It was the last Christmas Eve, we had a panel discussion about the globalism of software for Japanese. And I, as a moderator, asked a question to Higa-san in audience's seat, "Any plan for globalisation of seasar?"
At that moment, I didn't expect that exciting answer but the plan that he revlealed then was ambitious:

"I'll have some features integrated into the future spec of J2EE and/or JSF. Yes, I mean, I'll join JCP."
I, for many years, have been watching that many Japanese developers hesitate to join JCP and its discussion even though some of them have relly useful feedbacks. They have some handicap like language barrier, timezone gap, and great distance from other members, and so on. In spite of those disadvantages, Higa-san decided to suggest some interesting features to J2EE related JSRs. Let me summerize his suggestion.
One of the beautiful point of JSF is detachment of designer's work and developer's work. It is achieved by JSF tag in HTML file. But still some developers think HTML files shouldn't include any other tags than HTML. As a solution for this demand, Higa-san implement a framework, in which some special HTML attributes are binded to JSF tags. With this framework, named S2JSF, designers don't need to care for JSF tags. They have only to write legacy HTML and some special attributes. S2JSF automatically converts it into JSF tags.
I'm not sure if there's some products that already implement this feature or not. Also I don't know if JSF EG members have better altenrnative plan or not. But, at leaset, the plan for joining JCP is rare for japanese developers and I'm really happy to hear that. His decision should be respected. I think I should assist his activity to the standard. Now I'm thinking about setting up some meeting with him and a key person in J2EE Web tier shortly.
Hope Higa-san and S2JSF could find the appropriate route for integrating useful features into J2EE/JSF spec and he would break the ice in front of japanese developers.