ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the development of international trade opportunities as one strategy of economic change in rural Alaska. It deals with a brief historical review of the Alaska-Japan connection emphasizing the economic, political and geographical factors which have influenced the development of international trade opportunities. The chapter presents the results of two surveys conducted in 1979 and 1980, which provide data on rural Alaska's relationship with East Asian corporations. It examines Asian interest in rural Alaska's resources, the response of rural Alaska's Native corporations to this attention, and those internal and external factors which serve to limit the entrance of rural Alaska's developing economic institutions—the Native corporations—into the international marketplace. Industrial nations, such as Japan, need resource supplies to maintain their industrial machine, and thus many commentators have proposed a "marriage of convenience" between rural Alaska and the developed states of East Asia.
