Takahashi, Iwakazu --- "The Development of Competition Law for the Last 15 Years in Japan: Progress or Setback?" [2010] ELECD 236; in Zäch, Roger; Heinemann, Andreas; Kellerhals, Andreas (eds), "The Development of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: The Development of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zäch, Roger; Heinemann, Andreas; Kellerhals, Andreas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848444461

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: The Development of Competition Law for the Last 15 Years in Japan: Progress or Setback?

Author(s): Takahashi, Iwakazu

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

4. The Development of Competition
Law for the last 15 Years in Japan:
Progress or Setback?
Iwakazu Takahashi*

1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter will analyse the recent changes brought about by the Anti-
Monopoly Act in Japan (hereinafter referred to as the `AMA'). It will
highlight the positive and negative aspects of the law.


2 OUTLINE OF THE JAPANESE ANTI-MONOPOLY
ACT

2.1 History of the Law

The AMA was introduced in 1947. It is based on the antitrust legisla-
tion of the United States. The numerous revisions to it have given it a
distinctive flavour of its own, but the framework of the basic system has
remained the same. The AMA's purpose was `the promotion of fair and
free competition' by which it aimed at the promotion of `the democratic
and wholesome development of the national economy' as a final goal
(Article 1). The AMA, at the same time, had an underlying policy of
maintaining the outcomes of the economic democratisation policies of the
Allied Powers.1 Those policies dissolved the big financial combines and
the excessive concentration of economic power in the late 1940s to the
first half of the 1950s in the Japanese economy. Some examples were: the


*Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan.
1See for a comparison of the economic democratisation policies in Japan and
Germany, Takahashi, Iwakazu (1997), Doitsu Kyousouseigen-kinshihou no Seiritsu
to Kouzou (The Establishment and Structure of Antimonopoly Act in Germany)
Sanseido, pp. 54­59.

87
88 ...