global issue

Introduction I should be guilty of dissembling if I were not to refer to the economic difficulties which have affected Japan recently along with several other countries. I assume that these difficulties have come as a shock to people in Japan because of their contrast with the prolonged period of economic success which preceded them. But they show, as history has shown so often, that the enjoyment of steady uninterrupted growth, over the very long …

…standards without the two sets of standards necessarily being identical. People might think that this would remove inhibitions for international investors in investing in Japanese companies and would enable Japanese companies to obtain their capital on the most favourable possible international terms. People might think that everything possible would then have been done to ensure that accounting was playing its part in the economic recovery which your overseas visitors so warmly wish you to enjoy.