Japan's keiretsu was a major issue during the Japan-U. S. Struclural Impediments Initiative (SII) talkes, which started in 1989. Great misunderstanding has been caused by the confusion of, on the one-hand, keiretsu, which originally came into being as a means by which large companies could use the low wages of subcontracting small and medium-sized companies in the dual structure of the Japanese economy, and on the other hand, the enterprise groups that were organized after the break up of the zaibatsu.
No other countries are as laced with intercorporate network as Japan. More than 60 persent of Japan's small and medium-sized companies are subcontractors, whereas the formation of companies into keiretsu-like groupings on such a large scale is not found in any country in North America or in Europe.
Large Japanese companies assign functions such as sales, transportation, and servicing to be handled outside by keiretsu companies, and they are not as diversified as major U. S. companies, acting in coordination with companies in other industries through their corporate groupings. This feature usually makes Japanese companies dependent upon intercorporate relations.
The fact that large Japanese companies have avoided corporate bloating by allocating functions out-side in this way makes the number of intercorporate transactions disproportionally large in Japan, and at the same time it is a characteristic of Japan that these intercorporate transactions are maintained continuously over the long term.
The three terms in which transactions for goods are conducted are auction, tender, and face-to-face transactions, but whereas the auction and tender forms are generally used in market dealings, transactions between Japanese companies generally take the form of face-to-face transactions. What this means is that the other party to a transaction is selected in advance, and the price is determind later. In market transaction it is the price that takes priority, the other party being determined according to price-this is the opposite of face-to-face transactions. These are not market transactions of the type upon which neoclassical economics or Walras's are premised.
In this article, I discuss on the closed nature of the keiretsu system.

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The nature of Japanese interfirm relations have recently been attracting much attention from two different angles. In the context of trade frictions, close and longstanding interfirm relations frequently observable in Japan have come to be regarded, under the name of keiretsu, as a major impediment for foreign firms to gain access to the Japanese market, and hence as something to be reformed coforming to the Western notion of the market. On the other hand, recent works on industrial productivity including the MIT Report have characterized the close relations developed by Japanese major manufacturers with their suppliers as something that deserves emulating by Western firms. Coexistence of these two views has been producing confusion among policy makers and the public.
This paper aims to present an integrative analysis of Japanese interfirm relations, focusing on the relations between manufacturers and their suppliers, that can handle both the entry issue and the productivity issue.
The paper start from a methodological discussion. Following Williamson's argument, it hypothesizes that efficient govemance structure differs depending on the nature of transaction and that, instead of the classical market, relational contracting is required where customized goods are transacted. The implication is that in-depth comparative study of relcational contracting is a prerequisite for fruitful international comparisons.
The paper then shows, based on the author's research, that contractual practices in the U. S. are in several respects converging to relational contracting in Japan. Finally, it illuminates that the key to promote entry is to clarify what kind of skills are relevant for the supply of customized goods.

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The Tronto Conference in June 1988 appealed to wealthy countries to cut their CO₂ emissions by 20% by the year 2005. The intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) proposed scenarios as response strategies in the report which published in August 1990. The government of Japan revised national energy plan which included CO₂ emission control stratagies in June 1990 and established a action program for the greenhouse effect gas emission limitation in October 1990. This study examines responses for these issues by assessing the impacts of the CO₂ emission limitations on energy economics and energy industries. Its principal findings are as follows.
1 CO₂ emission level in the goal:
CO₂ emission levels in the goals of the limitation global climatic warming strategies/measures are follows; In the Tronto Conference Appeal CO₂ emission level in 2005 in the non-limitation case will be 1.7 times higher than the goal. In the IPCC report it be 1.1 times higher than it in its reference scenario. In the Action Program of Japan it will be 1.6 times higher than the goal.
2 CO₂ emission reduction:
The Tronto conference's appeal requestes CO₂ emission reduction at an annual rate of -1.0%. In the referense scenario of “response strategy working group” in the IPCC CO₂ emissions increases at annual rate of 2.2%. In the action program of Japan CO₂ emissions are reduced at annual rate of 0%.
3 The change in the energy mix is so drastic that it is not realistic from the energy economics stanndpoint.
4 Energy resource problems in terms of the reserves, production and prices are expected to emerge.
5 The possibility of effective energy use holds the key for CO₂ emission limitation.

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The subject of this monograph is to discuss Japan's energy policy in the 1990s. Since the last few years of 1980s there have been remarkable changes in the energy situation in Japan which involves energy demand increase far faster than expected, delayed penetration of alternative energy resources such as solar energy and nuclear power, and the rising concern with the green-house effect.
These changes urge us to find a solution to the problems in the coming decade.
The Advisory Committee on Energy issued an interim report on June 6, 1990, which presented some new ideas of the energy policy, based on the revised longterm forecast of energy demand and supply. It is the first time that the longterm energy forecast was revised upward, since the outbreak of the first oil crisis.
The report pointed out both securing the energy security and stabilizing the emission of carbon dioxide gas, as the critical goales to be realized within a couple of decades, and recomended several counter-measures to achieve the goales mentioned above.
Firstly, it emphasized the needs for energy saving through acceleration the introduction of the new technologies making available to use the wasted heats. Secondly, various sort of new energy resources were advised to be utilized more intensively. Finaly, the nuclear power generation was given a heavy emphasis in order to play a significant role in securing the stable supply of energy.
It seems to me that those recomendations presented by The Committee are quite natural but not enough to realize the goales. From my personal point of view, the following two points should be taken into considerations.
At first, it is necessary to introduce some kind of taxation measures so as to keep the upwarding trend of imported energy price sufficient to give incentives saving energy and using new energy resources to the energy consumers. Second, look at the whole scope of the existing nuclear power development program, placing a particular emphasis on the revision of the fast breeder program. Thus, it becomes easier to improve the public acceptance to the use of nuclear power.

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