Abstract
Fair trade is known as a new movement to solve the problem of poverty in developing countries. In Japan, this movement started as an alternative to compete against the capitalistic market system in the 80s. But now, it seems to be closely connected with commercialism and the mainstream market. M. Renard interpreted this situation as being “reabsorbed by the market”. Therefore this article attempts to analyze the present condition of fair trade in Japan using the original framework. From the analysis, it can be seen that the “commerce-movement” binary model is not necessarily applicable and that Japanese fair trade is tending to be paradoxically “neoliberalized”.
