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In 2005, a United Nations report expressed concerns about racism in Japan and that government recognition of the depth of the problem was not total. The author of the report, Doudou Diиne (Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights), concluded after a nine-day investigation that racial discrimination and xenophobia in Japan primarily affects three groups: national minorities, descendants of former Japanese colonies and foreigners from other Asian countries.

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Japan has the worlds second lowest birthrate after Hong Kong, and considering that the average world birthrate is 22/1000, Japan's birthrate is at an alarmingly low rate. In comparison in Australia our birthrate stands at 12.02/1000 and we consider this to be very low and are worried about an ageing population. The low birth rate in Japan coupled with a high life expectancy has caused the Japanese nation to be known as one of the fastest ageing and least growing in the develpoed world.

High sanitary and health standards has led Japan to have one of the highest life expectancy in the world, at 81.25 years of age as of 2006. It is also now the nation with the oldest average age on the planet, and 21.2% of its population elderly.

Sumiko Shimizu, former legislator and now member of a working panel of women advocating for gender equality states "Younger women want to work and enjoy their independent lifestyles. Marriage in Japan carries heavy social responsibilities for women which is why they delay tying the knot,". Women in Japan are expected to stay home and look after their children when married as such they are choosing to have children very late in life and to limit the amount of children that they have.

The Japanese government has recently introduced new measures to to encourage women to have more children. Plans include doubling current child allowances for couples having their third child.

ECONOMY

Japan's industrialized, free market economy is the second-largest in the world after the USA. Its economy is highly efficient and competitive in areas linked to international trade, but productivity is far lower in protected areas such as agriculture, distribution, and services. After achieving one of the highest economic growth rates in the world from the 1960s through the 1980s, the Japanese economy slowed dramatically in the early 1990s, when the "bubble economy" collapsed, marked by plummeting stock and real estate prices.

As you can see Japan is a member of some very large trade organizations such as APEC, WTO, and the OECD which is the organization for economic cooperation and development.

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Banking, insurance, real estate, retailing, transportation and telecommunications are all major industries. Japan has a large industrial capacity and is home to some of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles, electronic equipment, and machine tools.

It is home to leading multinational corporations and commercial brands in technology and machinery. Distinguishing characteristics of the Japanese economy have included the cooperation of manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and banks in closely-knit groups called keiretsu and the guarantee of lifetime employment in big corporations. Recently, Japanese companies have begun to abandon some of these norms in an attempt to increase profitability.

The structure of Japan's labor market was experiencing gradual change in the late 1980s and was expected to continue this trend throughout the 1990s. The structure of the labor market is affected by the aging of the working population, increasing numbers of women in the labor force (see Working women in Japan), and workers' rising education level. There is the prospect of increasing numbers of foreign nationals in the labor force. And, finally, the labor market faces possible changes owing to younger workers who sought to break away from traditional career paths to those that stressed greater individuality and creativity. I will pass you on Robert who will speak about the politiacl and legal background in Japan.

The Japanese organisational culture will likely be most different from the American and German organisational cultures, as although still very culturally different, the American and German national cultures see more similarities than that of the Japanese and German or Japanese and American cultures.

We all know that National culture quite often determines the very essence of organizational culture. A study conducted in 1999 in which over a thousand managers from U.S. and Japanese firms were surveyed, showed that corporate values reflect those