Abstract
Recently, Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) by Japanese Food companies have been increasing. The purpose of FDI has shifted from the procurement of cheap raw materials,labor and resources to enlargement of new markets. The FDI has contributed to increase the international trade rather than replace it. The major part of trade growth has been carried out though the intra-industry trade rather than the inter-industry trade. More specifically, the international trade between different manufacturing stages, i.e. the fragmentation process has strongly enlarged the international trade. In addition, especially in Thailand, the spill-over effects of Japanese food companies tend to be bigger than other foreign companies. In these cases,Japanese companies of local market oriented make local firms more domestic market oriented and have bigger spillover effects than those of export oriented. As for economic effects of the regional trade agreements on the self-sufficiency rates, the radical trade liberalization such as TPP are not realistic and do not contribute to the formation of free trade areas in Asia. Moreover, it may deteriorate economic welfares of trading countries. In addition to these, the current situation and problems of Japanese FDI in China, Taiwan and Korea were discussed.
