We are pleased to announce that in March 2009, Japan Foreign Trade Council, Inc. published "Foreign Trade 2009", with full coverage of Japan's foreign trade statistics on a customs-cleared basis for the previous year.

Foreign Trade 2009 marks the 34^th edition of this publication since it was first released in 1976. Improvements have been added over the years such as the inclusion of English for bilingual publication, the introduction of figures, and the addition of new information to the data chapter.

We hope you will find this volume useful for various purposes, for example, a reader for new employee education, as a pocket reference when traveling abroad on business, and a reference for local employees in foreign countries.