According to a recent press release, Canon is planning on purchasing roughly 14 million of its own shares – at an estimated cost north of $450 million dollars (50 billion yen) – with the "...aim of improving capital efficiency and ensuring a flexible capital strategy that provides for such future transactions as share exchanges."
The stock acquisition is scheduled to take place June 1 through July 14, 2017.
Note: At Canon's current stock price ($34.79 USD at the time of this article), they would only be able to purchase 12,976,343 shares with a 50 billion yen investment. [Sean]