Book Review : International Trade and Competition Law in Japan

The controversies that continue to rage over Japan's role in the international economy and, more specifically, its impressive and potentially ominous trade surpluses with the U.S. often circle around the question of what can be done about any of it. In the U.S., it is commonly assumed that an alliance between government and organized business in Japan is the culprit and that problem can be eliminated by changing government policies. Not surprisingly, the Japanese tend to t see the problem differently, depicting the trade balance as the natural result of organizational, technological and economic factors, and they tend to be skeptical of claims that it can be effectively remedied by changing laws.The debate should, therefore, center on how the relevant components of the Japanese legal system actually operate. Yet knowledge about these areas of Japanese law in the United States is so thin and poorly disseminated that the controversy continues in a circle of denunciations rather than moving toward more effective response to the problem. Mitsuo Matsushita's International Trade and Competition Law promises to be of much value in moving the dialogue in that direction