Abstract
This paper is discussed on the prospects of packaging industry and technologies of Japan for comming 21th century. It is clear that packaging industry depends on living style and social mechanizms. A trends of numerical consumption, amounts of money and composisition of packaging materials are one of a measure of development of packaging industry. Total consumption of packaging materials in Japan of 1965, 1980 and 1993 were $6,344.5{\times}10^3,\;15,898.7{\times}10^3\;and\;21,603.3{\times}10^3$ tons respectively and also, shipping money of packaging materials were $7,073{\times}10^{11},\;45,421{\times}10^{11}\;and\;63,902{\times}10^{11}$ yen, respectively. It is estimated from these data that the packaging industry is also increasing in future according of GNP of country. Compositions of packaging materials from 1965 to 1993, however, are somewhat changing according to development of new materials or social conditions such as platics packaging or wooden packaging materials. Technical forcasts of packaging industry are shown from view point of national living style, energy and resorces as well as environment of world based on forcasting committee of pulp & paper in Japan, report of research committee for the 21th packaging in JPI and materials of symposium in Kanagawa University in this paper. As a my conclusion, many functional packaging materials shall be developed in the future and accordingly Life Cycle Assesment plays a important role of packaging fields. Furthermore, I am estimating in future the new cellulosic materials such as nonwood fiber resources instead of paper, board, wooden containers and a part of plastic packaging materials shall be developed. This paper is constructed by three items as follow: