Yes. IIRC H.I.S. was charging a foreigner premium on the basis that foreigners were less honest (more likely to skip the return flight and leave H.I.S. to pay a penalty on the ticket). Rakuten's situ is quite different, I guess.

I assumed the incremental cost to Rakuten of translating each hotel listing wouldn't be so great - but maybe I'm wrong. (I had assumed that Rakuten had some translated templates and simply populated them with data -- room price, available inventory etc. -- i.e. a mostly automated process). Perhaps they still have extensive manual processes for which they incur costs. To be honest, I haven't looked at their English site much.