ABSTRACT
The Washington State apple industry has expended considerable effort to gain access for its fresh apples in the Japanese market, but current phytosanitary restrictions prohibit entry. This paper gives an overview of the Japanese fruit market situation and what may lie ahead for the Japanese apple market. Among fruits in Japan, apples are second behind mandarin oranges, which have over twice the total area and production. To quantify these relationships, the people estimated a demand model for Japanese household consumption of apples. If consumers treated US apples and Japanese apples as direct substitutes, one million boxes of US apples imported into Japan would, in a typical year, lead to an average price decline of about 3 percent. Japanese-produced Red and Golden Delicious apples are declining in popularity in favor of such varieties as Fuji, Tsugaru, and Mutsu, which in general provide greater returns to Japanese growers.
