United States Foreign Investments Japan

General Motors Corp. said Friday it will increase its control of struggling Japanese truck and diesel engine maker Isuzu Motors, a move that illustrates both the quickening pace of the auto industry's global consolidation and uncertain times in the Japanese industry. GM, the world's largest auto maker, will raise its ownership of Isuzu to 49% from 37.5% with an investment of $456 million.

U.S. investors hoping that Japan's election surprise on Sunday would be a watershed for Asia's battered financial markets came away disappointed on Monday. While stocks rallied 1.7% in Tokyo, they fell in most other Asian markets. But the yen didn't collapse, as some experts predicted. And on Wall Street, stocks closed mixed in mostly dull trading--suggesting confusion rather than worry or relief. In trading early today, most Asian markets rose modestly, while the yen was stable at about 141.

Miki Nakamura returned last month from a trip to Japan and, despite what the country's poor economy might suggest, it's still an opportune time for U.S. companies to develop business relationships in the region, she said. "Because the economy is bad, people tend to save their money more, but that doesn't mean they won't buy anything," said Nakamura, director of the USA-Japan Trade Expansion Center in Pensacola, Fla. "There's a change of lifestyle there.

Amid worrisome news that several prominent Japanese high-tech companies are beating a retreat from U.S. shores, Japan's largest trading company said Thursday that it is joining Atlantic Richfield Co. in a $200-million project to build the West Coast's first polypropylene plant in Carson. Other Japanese trading firms are expected to follow Itochu Corp. into the United States even as they shut down projects at home and in hard-hit Southeast Asia, according to Arco officials and others.

The Japanese lender that controls Pebble Beach has held recent negotiations to sell the legendary seaside golf resort to an American development group for at least $500 million, said a leading Japanese real estate specialist on Friday.

Japanese investors and lenders continued to purge their portfolios of U.S. real estate last year, selling or putting on the auction block $8.9 billion in property, including New York's famed Rockefeller Center, according to a survey to be released today.

Japanese investors and lenders continued to purge their portfolios of U.S. real estate last year, selling or putting on the auction block $8.9 billion in property, including New York's famed Rockefeller Center, according to a survey to be released today.

Seri Shigekazu, executive manager of the Fukuoka Takarazuka theater, isn't worried at all about his new neighbor, the $5-million, 13-screen AMC multiplex that recently opened just a few blocks away. After all, Shigekazu insists, his aging theater in this night-life district has fans so loyal that they are willing to pay $18 apiece to sink into their not-so-cushy seats. The beer and dried squid are extra.

Shortly after Walter F. Mondale arrived here as U.S. ambassador in September 1993, he was so hopeful that reform was about to take hold that he persuaded Washington not to impose trade sanctions over Japan's closed construction market. After all, the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party had lost its majority rule for the first time in 38 years. A new administration was spouting rosy reform plans that would open markets, empower consumers and tame obstructive bureaucrats.

On a shelf in Yoji Yamamoto's office sits a binder with the instructions for reproducing Woody Woodpecker, right down to the correct shade of Dai Nippon paint used to color his bright red topknot. That binder is one piece of MCA Inc.'s strategy as it moves into Japan--true Mickey Mouse territory and the most lucrative foreign market of the powerful Walt Disney Co.