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Article: The Japanese cooperative sector.
- Article from:
- Journal of Economic Issues
- Article date:
- June 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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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 ...