ABSTRACT
The 1950 Commodity Exchange Law established a legal framework similar to that in force in the USA, and most of the sixteen commodity exchanges currently trading agricultural futures in Japan were founded in the early 1950s. There is a high level of activity in Japanese futures trading, but this is spread across a large number of specialized exchanges in a number of locations throughout Japan. A number of the prices set by these Japanese exchanges are of international significance. The increasing involvement of Japanese trading companies in physical commodity trade between third-party countries means that Japanese exchanges sometimes obtain information in advance of other markets; for example, this often happens in the case of Chinese sugar imports. In Japan, where futures trading began in 1730, it was prohibited in 1868, although the ban was not in force for long.
