The new statistics law in Japan was promulgated and will come into force on April 1^st 2009. It was drastically revised after 60 years enforcement to modernize Japanese statistical system and to meet changing social requirements.

The new law expands its sphere in terms of application in several dimensions in which Japanese statistical system has been lagging behind: (1) regulations for producing better quality data and their relevant use are expanded substantially from survey statistics to non-survey statistics, e.g., secondary statistics and statistics based on administrative records; (2) furnishing infrastructure that facilitates better quality data, namely, creating and maintaing a business register as the sampling frame and statistical use of administrative information; and (3) furnishing a system for the secondary use of official statistics.

The newly proposed statistical system is based on a new concept that official statistical data should be a kind of public goods produced and disseminated not exclusively for governmental purposes as is the case at present but also for the general public including a wide range of secondary users, such as academics or business users. Official statistics should be regarded as information assets with multidimensional usability. The paper also focuses on a proposal for the official statistical data archive in order to fully utilize statistical information.

The results of 2005 Population Census in Japan are now in the process of publications. And, on May 23rd in 2009, The New Statistics Act in Japan was promulgated and partly came into effect on and after that day. 2010 Population Census, which is 19th Census in Japan, will be scheduled under the New Statistics Act. And necessary preparations for 2010 Census have been in steady progress.

In this paper, I will briefly survey Population Censuses in our country historically and describe the present situations of preparations of 2010 Census. From viewpoints of worsening of statistical-survey environment and people's sense of privacy, I will point out that the 2010 Census is at the crossroads and stands in need of reform and change in its methods.

The preparation of the 2011 Japanese Economic Census is underway. It is expected to include establishments and firms which are not covered by existing industrial censuses and to depict a changed portrait of Japanese economy. This paper discusses the process of planning the Japanese Economic Census, the difference between the Japanese Economic Census and existing industrial censuses, the background information explaining why the Japanese Economic Census is necessary, and what aspects should be considered for designing it. Further, it discusses the importance of utilizing administrative records, conducting the Company Organization Survey and maintenance of the business frame.

In 2000, the Japanese SNA (System of National Accounts), shortly the JSNA was based on the 1993SNA which was made by five international organizations such as the United Nations. Also, the statistics law of Japan was revised in 2007 after 60 years of the former statistics law. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relations of the both SNAs and their problems, and to foresee the circumstance of the JSNA under the new statistics.

According to the 1993SNA, it can be summarized as the following three points. The 1993SNA is to update the 1968SNA to fit new circumstances, to clarify and simplify it, and to harmonize it with other international standards. While the 1993SNA maintained the theoretical framework of the 1968SNA, there were many specific issues and the 1993SNA became relatively the large scale revision of the 1968SNA. Also, it proposed the new viewpoints for the transactions such as FISIM (Financial intermediation services indirectly measured) and the frameworks such as satellite analysis and accounts.

The JSNA has carried on introduction from the 1993 SNA. In the revised items, the JSNA introduced entirely 45 items and partially 22 items, but did not introduce 33 items because of the absence of the relative data, the different situations from Japan and so on. Also six committees were set up to deal with the problems of the JSNA and introduction from the 1993SNA. They have discussed on chair indices, FISIM, improvement of the system, capital stocks, public sectors, the methods of estimation and so on.

The SNA have generally two roles for a consistent statistical picture of the development of an economic system. Firstly it is an organizational schemes for economic statistics. According to this viewpoint, it develops the improvement of basic statistics. Secondly, it serves to facilitate economic analysis, public policy, decision-making and so on. By the way, the new statistic law attached importance to the role of the JSNA and regarded the JSNA as one of the central statistics. It will be useful for the JSNA and improvement of basic statistics.

In Japan, many major transportation travel surveys were conducted in 2005. For example, National Road Census, Public Transport Census in three major metropolitan areas, Nationwide Commodity Flow Survey, Inter Regional Travel Survey and so on. The survey results shown several topics such as, 1) decrease of response rate, 2) decline of transportation demand itself, 3) smart introduction of Information Technology. In this article, we summarize the issues and examine the future prospects on transportation survey. First, some ideas to increase the response rate are shown; offering monetary reward, enhance awareness of public concerns. Second, we propose the combination of several surveys would be required to meet the declined demand under the budget limitation. Third, the lack of international transportation data is discussed. The globalization of economics originates needs of international data especially in Asian region. Information Technology with internet will play an important role to consolidate the data between different nations. Fourth, positive relationship between disclosure of transportation data and increase of public attract for transportation policies is introduced. We expect that the disclosure would get public people's attention and it would also suppress the positive effect of response rate.

Transportation survey is one of the essential infrastructure for understanding current situations and future better transportation facilities. We would conclude that many transformations by IT or economical & demographic background would be required for future transportation survey.

Through the use of the panel data method, this paper seeks to verify whether the issuance of public bonds has induced market discipline in local government finance. The result of the analysis indicates that increases in the share of public bonds among the total amount of outstanding local government bonds have caused improvements in the future fiscal situation of local governments as the fiscal situation has been exposed to market discipline. Market discipline was effective even during 1990's when the issuance of local bonds increased rapidly. This suggests that issue of more public bonds would contribute to the reduction in and streamlining of unnecessary expenditures and increase in their revenues, which is desirable for the fiscal discipline of local governments in Japan.

Kurokabe Square, Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, has been regenerating the city through conservation of the decayed old buildings and cultural tourism, spearheaded by the efforts of Kurokabe, Inc., We conducted a survey of tourists coming to the city of Nagahama, to determine how to improve tourists' satisfaction and maximize the benefits to the local community from tourism. We found that visitors who are interested in cultural facilities spend more than those who are not, repeatedly come to the city because they love the city's cultural landscape and creative glassware manufacturing. Also the visitors staying a whole day in the city spend roughly the same amount as those staying overnight. It is therefore recommendable for the city to utilize these cultural facilities to attract those tourists. Based on the visitors' WTP (Willingness-to-Pay), it might be possible to enhance the city's net tourism income by selling combined tickets for admission to cultural facilities such as the glassware museum with discounts to encourage visitors to stay longer.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of garbage reduction and recycling promotion policy in Japan. Our study makes the following contributions: First, we employ SUR (seemingly unrelated regression) estimation, a model that was developed by Zellner (1962), because households dispose garbage and recyclable materials simultaneously. Second, we point out that the number of segregations, the frequency of collection, and a volume-based pricing system are policies that effectively promote garbage reduction and recycling. Third, we estimate the price elasticity of garbage, which is -0.0257 at the average price (=1.708 yen).