Abstract
The economical activities have rapidly expanded through economic development of all over the world. When the import and export goods have increased, the codes and standards concerned of both sides (import and export) are obliged to be influenced by the level of internationalization. Recently, a lot of building materials in Japan have been imported from the USA and Canada. But there are a lot of differences among the building codes of Japan, the USA and Canada. Even if the direct trade barriers such as tarif and trade matters have been put aside, people can't utilize building materials which are imported, if the building code won't permit to use these building materials. The governments of the USA and Canada pointed out the matters of building codes as domestic barriers against the trade, and the commitees to discuss the matters have been held between bilateral countries in order to solve the matters. But the fruitful results can't have harvested, because of the lacks of the understanding of the mutual codes. The aim of this paper is to make clear the differences among the building codes. This is a seriese of analizing the codes and the difference of the codes of the three countries. In this paper, the differences of the composition and the structure of the codes are mainly discussed. The differences are not only technical matters, but social and cultural matters which have been developed through long history of each countries.
