Japan-U.S. relations are more uncertain and subject to greater strain today than at any time since World War II. Longstanding military allies and increasingly interdependent economic partners, Japan and the United States have worked closely together to build a strong, multifaceted relationship based on democratic values and interests in world stability and development. But Japan today is our foremost economic and technological competitor. It consistently runs the largest annual international trade surplus with the U.S. ($59 billion in 1993). The end of the Cold War, lackluster international economic conditions, and the focus on economic issues in U.S. politics have raised new questions about the appropriate U.S. policy toward this Asian ally.

Japan is one of the world's largest wood importers, with two-thirds of its imports as logs (unprocessed timber). Southeast Asia has been the largest log supplier, but supplies (and exports to Japan) have been declining. The United States has become a more important supplier, but concerns about declining domestic timber supplies have led to proposals to prohibit or to tax log exports. Opponents suggest that Japan would simply turn to other sources to replace U.S. logs. One question in this debate is where the alternative sources of logs or wood products might be.

Japan's top 21 banks have reported Y13.6 trillion (US$136 billion) in non-performing loans, but experts consider the true figure to be in the range of Y40 to Y60 trillion (US$400 to US$600 billion). If 90, Japan's banks may take five to seven more years to write off their bad loans and restore health to their balance sheets. Current write-offs are being financed primarily by sales of stocks held by banks whose values have appreciated. This problem of bad loans is depressing Japan's economic growth rate and making resolution of trade disputes and further opening of Japan's financial markets more difficult.

The dollar declined abruptly in value against the yen in the second quarter of 1994, spurring the central banks of seventeen nations to coordinate a series of intervention efforts in the world's currency trading markets. In addition, the dollar's decline sparked discussions of the possible policy moves the United States and other nations might take to stem the fluctuations in the value of the dollar. Economic theory and empirical evidence indicate that the underlying movement of the exchange rate is tied to the long-term, macroeconomic movements of the economy, or to the combined movements of the economies of different countries, such as the United States and Japan. These macroeconomic factors account for at least half of the overall movement of exchange rates.

It has been more than a year since the United States and Japan established their bilateral framework for trade negotiations and other economic relations. The framework set down rules and deadlines to address various economic issues, particularly market access in Japan for U.S. exports and the Japanese global trade surplus. The two sides have failed to reach agreements on any of the major issues. The United States is left with several policy options to resolve the breakdown in trade negotiations.

The effects of top-level text structure and signaling on the reading recall of Japanese female junior college students studying English as a foreign language were investigated in this study. One hundred thirty-two subjects were selected from a private female junior college in Tokyo. The students were divided into three groups—high, average, and low reading comprehension levels—based on the results of the Test of Reading Comprehension. The instrument used to measure students' recall ability was developed from expository passages taken from a biology textbook. The passages were rearranged to show identifiable top-level structure, collection of description, causation, problem/solution, or comparison. Each passage was divided into two versions: a with-signaling version, in which top-level structure was explicitly stated by signaling words or phrases, and a without-signaling version, where signaling words or phrases were omitted. After the students were stratified on reading comprehension, they were assigned to eight different versions of text—two of each of the four top-level text structures, one with- and one without-signaling. In the recall test, students were instructed to read the text and to remember as much as they could.