Analysis explains the recent rise in Japan's trade surplus as follows:because of therecession at home,Japan has seen a decline in expensive imports of luxuries,which were enormously fashionable during the second half of the 1980s.This effect has been compounded,thanks to slow growth elsewhere,by low prices for the international commodities that Japanese industry depends upon.Exports of Japanese machinery,on the other hand,withstood the downturn quite well because the Asian economies that buy them continued to boom.