There’s no question that every venture capitalist within 100 miles of Silicon Valley wanted to squeeze their khaki-clad selves into what had become tech’s hottest deal of late. That would be to get a piece of the new round of funding for social bookmaking phenom Pinterest. But while piles of VCs and other investors tried to work every angle possible to noodge into the action, the iconoclastic CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann decided to go big and go global by hooking up with a Tokyo-based Internet giant. That would be Japan’s Rakuten, which will invest upwards of $50 million in a $100 million round that values the social bookmarking phenom at $1.5 billion. Rakuten is one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, with a flagship site Rakuten Ichiba, among others. It was founded in 1997 and had revenues of $4.7 billion in 2011. Most important in Pinterest’s calculation was apparently the link with its CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, whose nickname is Mickey. One the richest men in Japan, Mikitani is one of the best known entrepreneurs there where he’s been described as “Richard Branson meets Jeff Bezos.” I briefly chatted with Mikitani last night about why he decided on the Pinterest deal, in a conversation where he focused a bit on Rakuten’s famed “omotenashi” or “empowerment” philosophy. Simply put, the concept is that — unlike an Amazon — Rakuten is a facilitator of commerce, much like its shopping mall metaphor beginnings. The approach is to aid merchants rather than compete with them. It’s a little eBay, a little Alibaba and even a little Amazon Web services mixed in.