Japan and Eastern Europe

The first problem — if not opportunity — to confront was the paucity of literature on the subject of Japan’s economic involvement within this area. Japanese statistics about trade with the ‘Communist bloc’ naturally included the USSR, China, and so on. For what these statistics were worth, such trade in 1985 comprised 9.2 per cent of Japanese exports and 6.5 per cent of Japanese imports (Murakami and Kosai (eds), 1986, Graph 40, on an unnumbered page; source: Japan Tariff Association, Summary Report, Trade of Japan). Books about Japan and Europe are fairly numerous, but what they have had in mind is always or almost always Western Europe. Historically, Japan had had little connection with Eastern Europe; geographically the two areas are not near to one another, culturally there is little resemblance. (The last aspect will, however, be examined for certain countries elsewhere in this chapter.) From an economic angle the Japanese saw Western Europe, not Eastern Europe, as advanced and attractive. I had virtually reached a conclusion that nothing systematic had been written on the subject in English, when I found Iiiana Zloch-Christy (ed.), Privatization and Foreign Investments in Eastern Europe, (Praeger, 1995), which contains very relevant articles by Ken Morita and Gabor Bakos. Those focus directly on Japanese involvement; other articles in the same book make briefer allusions.