TOKYO (Reuters) - Yahoo Japan Corp said on Thursday it aimed

TOKYO (Reuters) - Yahoo Japan Corp said on Thursday it aimed to unseat Rakuten Inc as Japan's largest Web-based shopping mall operator by next summer. Shopping remains one of the few areas of Internet-related business in which Yahoo Japan is not the domestic leader. The company is already the top provider of such services as high-speed Net access, online auctions and Web advertising. "In shopping, Yahoo Japan is still running behind Rakuten. We are striving hard to overtake them by turnover," Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue told Reuters in an interview. Virtual shops at Yahoo Japan made a total of about 10.8 billion yen ($99.12 million) in sales in the April-June quarter, compared to around 29.4 billion yen at Rakuten. Yahoo Japan is rapidly expanding its virtual shopping mall, having more than doubled the number of shops on its Web site to 565 in the two months to September. As a result of that expansion, sales during the July-September quarter rose 20 percent to about 13 billion yen. Turnover at Rakuten's virtual mall in the latest quarter is not yet available.