Airbnb makes case for home-sharing in Japan as regulation looms

Tokyo

AIRBNB Inc has gone on a charm offensive in Japan, hoping to drum up support as regulators there debate whether to clamp down on the startup's rapidly expanding operations.

The world's third most valuable private startup dispatched high-powered lawyer and political strategist Chris Lehane to lay out how it can buoy a stagnant economy and support the 2020 Olympics. Just last month, co-founder Joe Gebbia was in Tokyo extolling its contributions to entrepreneurship.

The company is hoping to win over hearts and minds in what was its fastest-growing market in 2015, a country experiencing a tourism boom that's in turn constricting hotel room availability.

Mr Lehane, the ex-White House crisis manager known as the "master of disaster", recently helped Airbnb defeat a ballot measure seeking to curb its operations in San Francisco. One of his tasks now is to side-step the sort of controversy that has dogged Airbnb in other markets - …