OUR man in Japan was born in Newport and comes from a Valleys steel family. Dr Robert Parry is head of WalesTrade International's Tokyo office and is about to host a delegation of 17 Welsh firms alongside a visit from economic development minister Andrew Davies.

WalesTrade International (WTI) is the Assembly executive's overseas trade arm and is designed to help Welsh firms prospect for opportunities abroad. In Mr Parry's case the WTI has struck gold.

He's a fluent Japanese speaker and reader, having taken a four-year PhD in industrial economics at Kobe university and stayed on a further six years as a lecturer.

His parents came from Tredegar and his father worked in the wages department of the Ebbw Vale steel works.

During the 1960s his father moved to the newly-opened Llanwern site, relocating his family to Chepstow where Robert grew up.

Robert won a scholarship to Monmouth School where he ended up as head boy. After that it was a degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Hertford College, Oxford.

He joined the WTI a year ago having answered a job ad in a newspaper. He said: "Academia can be a bit detached from the real world.

"I'm enjoying doing something practical on behalf of Welsh people and the Welsh economy. I'm also very happy to be working for the Assembly because I've been a fan of devolution since the 1970s."

He said WTI's mission was to help develop the country's entrepreneurial culture, especially in relation to exports.

"Jobs that come from exporting tend to have a higher added value and are thus more secure."

He believes there's a lot of missionary work to be done about opportunities in Japan because few people over here have much idea about its economy.

"The media seems only interested in the freaky stuff - no basic information comes across."

Dr Parry astounded me by pointing out sheer size of the Japanese market.

"The gross national product has been estimated at 4.5 trillion dollars - about three times the size of the UK economy.

"And it's a country of affluent, well-educated consumers."

There's 120 million of them, living in a long country which has freezing winters in the north (being close to Siberia) and a virtual sub-tropical climate in the south.

"Eighty per cent of the country is mountainous forest, which creates a scarcity of low, flat land for building or agriculture."

Leisure time means a basketball game, cinema at the out-of-town multiplex or a skiing trip to the mountains in your trusty 4x4.

Despite these slight differences in geography and ethnicity, Dr Parry claimed the Japanese reminded him of the Welsh.

"Under the Shogun military government, which lasted around 250 years, Japanese society was very stable.

"Merchants were left to get on with it, and banking and commodity exchanges were developed.

"Buddhism in Japan developed very differently to other parts of Asia: priests extolled the virtues of hard work and saving for the future. It was a bit like the Protestant ethic."

But one of the downsides of the Shogun regime was that virtually all contact with foreign culture was banned.

And because the West went through an industrial revolution it left Japan behind in terms of economics and military capability.

The Americans arrived in 1853 and forced the country to begin trading with them and in 1869 a revolution overthrew the government and forced a rapid modernisation.

This period formed the background to the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai which Dr Parry enjoyed as much as I did.

He said that today there was lots of goodwill between Wales and Japan.

"Many executives who are now at the top of organisations in Japan, lived in Europe from the 1970s onwards when their firms opened factories over here.

"Some were based in Wales and really enjoyed the experience."

He said there was an active St David's Society in Japan and expects to be attending some belt-busting dinners in Tokyo and Osaka (the second largest conurbation) to celebrate March 1.

Current opportunities for Welsh business have a lot to do with the break-up of the giant Japanese groupings called Keiretsus.

These huge entities contained all kinds of businesses including manufacturers, insurance companies and shipping lines and they traded internally.

It enabled long-term supplier relationships to be established which powered Japanese industry ahead.

But at the same time the Keiretsus created huge barriers to international trade.

Times change and the impact of globalisation has been as profound in Japan as everywhere else.

Manufacturing operations are being "offshored" to China (where per capita income is 35-times smaller) and price has become a major factor in the supply chain.

Consequently, the Keiretsus are breaking down and - according to Dr Parry - opportunities for European firms now abound.

That's where he comes in and he's had a busy year organising visits to trade shows in sectors such as aerospace, telecoms, and home interiors.

Gwent business Silver Telecom looks set to benefit from a WTI initiative having signed an agreement with Japanese distributor Global Electronics Corporation.

Silver specialises in analogue circuits for use in Internet telephony (digital is not the answer to everything, apparently) and is also entering into an agreement with Asahi-Kasei Micro Systems to form a telecoms joint venture.

Tritech Precision Products of Wrexham and King Engineering of Tredegar exhibited on the WTI stand at Japan Aerospace in Yokohama last October.

Tritech makes high-spec castings; King makes generators for military and aerospace applications.

A trading company from Nagoya became interested in both companies and Dr Parry took Nagoya representatives to meet the firms in Wales in December.

He said: "It went well and I'm hoping the visit will bear fruit in coming months."

Although the Western media has given the impression that the Japanese economy has been on its backside for a decade (redundant executives sleeping in boxes under bridges and so on), Dr Parry said this was a misleading impression.

"In the late 1980s there was a bubble in the Japanese stock exchange and property market which resulted in asset price deflation and this had a negative effect on consumer spending.

"But real-world industrial activity has continued more-or-less unabated.

"Companies such as Toyota have been fantasically successful and the country has enjoyed reasonable growth rates.

"Last year gross national product grew by 3.2 per cent and I'm imploring Welsh firms to consider possibilities in the Japanese marketplace."