Imports

Japan's main imports are machinery and equipment, fossil fuels, foodstuffs (in particular beef), chemicals, textiles and raw materials for its industries. By market share measures, domestic markets are the least open of any OECD country. Junichiro Koizumi's administration began some pro-competition reforms, and foreign investment in Japan has soared.^[109]

Japan ranks 27th of 189 countries in the 2014 Ease of doing business index and has one of the smallest tax revenues of the developed world. The Japanese variant of capitalism has many distinct features: keiretsu enterprises are influential, and lifetime employment and seniority-based career advancement are relatively common in the Japanese work environment. Japanese companies are known for management methods like "The Toyota Way", and shareholder activism is rare.

Some of the largest enterprises in Japan include Toyota, Nintendo, NTT DoCoMo, Canon, Honda, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba,Sharp, Nippon Steel, Nippon Oil, and Seven & I Holdings Co..It has some of the world's largest banks, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (known for itsNikkei 225 and TOPIX indices) stands as the second largest in the world by market capitalization. As of 2006, Japan was home to 326 companies from the Forbes Global 2000 or 16.3 percent. In 2013, it was announced that Japan would be importing shale natural gas.^[115]