(FORTUNE Magazine) – Love to hate Japan? You won't get much sympathy from Donald Springer, chairman of the New York Fur Leather and Outerwear Exposition. Thanks to a three-day show set up in Tokyo last year with the help of a little-known Japanese government agency, he and 29 other New York fur manufacturers met over 1,000 buyers and sold $8 million in furs. Says Springer: ''Business has been tough, and it helped keep us alive another year.'' The furriers' way into Japan was paved by Jetro, short for Japan External Trade Organization. Created in 1958 to encourage Japanese exports abroad, Jetro now concentrates on promoting imports into Japan. Overall, the Japanese have budgeted nearly $1 billion to help finance imports from the U.S., according to American officials. Still, that's only one-fortieth of Japan's trade surplus with the U.S., which is straining transpacific relations. To find goods Japanese companies want to buy, Jetro trade experts have visited 17 U.S. states since September 1990. In Tennessee they found Dorothy ''Dot'' Smith, president of Pepper Patch, a small specialty food company that makes Tipsy Cakes, a pecan concoction laced with Jack Daniel's whiskey, a Japanese favorite. Jetro's biggest single deal: a $4 million sale of full-line vending machines produced by Crane Co., the U.S. leader. Crane's machines cost 40% less than similar Japanese models, and Jetro helped it meet Japan's complicated regulatory requirements.