Good afternoon.
I am Hisayuki Hashimoto of the Secretariat of the Federation of Japan Furniture
Manufacturers’ Association.
This Federation is the sole organization of the wooden furniture makers in Japan,
which was organized as a corporate juridical person in 1966.
At present, it has 25 member organizations and about 1,000 member companies
across the country. The main products are furniture for the home, school and public
facilities as well as custom-ordered and OEM furniture and so forth.
Now, according to the industrial statistics of the Ministry of Economy, Trade andIndustry, in the wooden furniture manufacturing industry, most of the companies aremedium, small and minute in corporate scale, business establishments employing 29
workers or less accounting for 96% of all.
The value of the wooden furniture manufactured and shipped in 2005 is about 990
billion yen, the amount having fallen to less than half in comparison to that at the peak(1991).
With the burst of the economic bubble, lower price has been severely requested for
furniture which is a consumer durable commodity, and the demand for domesticallymanufactured furniture has been continuously reduced due to the buying restraint andincrease in the import of low-priced furniture from Asian countries including China. Inaddition, it has become difficult for us to absorb by corporate efforts alone the increasein cost due to the rise in the price of furniture-related materials and so forth, spurred by
the recent soaring oil price. As a result, companies have continuously gone into
bankruptcy or out of business up to this date.
Under such severe circumstances, the path to follow in the future is to promote
product development to specialize in high-quality furniture, made specially withexcellent domestic technique and refined design, and it is urgently required to develop
effective domestic and overseas strategies however small.
In this connection, wood resources are precious for our industry. As we recognizethat the mass consumption of wood resources to surpass the growth of forests is theprincipal cause for bringing about the aggravation of the global environment, we willproduce only the necessary quantity of furniture of fine quality and promote theactivities for extending the useful life of furniture by repairing and recycling asrequired.
With respect to the wooden furniture involved in the government procurement under
the Law on Promoting Green Purchasing put into effect last year and the use of verified

legal wood, our Federation has been conducting the certification of the organization
since August last year. At present 24 companies across the country, having beencertified, are tackling the problem.
Since these companies that have just started their efforts, are mainly delivering
furniture related to public facilities, they have not yet supplied to the general furnituremarket.
In order to promote the use of verified legal wood, the efforts of countries andmeasures for cooperation among the government, domestic wood-related business
operators and material consumers are necessary. Though it may take time, as modest
but steady activities are required in addition to such efforts, we will continue to exert
such efforts.
Hisayuki Hashimoto,Federation of Japan Furniture Manufacturers’ Association