To the Editor: Anesthesiology in Japan has progressed due to technology and knowledge introduced from many countries such as the United States. The first department of anesthesiology was established in Japan in 1952; all medical universities in Japan now have departments, resulting in an increase in the number of anesthetists. Accordingly, many anesthetists have initiated anesthesiology research. Furthermore, recent economic developments in Japan have enabled us to equip one department with up-to-date equipment in clinical and laboratory settings. Thus, we examined the change in research activity among Japanese anesthetists using bibliometrics. We counted the number of Japanese-authored articles published in two widely circulated anesthesia journals, Anesthesia & Analgesia and Anesthesiology, during two 5-year periods, 1971-1975 and 1989-1993. In each journal, we compared the findings of these two periods. Figure 1 suggests that research activity among Japanese anesthetists has markedly increased over the past 20 years. Formerly, many American anesthesiologists and Japanese anesthetists who had studied abroad in the USA gave instruction in technology and the logic of research to inexperienced anesthesiology researchers in Japan. In recent years, a larger number of Japanese anesthetists have gone abroad to obtain the most advanced knowledge in the field. We must remember that progress in anesthesiology in Japan is attributable to educational opportunities abroad, especially in the USA, as well as to the efforts of Japanese anesthetists. Finally, we highly respect the scientific attitude of the editorial staff and reviewers at the journals who assessed Japanese work fairly and without racial discrimination, seeking only to further advancement of anesthesiology in the world.Figure 1: The number and the share of publications by Japanese authors in the two periods. We examined "clinical and laboratory investigations" in all issues of Anesthesiology and Anesthesia & Analgesia during the two 5-yr periods. "Editorials," "case reports," "correspondence," "review articles," and studies undertaken in non-Japanese institutes were excluded. The Japanese share of publications (the number of articles by Japanese authors/the total number of articles published) is shown in parentheses.Migiwa Asano, MD Katsuya Mikawa, MD Kahoru Nishina, MD Nobuhiro Maekawa, MD Hidefumi Obara, MD Department of Anesthesiology Kobe University School of Medicine Kusunoki-cho 7, Chuo-ku Kobe 650, Japan