified-as-crypto-assets-to-prevent-confusion-with-legal-tender

I think Japanese government mistook to adopt the name of "Virtual currency" because they just imitated G20's definition.
Although the definition will be changed, according to Financial Service Authority's meeting, bitcoin has not been denied to be used as payment method hereafter.

This is amazing! Its really nice to see news like this because it inspired everyone to invest , bitcoin is still recovering but you can see that it improves the way companies/countries adapt and accept it. Still hoping that some companies from my country also accept bitcoin , I know it will take a lot of time but I am willing to wait.

How can Rakuten be the Amazon of  Japan if Japan already have made Amazon locally available? This news sites are really killing it, it is hard for companies like Rakuten to shine under their name if they are compared to giants like Amazon. But if Rakuten actually did accept Bitcoin first then they might be on the edge of something, being a pioneer in the e-commerce industry that accepts Bitcoin will really help them land on the right foot especially because their country is known to be crypto friendly, they already have a head start in their own country.

That is great news! I love to hear news when Bitcoin is rising in adoption. I hope other companies will follow them and add Bitcoin as a method of payment as well. If many of those smaller or national companies accept Bitcoin, maybe the big ones (like Amazon or AliExpress) will follow them. That would be a great thing for Bitcoin and the whple cryptocurrency world.