I am a business professor, and I think it very much depends on the faculty member. Some are more tuned in to the international marketplace than are others. As someone who has traveled extensively and visited a number of universities in Japan, not to mention having hired a lot of people so that I’ve had to assess the value of their degrees, I would recognize the names of a few of the best ones and would admire your enterprise (assuming you are a U.S. student) in going abroad for your MBA. I will have to admit, though, that I have colleagues who could not name a japanese university if you were to torture them. And unfortunately, in the global rankings, most Japanese universities don’t come out terribly well.

Having said that, most Ph.D. programs do not require that you have an MBA at all to be admitted. If you were an outstanding undergraduate student at a good school in the U.S. with strong GRE or GMAT scores, you could get into a Ph.D. program regardless of your MBA and how well it would be assessed. A Ph.D. is a research degree, so while it will be helpful as a faculty member to understand the practicalities taught in most MBA programs, it requires very different skills than the MBA and therefore is often not considered predictive of success in the Ph.D. program.

My advice – go to Japan, get to know people there, and establish some connections you can use for data gathering once you start doing your research in the Ph.D. program. Don’t worry too much about perceptions, unless your undergrad record was not strong enough to get you into a Ph.D. program on its own.

Good luck! There is definitely a need for Ph.D.s in most areas of business these days. Faculty are retiring at an alarming rate, and the new people coming out of Ph.D. programs are insufficient to replace them (not to mention that many of them have trouble getting visas or don’t speak enough English to succeed in the classroom).