94

In April 1979, six years after the First Oil Crisis of October 1973, the Japanese chemical corporation Kureha Kagaku Kogyo and the East German corporation for optical instruments Carl Zeiss Jena concluded a technology license agreement regarding optical measuring instruments and immunologic cancer diagnosis technology, which was utilizing these instruments. The licenser was Carl Zeiss Jena and Kureha Kagaku Kogyo was the licensee and this article analyses this example of licensing. It also examines the state of Japanese-East German economic relations during the period from the latter half of the 1970s to the first half of the 1980s through an analysis of the dimension of the enterprise.. The relationship was not completely successful, however and it is not mentioned in the history of either companies and has a tendency to be forgotten. Rather than being written off as a historical anecdote, the relationship is worth studying because it clarifies – at least partially – the extent of corporate business activities and the state of the relationship between Japan and East Germany from the First Oil Crisis until the first half of the 1980s. It also appears that the relations between the two countries at that time with regard to the dimension of each national economy are reflected in this project.