The Japanese Cooperative Sector
The modern history of Japanese cooperatives began in the Meiji Era of the nineteenth century. Today in Japan, more than 30 million people are members in cooperatives.1 The cooperative sector is especially strong in agriculture and related industries, and cooperatives are also found in the retail distribution of food, medical care, insurance, housing, universities, and in the financial industry as investors and with credit unions. While the range of industries where cooperatives are found is similar in some ways to that of the United States and other industrialized countries, the extensive penetration of one sector-agriculture-is neither paralleled in the United States nor in other industrialized countries. The strength of involvement in one sector of the economy in Japan is both a strength, and in light of recent trade pressure to lift agricultural tariffs, a potentially dangerous strategy.